The Directing eye

Even though my job is to talk about the directing of this play, I have to say that the set design was magnificent! The director has say in that, so his eye for settings is great.
The play starts off with the three sisters walking around the stage looking out into space. The other characters did a little bit of that on their way to their position; which was a chair out in the woods. As the three sisters got into their early dialog you could see the cast holding private conversations in the woods, and then someone would shout out something against what the three sisters were saying but it would be directed at the person the character was talking to. I thought that was interesting. I thought the blocking was good, and you'd probably find a lot of directors who may not like the fact that conversations in the story were from a sitting position, or they just stood in one place moving here and there but not much. I liked the way the director used four entrances to the stage, it gave the stage more dimensions. We as the audience got to imagine that there was a living room area by the way the director sold the laughter coming from the speakers above the exit by the lobby.
I thought the play was good, but I didn't like the relationship between the eldest sister and her husband the teacher. The fact that she wasn't happy with him but she felt that a soldier with a sick wife for whom he referred to disrespectfully would be better for her...huh?
By: Patrick Ford