"...sadly not enough"

August 12, 2004 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

The program for the August 2004 production of The Cherry Orchard at Williamstown Theatre Festival is a collector’s item, listing all the plays produced there during the fifty years of summer theatre in the Adams Memorial Theatre. Especially important are the year by year listings of the plays of each decade. Sixteen productions of Chekhov’s plays were produced during the thirty-three years Nikos Psacharopoulos was director.

It is thus fitting that The Cherry Orchard concludes this memorial season. It is sad, however, to report that the current production does not work.

The cherry trees are there, beautiful and magnificent, rolled across the back drop and brushing against the windows in all their glory. They are so lovely in themselves that one can understand the pain their loss could bring.

But they are intrusive in this production, taking the play away from the actors. In Chekhov’s script the play ends with “the thud of an axe striking a tree far away in the orchard.” In the current production, we see the woodmen up-right hewing away at the trees, distracting us from the abandoned Firs, (whom flightily all have assumed some one else took to the hospital) sitting alone in his chair.

And the “distant sound that seems to come from the sky and is the sound of a breaking string” the sound that cut through the lazy silence of the scene by the railroad tracks, a sound that Chekhov asked to be repeated here, is omitted.

But more is gone. The ensemble playing, so dear to Stanislavski’s “system” which also stressed meticulous character development so that even minor characters had lives and agendas, is absent.

Years ago, at the Lincoln Center as I recall, I saw the play in Russian and without earphone translation could follow it easily. The script and characters flowed. Unfortunately the current production moves jerkily by fits and starts, and the translation with words such as “boy friend” seemed trying too hard to bring the language up to date.

As Mme. Ranyevskaya, Linda Emond, brought out only the unendearing sides of the character. She kept draping herself over couches as though she were posing for a French painting at the Clark. She brought no feeling to her grief over the lost drowned child—and she was, in Chekhov’s script, capable of true, if brief, moments of sincere love and grief.

Richie Coster as Lopakhim, the peasant-become-rich merchant, employed a strange voice and diction, and awkward annoying movements. As written by Chekhov, though in a way the villain, in taking over the orchard, he has endearing moments and clumsily wishes well in his inept way. One finds this side of his character totally lacking.

It is unfortunate that he must play the “no proposal” scene with Varya (Michelle Williams) the most believable actress in the entire play. Varya is only the adopted daughter, a role most plays would consider secondary. Here, her plight is the most moving. Although the orchard has never been hers, she has struggled hardest that the estate may remain. Her flinging down the keys is one of the saddest moments in the play.

Petya Trofimov (Chris Messina), perpetual student and former tutor of the dead child, manages, in the midst of all the confusion, to play the role as written. In each Chekhov play there is always one character with noble dreams for the future of Russia. “Happiness is…ever nearer. And if we never see it, if we never know it, what does it matter? Others will see it.” In his two big scenes he never goes over the top. “All Russia is our garden” was beautifully handled and convincing.

So, in order to write a positive review, I first tried to deal with the truly magnificent sets and the absolutely beautiful cherry blossoms, which made one sad that they must go, and brought the play’s title into such stunning light. But Chekhov wisely kept them off stage and let the characters evoke them. At Williamstown they steal the stage, stunning in their own way, but sadly not enough.

Obviously a great deal of love and talent and joy has gone into this production and it is always sad for a reviewer, for whom it did not work, to have to be a spoilsport .