By Mike Hoban

“Mommy’s Dead and They Buried Her in Moscow” – Created by Nervous Theater Company; Directed by Connor Berkompas. Presented by Nervous Theater in a co-production with The Ellen Theater at the Ellen Theater in Bozeman, MT. Available for streaming now.

How do you transform The Three Sisters, Chekhov’s masterpiece of narcissistic despair, into an almost joyous experience? If you’re the Nervous Theater Company, you begin by removing nearly all of the characters except the three siblings from the stage and story (although a couple of their “romantic” interests are represented as disembodied voices offstage), add a handful of quasi-contemporary musical numbers, and throw theatrical conventions out the window. Mommy’s Dead and They Buried Her in Moscow is the second production by the company co-founded by Boston Conservatory alums Annabella Joy, Connor Berkompas and Sympathie the Clown, and with Mommy’s Dead, they deliver on their stated mission to produce “radically re-imagined classics”.

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