Chekhov's penultimate play has inspired a bewildering variety of interpretations since its premiere at the Moscow Arts Theatre on 31 January 1901. Three Sisters has been viewed both as tragedy and as comedy, as a poignant testimony to the eternal yearning for love, happiness, beauty and meaning, and as a devastating indictment of the folly of inert gentility and vacuous day-dreaming. Its characters have been deemed worthy embodiments of the universal 'human condition', keenly experiencing hope, disappointment, frustration, loneliness and the passage of time - or passive products of...