The Cherry Orchard (Classic Stage Company)
I originally wrote about the play here. To briefly summarize, the story concerns a once aristocratic Russian family who are now in danger of losing their estate, which includes a famous cherry orchard. Lyuba (Dianne Wiest), who fled Russia with her daughter Anna (Katherine Waterston) after her seven-year-old son drowned, has returned from living in Paris with a lover who stole all her money. Her brother, Gayev (Daniel Davis), a distracted man who is given to making impassioned speeches to bookcases and playing imaginary games of billiards, is no help. The only person in the extended household who has any sense of the future is Lopakhin (John Turturro), who grew up as a boy on the estate, the son of a serf. He has now built a fortune, and urges the family to lease lots on the estate to summer tourists. This, however, would necessitate chopping down the cherry orchard.
There are also the requisite romantic entanglements of Chekhov: Varya (Juliet Rylance), Lyuba's older daughter, is in love with Lopakhin, who won't propose, because he really hasn't gotten over a crush on Lyuba. Anna is in love with Trofimov, a perpetual student who is something of an early Bolshevik, who makes announcements like "we are above love." Dunyasha, a serving girl (Elizabeth Waterston), is in love with the cruel footman Yasha (Slate Holmgren), even though she has been proposed to by the perpetually clumsy Epikhodov (Michael Urie).
The play rings with a sense of loss. The characters of Lyubov and Gayev, though in their fifties, are child-like, which Chekhov reinforces with the opening scene, set in a nursery. They continue to spend money, even when they don't have any to spare. The world is changing around them, but they ignore the signs, and Lopakhin's advice, until it is too late.
Belgrader has done a lovely job of incorporating the play into the small space. The play is in three-quarter round, on a floor level with the first row of the audience, and only a few feet away. Several times those in the front row had to pull in their feet as actors went by. Swatches of dialogue that are heavy in exposition are often delivered as asides to the audience, and Charlotta, the governess, breaks the fourth wall definitively by interacting with the audience. This gives a fresh take to the material, and gave this viewer the impression I was somehow involved with the situation.
The actors are all exquisite. Wiest, with a winsome expression and lilting voice, perfectly captures the woman-child of Lyubov, and Turturro, though perhaps a bit old for the part, brims with rage and shame. The play has a climax of a sort when he buys the orchard at auction, and as I wrote in my previous post, the scene in which he announces this at a party is my favorite. Turturro, given a great scene to play, knocks it out of the park, giddy with drink and triumph, but at the same time realizing he is destroying the dreams of those whom he loves. He dances around the stage in traditional Russian folk style, and then pulls apart a seat cushion, the feathers cascading around him.
The supporting players are no less brilliant. Alvin Epstein, a giant in American theater (he was in the original Waiting for Godot), makes an excellent Firs, the ancient manservant who rued the day the serfs were ever freed. Davis, who is probably best known as Fran Drescher's foil during the run of the The Nanny, makes a particularly sad and ennobled Gayev.
This production, for those who will be in New York the next few weeks, is well worth the effort to see.
Comments
Post a Comment