Three Sisters : A New Interpretation by Lev Dodin and the Maly Theatre:
Photo: Viktor Vassiliev
One of the most exciting theatrical events in a season that brought Boston the extraordinary Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 and Mark Ryland in Nice Fish (both at the ART) is Lev Dodin’s Three Sisters now playing at ArtsEmerson’s Cutler Majestic Theatre. Dodin, an illustrious Russian director, began his career more than fifty years ago when he joined the Young People’s Theatre run by Matvey Dubrovin, a pupil of Meyerhold. In the 1960s, he studied at the Leningrad Institute of Theatre under Boris Zon, who was a former student of Stanislavsky. Dodin’s work continues to be influenced by the discoveries of Meyerhold and Stanislavsky.
In 1983, Dodin was appointed artistic director of the Maly Theatre in what was still Leningrad. The Maly has its own long-standing company of actors, some of whom trained under Dodin at the St. Petersburg Academy of Theatre Arts, as the Leningrad Institute is known today. Maly productions tour widely, although this is the first time the troupe has visited Boston. Three Sisters is played in Russian with English supertitles.