Sometimes a reviewer gets the feeling that playwrights today who haven’t been slammed with a strong premise figure, What the hell, seeing as Anton Chekhov still remains the guiding force behind so many 21st-century comedy-dramas, why not just do a spin on him?
Just closed is Halley Feiffer’s Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow, a vulgar twist on The Three Sisters. Still playing, but unfortunately not for long, is Aaron Posner’s Life Sucks, a sidelong glance at Uncle Vanya from a playful fellow who’s already had fun with The Seagull (Stupid Fucking Bird) and his own take on Three Sisters (No Sisters). Among numerous others, not to be forgotten is Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, a giggly Facebook-like poke at the apparently very malleable Uncle Vanya.
What, you ask, no full-frontal attack on The Cherry Orchard? Despair not. Into the breach rides House or How to Lose an Orchard in 90 Minutes or Less. It’s conceived and created by Theater Mitu (Kayla Asbell, Denis Butkus, Aysan Celik, Alex Hawthorn, Michael Littig, Justin Nestor, Rubén Polendo, Scott Spahr, Corey Sullivan, Isabella Uzcátegui, and Ada Westfali), performed by those in the above parentheses (minus Littig and Polendo), and directed by Polendo. N.B.: Littig is credited nowhere else, whereas all the others are credited with myriad other contributions including, but not limited to, original songs with Chekhov lyrics and music sampled from anywhere and everywhere.
Of those listed, Hawthorn, Nestor, Polendo, and Spahr have created as the set the frame of a one-room house with peaked roof. In it reside one plant (representing a cherry orchard?) and various other monitors and doodads. They’re the accouterments of a multimedia piece for which all audience members must wear earphones, the side with the red tape attached meant to go over the right ear.
Let it immediately be said that whatever this gaggle of theater artists is up to—they’ve already been working hither and yon—they are to be watched and encouraged. The Theater Mitu group, as a program note states, is “Driven by a commitment to innovation.” Easy for them to say—as it is and has been said for many upstart groups before them—but they truly make good on the declared mission. To a strong degree, they adhere to their title’s 90-minutes-or-less promise.
Indeed, what they’re about here is close to 30 minutes less than the 90 mentioned and is, for the most part, an impressive deconstruction of Chekhov’s play wherein the careless owners of a Russian home is sold to a stolid and practical neighbor. And you have to admit that a home where a cherished cherry orchard is destroyed, is somehow very right for the other kind of de- and re-construction.
While staying close enough the original text (okay, Cherry Orchard first-timers aren’t likely to get the classic’s full strength), the Mitu players and constructers use themselves, microphones, and monitors showing themselves in close-ups (as well as including excerpts from cartoons featuring houses) to examine one of life’s most cogent objects and symbols: the house. They take turns narrating their appropriated version and are often separately seen doing so through circular metal fittings, a fellow actor close by wielding a mic.
There’s no missing that the considerable significance of the house is what’s being innovatively driven home here. There is, though, the occasional (maybe not so occasional) wondering engendered as to what this or that segment is intended to convey. At one point, Spahr stands on a rise waving his arms, as if in flight. If this were a Seagull deconstruction, the action might have oblique resonance. But here? At another point the monitors show a sleight-of-hand artist doing a series of card tricks, while the actors mimic his every gesture. All right, and so…?
Nonetheless, the message that the Theater Mitu troupe wants to get across does get across for the simple reason that it’s repeatedly announced. The more obscure sequences register less as readily comprehended than as elusive, yet intriguing dressing. At one engaging point there’s a choreographed drill in which the actors participate with smiles. Doesn’t matter that the dance seems to have nothing to do with the existential significance of the house: It’s beautiful to take in. Or maybe the idea is that some houses can contain a memorable ballroom for a contemporary gavotte.
By the way, the Mitu folks greet the entering audience in matching jackets, shirts, trousers and socks that they wear throughout the work. (Celik and Polendo are the “lead” costumers). Audience members questioning why no shoes at the outset may guess the answer when they notice the pairs of boots lined up on the floor of the house. Yes, the actors perform House in the boots (Uggs?).
In communication circles a theory persists that audiences remember messages when they’re delivered with humor. With House the enterprising Theater Mitu aggregate may be operating on an ancillary theory that anything executed with alluring craft also does the trick. No matter what else they have up their communal sleeve, theirs is no shaky House of cards.
HOUSE, or how to lose an orchard in 90 minutes or less opened August 25, 2019, at Mitu580 (Brooklyn) and runs through September 8. Tickets and information: theatermitu.org
