I'm not very good at being a princess really, or even a lady. But when I'm an old woman I'll have the best stories to tell. Like the time I almost got my head shot off. "
“Four Sisters At Sunset” explores the themes of sisterhood; family expectations; state vs individual; and how even the strongest family loyalties can be tested by changing times. Being the last surviving of three sisters in a wider family of many aunts and female cousins, I have always been interested in the sister dynamic. Accordingly, I became intrigued by eye-witness accounts of a little-known dispute between the Romanov girls near the end of their captivity as recounted In Helen Rappaport’s biographies, “Ekaterinburg” and “The Romanov Sisters”.
June 1918. The family of the deposed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia is imprisoned in a house in Ekaterinburg in the stifling heat of a Siberian summer. Unbeknownst to them, the family only have one month before they will be executed by their Bolshevik captors. The four attractive daughters of the Tsar, now aged between 17 and 22, have up until their captivity been the most photographed and speculated-over young women in the world.
Regarded outside their family as a glamorous collectivity and diminished in status by the long-awaited birth of their brother, the Crown Prince, the Imperial sisters have been raised together in a cloistered isolation in accordance with their exalted position and with the wishes of their domineering and deeply religious mother. Amid the growing dangers of imprisonment, the four draw together for strength as usual.
However, when the lonely and romantic Marie falls in love with one of their guards, she finds herself at odds with her deeply autocratic eldest sister, Olga. This threatens the four’s seemingly inviolable bond. Their conflict is simultaneously mirrored in the relationship between Marie's hapless lover, Ivan, and his fellow guards, the latter of whom regard the romance with equal dismay.
Against a backdrop of war and changing political and social mores, I have tried to recreate four very distinctive voices behind the demure group photographs which represent but also strangely obfuscate the memory of the doomed Grand Duchesses. I also intended the play as a celebration of sisterhood with all its joys and tensions, an eternal narrative which transcends culture, class, and the ages.
June 1918. The family of the deposed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia is imprisoned in a house in Ekaterinburg in the stifling heat of a Siberian summer. Unbeknownst to them, the family only have one month before they will be executed by their Bolshevik captors. The four attractive daughters of the Tsar, now aged between 17 and 22, have up until their captivity been the most photographed and speculated-over young women in the world.
Regarded outside their family as a glamorous collectivity and diminished in status by the long-awaited birth of their brother, the Crown Prince, the Imperial sisters have been raised together in a cloistered isolation in accordance with their exalted position and with the wishes of their domineering and deeply religious mother. Amid the growing dangers of imprisonment, the four draw together for strength as usual.
However, when the lonely and romantic Marie falls in love with one of their guards, she finds herself at odds with her deeply autocratic eldest sister, Olga. This threatens the four’s seemingly inviolable bond. Their conflict is simultaneously mirrored in the relationship between Marie's hapless lover, Ivan, and his fellow guards, the latter of whom regard the romance with equal dismay.
Against a backdrop of war and changing political and social mores, I have tried to recreate four very distinctive voices behind the demure group photographs which represent but also strangely obfuscate the memory of the doomed Grand Duchesses. I also intended the play as a celebration of sisterhood with all its joys and tensions, an eternal narrative which transcends culture, class, and the ages.