THE futility of provincial existence is never far from the surface of Three Sisters and the contemporary tones of Cordelia Lynn’s adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play, written in 1900, make it memorably explicit.

The eponymous Sergeyevna sisters, Olga (Patsy Ferran), Masha (Pearl Chanda) and Irene (Ria Zmitrowicz), dream of moving to the symbol of freedom and hope that is Moscow but with their army office father and their mother dead and their brother married to a “suburban little woman,” they’re trapped in a remote Russian town where they have only soldiers for company.

As Chekhov’s play unfurls, the sisters’ excited hopes give way to the cruel banality of everyday existence, one made more painful by the nostalgia which grips almost every character.