Playwright: Aaron Sawyer. At: Red Theater at the Den, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave. Tickets: 773-733-0540; www.redtheater.org; $10-$20 . Runs through: March 23
Aaron Sawyer may not be the only writer to transpose Chekhov's pre-revolution Russia to a universe more accessible to modern American audiencesthe 1950s, say, or Enid, Okla.but uprooting the Prozarov sisters from their beloved Nebraska to isolate them in a war-torn Afghanistan entails more than a shift in geographical references or dress hems. Still, as one of Sawyer's GIs remarks, "If you're going to fire the first shot, you might as well blow it all up."
Our story still focuses on the children of a U.S. "advisor" posted to a foreign land far from the family's beloved Omaha. Eldest sister Olga teaches at the local school, as does middle sister Maria's would-be playwright husband Freddy, while little sister Irna chafes under the restrictions mandated by local custom. Laptop-hugging brother Andrew fancies himself an entrepreneur, but first needs ground-gripping Natasha to break him of his gambling habita duty the unreconstructed colonialista embraces eagerly, along with taking charge of her husband's affairs and bossing her in-laws.
In a country where the house servants may be plotting against their employers and an unescorted woman risks assault by wearing red stiletto-heels on the street, hostilities requiring military presence are not limited to a few troops marching to distant drums. The erosive malaise infecting these homesick expats may be manifested psychologically on the domestic front, but its effect on the uniformed personnelPetro, Sully, Cookie and commander Alex Chebutykinis patently physical.
Before we are done, three of them will undergo bodily changes, a rape victim will not be whom we expect, somebody will die who didn't in the 1901 version, and someone else will meet an untimely end in a manner grimly commonplace, given that person's locale.
Red Theater calls its version an "aggressive retelling" of Chekhovabraggadocio often connoting a license to self-conscious excessbut except for the introduction of a Brechtian device in the form of a protean everyperson dubbed "Misfit" ( whose purpose remains unclear to us for too long ), Sawyer's analogies parallel his source material with remarkable accuracy. The actors likewise engage our sympathies, easing us into our milieuin particular, Jim Poole's avuncular senior officer Alex, Johnard Washington's cheerful Petro, and Victoria Alvarez-Chacon's Cookie, whose willingness to sacrifice even her gender identity for love and country makes her loss the most tragic of all.