SOURCE: “Dreaming the Music,” in Fields of Play in Modern Drama, Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 79-101.

In the following essay, Whitaker compares the musical elements of The Three Sisters with George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House and Paul Claudel's Break of Noon.

You seem wide awake tonight as you settle into your seats and begin to scan the program, but you must be dreaming—for what director in his right mind would dare to run these three talky plays together in repertory? Yet there they are, spelled out in black on green: Three Sisters, Heartbreak House, and Break of Noon. And your ticket-stubs—M 12 and 13, just left of center—are matched by two untorn pairs in your pocket.

“Why?” you ask her. “What can be on his mind?”

“Maybe the music,” she says, without looking up. But what music could link the wistful stammering of Chekhov's military and provincial...