Set of Sisters like one big happy family
THREE figures are essential to a theatrical production: the writer; the director, who interprets the script; and the actor, who puts his slant on the ideas of both. Three sets of ideas that don’t necessarily match. With Sisters, which opens at the Everyman on Monday, it’s been cooperative, playwright Declan Hassett sitting in on rehearsals while director Michael Twomey guides actress Gerry McLoughlin through the birth pangs of creating a character. Two characters, since Sisters is a challenging, shocking dual role of siblings whose lives have taken different paths.
The play was created for the late Anna Manahan, a friend of the playwright’s. “We’d often talked about my writing Anna’s biography,” says Hassett, “but there never seemed to be enough hours in the day. So one evening I said I’d write a play for her instead. I thought no more about it, but three days later she was on the phone, saying, ‘well, have you written it yet?’ And she kept at me until I did.” Sisters, directed by Michael Scott, premiered in 2005 and was a hit, in this country and abroad, selling out and gaining Manahan a Tony nomination in New York in 2006.
