A play with Miss Cornell is always an event; her present production is almost an incredibility in the theatrical talent which its dramatis personae represent. Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon, Edmund Gwenn, Dennis King, Alexander Knox, Gertrude Musgrove, and, of course Katherin Cornell lend an intoxicating amount of capability to a superbly written and directed play.

Each of the three Prozorov sisters, living in a provincial Russian town of the last century, suffers from disappointment and disillusion. Masha, wed to an absurd pedagogue, finds, only to lose, her true love, Colonel Vershinin; Olga, the eldest, is doomed to spend the dreary minutes of her existence as a high-school superintendent; and Irina, the youngest, hating her provincial life, no longer able to "remember the Italian for window or ceiling," sees her last chance for escape disappear when her fiance is killed in a duel.

All the characterizations are distinguished, with that of Edmund Gwenn as Dr. Chebutykin outstanding. The play is a beautifully executed bit of national portraiture as well as a discriminating study of individual frustration.