The Polish playwright Janusz Glowacki (1938) has been living in New York for over twenty years now and his plays are successfully performed in Europe as well as in the USA.

His last play The Fourth Sister, 1999, takes place in present-day Moscow. However, a drastic picture of a time at the end of the century is easily recognizable. It shows the time when money rules and people are divided into two groups. Those who have money and those who do not. This is the world of unemployed intellectuals, nostalgic drunks who yearn for the previous regime, all kinds of scoundrels, petty criminals, mafia murderers, and shrewd, cunning political careerists. It is also the world of hunger and distress, as well as the cruel reality on one side and glamorous movie dreams somewhere far on the other side. All common characteristics of the global village are recognizable either in Moscow or elsewhere.

The title itself reveals an analogy to Chekhov but instead of Moscow Glowacki’s sisters want to go to America and instead of the idyllic and dull countryside they are surrounded by the wild city chaos.

Although the world in his play is cruel and drastic, the author chose to present it as a comedy, including a wide range of its forms starting from familiar ironic allusions to specific events, to the comedy of manners and a complete grotesque. Glowacki’s black comedy depicts a colourful society of numerous individuals, but regardless of the side of the law they belong to, they all have a common human characteristic. They are both funny and sad, tragic and comical in their search for warmth and human touch which unite the people more than all processes of globalisation that we have faced so far and will still face in future…