Everyman Theatre opened their run of Anton Chekov's final play, The Cherry Orchard, with a special pay-what-you-can performance on March 18.
A complex but humorous story about nostalgia and one family's fall from eminence, The Cherry Orchard is a bittersweet reflection that feels current in any era but seems especially appropriate in today's atmosphere of uncertainty and economic angst.
Chekov was criticized in his own time both for being too political and not radical enough, but now, over 100 years after the play's debut, it resounds with freshness and poignancy that doesn't require a political interpretation to resonate with relevance.
The Cherry Orchard is the story of Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya (Deborah Hazlett), a widow, and her family as they face the sale of their estate to pay the family's debts. They live in a condition of impoverished gentility. Lyubov often tragically forgets their financial situation in an attempt to cling to her old lifestyle, which includes ordering expensive food at restaurants and giving extravagant gifts of money to beggars.
She also supports a cast of the family's servants out of loyalty and affection, even though their wages and board are beyond her means. As the auction of the estate approaches, Lyubov reflects on the joy and peace that the old cherry orchard on their lands gives her - when the plot is sold, it will likely be split up into summer homes, and the orchard will be cut down.
Her memories are sweet and sad, often combining the pleasure of life, youth and springtime with the melancholy of death - her seven-year-old son drowned in the river that runs through the orchard, and when she gazes at it for the first time in five years, she believes she sees her mother's ghost among the blossoms.
Elements of humor relieve the atmosphere and give the play a more human gleam, as if to say that in the midst of loss there will be new life, and that nostalgia will be tempered with hope.
The blossoming love between Anya (Julia Proctor), Lyubov's 17-year-old daughter, and Trofimov (Clinton Brandhagen), a poor student with connections to the family, gives the play lightness, and the antics of Dunyasha (Kathryn Elizabeth Kelly) and Yepikhodov (Owen Scott), two awkward and pretentious family servants, are both funny and recognizable. But it is Firs (Stan Weiman), the ancient family servant, who embodies the sense of obsolescence that the play dwells upon often.
Everyman Theatre's production of this landmark play is gentle and satisfying. It's a literal performance of the play set in early 20th-century Russia, with no "updated" adaptation in the production design or text. The set is a multi-layered, antiqued combination of tree blossoms (frosted glass cut into curling clouds) and architectural details (columns, curtains and arches in dignified shabbiness to denote the spaces of the house and garden).
The lighting design enhances the set's ethereal, suspended magic, casting shadows and sepia-toned pools on the space. The costumes are refined enough to telegraph the family's former affluence without being overwhelming or distracting.
Into this setting walks a cast of lively, delicate, emotive and subtle actors. Individually, they fill their roles with humor and humanity and collectively they operate as a smooth ensemble with easy chemistry. Scott as Yepikhodov brings pitch-perfect physical comedy to his scenes, with a self-depreciating air that makes him a bit reminiscent of a Buster Keaton-like character transplanted to Russia. Hazlett as Lyubov possesses a quiet grace and dignity that makes her pain, recent and past, tangible without becoming histrionic.
Stan Weiman as Firs is movingly decrepit, shuffling through his scenes with the weight of decades on his shoulders.
Megan Anderson as Varya is a stand-out in an already stellar cast.
She plays Lyubov's adopted daughter and housekeeper to the estate with gravity and youthfulness combined along with a heartbreaking ability to overcome her personal grief for the sake of supporting and cheering the family.
Craig Wallace is the weakest link as Yermolai Lopakhin, a well-off merchant friend of the family.
Wallace's performance is a bit too loud, succeeding in broadcasting the confident, prosperous side of his personality, without quite convincing the audience of the warmth that would have drawn the other characters to him as a friend.
With a low stage and close audience seating, the Everyman Theatre has constructed a space perfect for the quiet emotional power of Chekov's play.
A playwright who departed from the melodramatic norms of his time, Chekov preferred his characters to portray intricate internal lives rather than caricatures of life.
Everyman's production distills this power and, with warm acting, the cast addresses the audience directly with their dreams and reminisces, fears and illusions.
Their show is certainly worth watching, for theater buffs, literature fans and anyone who has had to leave their childhood home.
The Cherry Orchard plays at Everyman Theatre now through April 26.
