Anton Chekhov's masterpiece Three sisters, with a superb cast directed by Maria Magkanari, opens at the National Theatre of Greece on 6 March in a surprise venue, the Plagia Skini of the Ziller Building. It is a play that explores expectation, time and memory, but most of all the search for a Moscow that is always just out of reach. It is about people who long to become a better version of themselves but lack the courage to do so.

Three sisters - a single generation in a single family. Three women united by the closest of kinships, but doomed to live separate lives. As the eldest, Olga will always dwell in the past. Masha, the middle sibling, will commit herself to the present. And Irina, the youngest, will dream of the future.

In Chekhov's hands, daily social rituals, birthdays and anniversaries, philosophical discussions and plans, births and disasters, love and rejection, arrivals and departures, and above all, disappointment, are crafted into a precious, often enigmatic play, which leads his characters with underlying humour from extreme joy to utter despair.

This is not the first time that Maria Magkanari has tackled the great Russian dramatist, unlocking the riddles of an emblematic work that for more than a century has served as a perfect metaphor for talking about time.Three sisters is a mosaic of elusive meaningfulness, of moments in our lives that failed to be glorious, successful, or redemptive. But it also stands as a monument to Chekhov's love of humanity.

The three sisters will never stop speaking – even in silence – about desires that have been buried or forgotten;  about men who say they love their wives and women who are constantly yearning; about broken clocks and lives left unfulfilled;  about all the vitality that is silently suffocated by indolence; about daily household rituals steeped in silence;  about infectious tears and laughter; about the confusion felt by those searching for meaning; about the self-deception that holds us all captive; and about the path traced by rivers of tears to explosive joy; in short, about life.  

Three sisters has been staged twice by the National Theatre of Greece: in 1951, directed by Karolos Koun, and in 1982, directed by Michael Cacoyannis. Both productions were presented on the main stage of the Ziller Building.