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Yvette Ganier, Kate Czajkowski, and Genevieve Perrier in Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters.

Spoiler alert: The sisters never make it to Moscow.

From the very beginning of Three Sisters, it’s practically all the three titular characters talk about. The aristocratic siblings are stuck with each other in a small, unrefined town where knowing three languages is “an unnecessary appendage,” with only a few stationed soldiers to distract them from the doldrums of their everyday lives since their fall from high society.

But for Temple Repertory Theater’s production of Anton Chekhov’s classic, that stagnation’s a good thing. The characters may never go anywhere, but the actors portraying them make full use of Chekhov’s witty banter (adapted to more modern language) and multiple stories to create a dynamic social circle that’s fun to watch change and grow. Despite the show’s relatively long run time, the action moves quickly with subtle set changes and leaps forward in time that reveal a significant portion of these characters’ lives.

And there are a lot of characters –Three Sisters has a large cast with a lot of Russian names, which makes for confusing plot summaries and characters you remember but can’t name. But even with this web of romances and connected stories, the show itself is easy to follow, in large part because each character is well developed and faces a unique set of challenges, despite many coming from the same family and almost all belonging to the same declining class.

It’s hard to know exactly how to feel about many of these characters, which is often what makes them so compelling. When Irina (the charming Genevieve Perrier), at the ripe old age of 24, proclaims that she simply can not work another day at her mundane job, you almost feel bad for her and her perceived fall from grace. Or when the bumbling Kulygin (a standout performance from David Ingram) offers the middle sister Masha a chance to start their marriage over after learning she’s been unfaithful, it’s tough to judge if he’s being naive, or simply recognizing his own shortcomings as a husband. It was Chekhov who created these wonderfully rounded characters, but it’s the actors, with few exceptions, who really nail it in this production.

Three Sisters is heralded as a symbolic portrait of a dying class and a historical snapshot of Russian aristocracy — and Temple Rep’s production certainly has those elements. But it’s broader, more gripping appeal is the way these actors portray a family’s universal challenges of growing old, accepting change, settling for second best and just struggling to make it through the day.

Three Sisters
July 7 – August 1, 2010
$15 – $25

Temple Repertory Theater
1301 W. Norris Street, Philadelphia, PA
(215) 204-1344
www.temple.edu/theater