“How, when seemingly depicting a family and their suitors, servants and hangers-on lolling around a country house, does he paint a whole world of longings and fears in such vivid colours?” So asks the Times critic Dominic Maxwell of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. In a new translation by the playwright Rory Mullarkey, the play is now on at Shakespeare’s historic home, the Globe. From beginning to end, candlelight sustains the tone in a household where Olga, Masha, and Irina are surrounded by a collection of powerless, miserable men vying for their affections. But the true tension is between the sisters: they lash out at one another, failing to listen and letting emotions fly while longing, perhaps hopelessly, for happiness. —Jeanne Malle