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Chekhov then. Chekhov now. Chekhov forever

Philadelphia, meet Anton Chekhov. In 2005, Walt Whitman came to town, with the 150th anniversary of the debut of the Camden bard's Leaves of Grass. Last year, Jane Austen stomped in, partying like it was 2013 for the bicentennial of Pride and Prejudice. Shakespeare visits, it seems, every year (including this one, the 450th anniversary of his birth).

Grace Gonglewski as Masha, Kraig Swartz as Vanya, and Deirdre Madigan as Sonia in Philadelphia Theatre Company's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike." All the sibs in the play have been named after Chekhov characters.
Grace Gonglewski as Masha, Kraig Swartz as Vanya, and Deirdre Madigan as Sonia in Philadelphia Theatre Company's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike." All the sibs in the play have been named after Chekhov characters.Read more

Philadelphia, meet Anton Chekhov.

In 2005, Walt Whitman came to town, with the 150th anniversary of the debut of the Camden bard's Leaves of Grass. Last year, Jane Austen stomped in, partying like it was 2013 for the bicentennial of Pride and Prejudice. Shakespeare visits, it seems, every year (including this one, the 450th anniversary of his birth).

Well, make way for Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), physician, master of the short story, and one of history's great playwrights. This month and next two theatrical productions bring front and center the Russian writer in his famous pince-nez.

Three Sisters, the searing, ambiguous masterpiece often called "Chekhov's Lear," is in previews at the Arden Theatre. Directed by Terrence J. Nolen, it's the result of two arduous years of development.

"I've been casting Three Sisters in my mind with Philadelphia actors for 20 years," Nolen says. "Then we decided to apply to the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage for support, looking at it as a two-year project, and they supported us."

Meantime, Christopher Durang's Bucks County comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike - which debuted in 2012 at Princeton's McCarter Theatre (with Sigourney Weaver and David Hyde Pierce) and went on to flatten Manhattan and win the 2013 best-play Tony - is running at the Philadelphia Theatre Company's Suzanne Roberts Theatre.

"I didn't want to do a Chekhov parody, or set it in the past, or in Russia," Durang says. "I was taking Chekhov characters and scenes and putting them in a blender . . . using him as a jumping-off point." Hilariously.

If it seems like a long time away for Chekhov, and for Three Sisters, it is. "We do a Chekhov every 25 years," Nolen jokes. (Arden last got its Chekhov on in 1989, with Michael Frayn's The Sneeze, a group of his short plays.)

Set in a house in the provinces, Sisters revolves around the Prozorov sisters, Masha, Olga, and Irina, all of whom long for Moscow. The play is, again like Lear, both epic and delicate, tragic and comic, and hard to do well, so a professional company might approach with caution. (A Villanova University production did appear in 2007, as did one at Temple in 2010. Also in 2010, Lantern Theater Company staged a weeklong Chekhov festival - but hung it on Uncle Vanya.)

For this one, Nolen sought out translator Curt Columbus for a new rendering; the two even traveled to Russia to "get an immersion in all things Chekhov."

"I love his understanding of the specifics of Chekhov, and contemporary audiences and their needs," Nolen says. He "wanted the translator to be part of the rehearsal process" - and he was, grappling with the untranslatable niceties of Russian with Mary Tuomanen (who plays Irina) and/or dramaturge Sarah Ollove, both of whom have some Russian.

Columbus found American equivalents for the patronymics and diminutives that bewilder U.S. audiences. He even "put back in all Chekhov's commas" when he realized they made a difference.

Tuomanen studied in Moscow during her time at Connecticut's National Theater Institute. What she saw opened her eyes.

"To come in contact with people for whom art really is sacred, you realize you really have to step up your game," she says. Sisters is her first professional Chekhov, and "to honestly represent my character's crisis is a real honor."

As for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, how did Chekhov come to Bucks County? Durang, speaking by phone from his home there, says the idea struck "at a particular moment, when I was looking at my house and I thought, 'I'm the same age as Uncle Vanya, and I'm living in a house like the house in The Seagull.' "

What Durang didn't realize was that when his play debuted at McCarter, "the house onstage would look quite so much like my own." And, he says,  "As I kept writing, I found myself wanting to mention other things from the area," such as the evocatively named town of Upper Black Eddy.

Part of the jest is that all the sibs in the play have been named after Chekhov characters. From there, Durang wrote intuitively, pulling things in from here and there. The saga of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore led, indirectly, to Spike, the very non-Chekhov-ian dude who is Masha's most recent conquest. "This young guy seemed to fit with Masha being this grandiose actress," Durang says.

Grace Gonglewski, who plays Masha in the PTC production, says, "I just left a message at the Arden saying, 'We're all coming over to see Three Sisters, and you're all invited to see Vanya.' "

She says it was a Chekhov role - as Nina in The Seagull in a college production - that really began her acting career. One way Vanya strikes her as being like real Chekhov is that "there really isn't a main character. All are equal threads in this tapestry, and everybody gets his or her moment to shine, to speak about their worlds."

Kraig Swartz, who plays Vanya, says, "even though they are pretty emotionally inarticulate, these people are still pretty good in describing how they're feeling - and, in this play, at irritating the people around them. That's what Chris is toying with."

Durang has been visiting the rehearsals and offering notes. What was that like? Both Swartz and Gonglewski, hours apart, say one word: "Terrifying." Both also say his notes were indispensable.

The hearts of civilized people, Chekhov once wrote in a letter to a friend, "suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye." The braided nuances of Three Sisters are full of such pain. "It combines this epic sweep with intensely intimate moments," Nolen says. "One of the pleasures of developing this play was being able, with the entire cast, to explore that intimacy within that sweep."

Amid the laughs of Vanya, we glimpse it, too, especially in a speech by Vanya near the end. "He is in a state of heightened anxiety," Swartz says, "but what he's saying is what anyone would say: the march of time, and loss, and worrying about the future. It's a beautiful speech, a real gift."

Gonglewski says: "That's Chekhov. When the characters' hearts are breaking, tears of laughter are rolling down our faces; when they're laughing, we're crying. There's a dramatic reversal between the theater world and the audience, simultaneous pain and hilarity."

Three Sisters "is beautiful because it presents a multiplicity of meanings for life," Tuomanen says, "and at the end, that piercing last line of Olga's speaks for all of us: 'If only we could know!' "

THEATER

Three Sisters

Through April 20 at Arden Theatre Company, 40 N. 2d St.

Tickets $15-$48. Information: 215-922-1122 or www.ardentheatre.org.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Through April 20 at Philadelphia Theatre Company's Suzanne Roberts Theatre, 480 S. Broad St.

Tickets: $29-$64. Information: 215-985-0420 or www.philadelphiatheatrecompany.org.EndText

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@jtimpane