Theatre: Three Sisters on Hope Street brings classic into a new era

Jan 25 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

The story-line may be familiar, but the rest of the play is pure Liverpool. Philip Key reports

IT WAS a role in a school production of Grease that turned Samantha Robinson’s world around. Now she is about to undergo another change, as she heads back to Liverpool to create a new role in a new play, Three Sisters on Hope Street, opening tonight at the Liverpool Everyman.

For the last few years, she has been carving out a busy stage and television career for herself in London. But she has never acted in Liverpool, where her roots lie.

Born in Southport and reared in Skelmersdale, the city holds a special place in her heart with childhood memories of the markets, the waterfront and shops.

She still has an annual pilgrimage to the Liverpool shops every Christmas with her mother.

Appearing in a new Liverpool-set play, at a time when Liverpool is celebrating its year as European Capital of Culture, holds a special thrill particularly as she is the only local in the cast.

“It means a lot to be in the city at this time,” she says. “There is going to be a real buzz in Liverpool and I want to get to know it better. I hope I can partake in some of the events if the timing is right.”

When we spoke, however, she was deep in rehearsals at London’s Riverside Studios, where there was also a real buzz about the new play.

Co-written by Liverpool writer Diane Samuels and actress/writer Tracy-Ann Oberman (still best known for her role as Chrissie Watts in EastEnders and an appearance in Doctor Who), it is a reworking of the Chekhov classic Three Sisters, first produced in Moscow in 1901.

In the new version, the setting is among the Liverpool Jewish community just after World War II when society was in a state of flux.

In Chekhov’s tale, the sisters and their dissolute brother live in the provinces and dream of returning to Moscow, their dull lives enlivened by the presence nearby of the Imperial Army. Various relationship and life complications occur in a play many consider to be Chekhov’s masterpiece.

In the new play, the sisters live in Liverpool, and it is the presence of an American air base at Burtonwood which provides some of the romantic interest.

Samantha is playing the youngest sister, Rita.

As fate would have it, she does have three sisters of her own and a brother. “Oh yes, I have a moody one and a chirpy one and when we were young we teased our brother,” she laughs. And while having many siblings has been an inspiration, she says they were not really like the characters in the play.

It was at Lathom High School that she first took to the stage at age 15, playing Sandra Dee in the school production of Grease. “As soon as I had done that I was hook- ed, absolutely. Before that, I had been considering a career as a criminal psychologist but changed my mind.”

She took theatre studies and performing art courses at college, and later moved to London to the Ruse Bruford theatre school’s base, in Greenwich: “I went into the profession from there, and have been doing it many years.”

There has been a lot of stage work – including recently playing opposite Pete Postlethwaite in The Tempest, at Manchester’s Royal Exchange – and various television work, including a role in Shameless and a soon-to-be aired episode of Holby City in which she plays a wife whose husband and father are in hospital at the same time. “It is an intense storyline, but it was good fun seeing all the blood and stuff close up.”

She is excited about the new play, however, a co-production by the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Theatres and Hampstead Theatre and the Liverpool theatres’ first offering for the European Capital of Culture Year.

“It is set in 1946, just after the war, and the three sisters are part of a Liverpool Jewish community, middle class, well educated. Their aspirations are to go to new York where the family come from.

“But my character, Rita, becomes interested in the Zionist movement and her aspirations become different, the fight for the homeland. Jews are being persecuted all over the world and she is affected by it.”

In the original, two men fight a duel over her character. “There is no duel, but there is a fight . . .” she reveals. Samantha did actually appear in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, that time playing Masha, an older sister.

“That was very different, a traditional version. I find the new one much more alive and it will echo with audiences. It has really worked transporting it to Liverpool and given real life and passion to the piece.”

As with any new play, things have changed in rehearsal. “There have been bits and pieces changed and we have explored different ways of doing things. But it is now set and we have found the right tone for it.

“The writers have been in and out of rehearsals, and always available for chats. It has been exciting to see the development of the script.”

She has also been doing her homework. As one of the non-Jewish actors in the play, she has been researching. “I have been discovering what it means to be Jewish, how it affects your personality and how you relate to people in a different way. We also looked into what it was like in World War II, how air raids affected a community and the Jewish community in particular.”

There had also been help from a regular role she played earlier in her career in the television series Island at War, set in Jersey during the occupation. “I was able to draw on some of those experiences. I played a young girl on the island who ended up becoming involved with the Germans without really knowing it. The community turned on her. It was interesting to discover how it felt to be overrun and not have your place in the world. Although it was set in Jersey, it was actually filmed on the Isle of Man.”

Of course, Three Sisters on Hope Street is not that story, but one that will be familiar to both theatre-goers and many Liverpudlians.

“It follows the structure of the Chekhov play but the references and language are Liverpool,” she says. “We are all nervously excited about premiering it in Liverpool – we want it to go well and make a good impression. So fingers crossed.”

THREE Sisters on Hope Street opens with a preview tonight at the Liverpool Everyman, and runs until February 16.

philkey@dailypost.co.uk