When the word “immersive” is attached to a theater production, I usually react with skepticism, questioning whether such an approach will enhance or distract from the source material. Immersive theater, when done well, can be a powerful experience, as Albany Park Theater Project has repeatedly demonstrated, but the format also runs the risk of feeling gimmicky or awkward. Plus, in the wider entertainment world, the immersive trend is now so ubiquitous — from virtual reality riffs on Van Gogh’s paintings to renderings of Mozart’s world generated by artificial intelligence — that the word has almost lost all meaning.
How does Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” fare under the immersive treatment? As staged by the Sandbox Theatre Collective, an off-Loop company founded in 2022, the results are mixed. The United Church of Rogers Park’s nearly 100-year-old building, with its dark brown wood paneling and vintage casement windows, is an atmospheric stand-in for a provincial Russian household around the turn of the 20th century. Directed by Audrey Napoli, with Kristen Alesia as the immersive consultant, the production employs interactive elements that work during the opening party scene but make it difficult to connect with individual character arcs for much of the play.
Cait Kelly, Lexy Weixel and Andi Muriel star as the titular sisters — Olga, Masha and Irina — who share a house with their brother, Andrey (Jerome Michael Jones), after the death of their father, an army general. Like many of Chekhov’s characters, these adult siblings struggle to adjust to the declining circumstances of their previously privileged lifestyles. Olga teaches at a local school, Masha is unhappily married to an older man (Kulygin, played by Caleb Ryan Jones), and Irina looks forward to becoming a working woman as she celebrates her 20th birthday. Above all, the sisters dream of returning to their hometown of Moscow, idealizing it as the place where they can once again find happiness.
The audience, limited to 15 people per performance, joins Irina’s birthday festivities during the opening scene; attendees are invited to eat cake and drink champagne, with some sitting at the dinner table and others scattered around the room. Actors interact with audience members as if they were party guests, encouraging everyone to gather for a group photo at one point. Napoli’s direction mimics the environment of a real-life social gathering, with some conversations happening simultaneously and live piano music occasionally underscoring the dialogue. Those who haven’t read or seen the play before will likely miss certain subtexts and setups for later plot developments due to this format.
Later in the first act, the action splits into smaller scenes taking place in separate rooms, prompting audience members to choose which actors they will follow. These transitions were still being worked out on opening night, and I suspect the flow will improve as the run continues. Again, my bigger concern is that viewers will miss certain plot points, and with all remaining performances currently sold out, a return visit to catch the other scenes isn’t likely.
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Following intermission, the plot skips ahead about four years, and the actors and audience journey upstairs to a cramped, stuffy room meant to be the bedroom that Olga and Irina share. (Andrey is now married to Natasha, played by Michaela Voit, and the self-absorbed woman has commandeered Irina’s former bedroom for her infant son.) In the wee hours of the morning, after a long night spent dealing with a fire in the town, emotions run high among the four siblings. Irina bemoans the waste of her fine education and the lack of poetry and meaning in her work. Masha confesses to an affair with married army officer Vershinin (James Lewis), while Andrey admits to having mortgaged the family home, without his sisters’ consent, to pay his gambling debts. Exhausted from filling in as headmistress at her school, Olga tries to hold the fraying family together.
These intimate scenes in the upstairs bedroom are the most effective of the entire production, even though the slight attempts at audience interaction don’t make much sense in this context. Kelly gives an especially convincing performance as we see Olga’s quiet desperation grow behind the calm persona she presents to the world. The oppressive heat (the church isn’t air-conditioned) amplifies the feelings of malaise, discontent and irritability displayed by the characters.
Culminating in a lovely lit outdoor garden complete with a real bonfire, the final scenes play out with scattered blocking that makes it hard to catch all of the dialogue. The limitations of this particular immersive format become clearest in the finale; it’s hard to feel the full weight of these characters’ emotional journeys when we’re missing pieces of their stories. Of course, even in traditional productions, it’s impossible to look everywhere at once and catch all of the subtleties happening onstage, but I came away from this “Three Sisters” with a sense that the principal actors had more to offer than I was able to absorb.
Review: “Three Sisters” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Aug. 17
Where: United Church of Rogers Park, 1545 W. Morse Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes
Tickets: Waiting list availability only, sandboxtheatrecollective.com
Emily McClanathan is a freelance critic.