“Uh-oh,” you might think, entering The Orchard, the Arlekin Players Theatre/(zero-O)Virtual Theater Lab production based on Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. “What am I in for now?” you might think with scary apprehension.
I had those thoughts — and had already been skeptical of the lost “Cherry” from Chekhov’s title. I suspected that 21st-century liberties were about to be taken with a classic first seen in 1904 as the last of the master’s stage works.
Now, 118 years later, I was exposed to a Cherry Orchard set dominated by an imposingly shiny metal crane — a multi-parts machine, of all anachronistic things, placed in a lighted circle just off the stage center.
Everything else on designer Anna Fedorova’s set was blue. The eight benches placed around were blue. The small rocking-horse was blue. The two or three different-sized balls were blue. The seemingly thousand scraps of paper covering the stage floor like so much detritus were blue. The only exception was the back wall: black with intertwining white tree branches that also resembled a spider’s web.
The prominent rocking-horse and the balls indicated I was in a nursery, which jibed with the play’s first of four acts, but with what additional bizarrerie was I be confronted?
What I was about to watch was a brilliant response to Chekhov’s superlative sad comedy, orchestrated by director Igor Golyak, whose work I hadn’t seen before, but whose future works I shall anticipate.
The first reassuring comment to make is that, while the Carol Rocamora translation is somewhat trimmed, Chekhov’s play is on view. After a long Paris stay, Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya (Jessica Hecht) returns to her home with brother Leonid Adreevich Gaev (Mark Nelson) and daughter Anya (Juliet Brett).
Reunited with older daughter and housekeeper Varya Michailovna (Elise Kiibler) and former peasant Yermolai Alekseevich Lopakhin (Nael Nacer), she learns from the now ambitious Lopakhin that the estate is about to be auctioned off, including the beloved cherry orchard.
Lopakhin does have a plan by which Ranevskaya could sell the cherry orchard for a money-making housing development, but neither she nor Gaev pay attention. Since they decide the approach is ludicrous, the eventual devastating events are preordained.
Regarding Golyak’s production notions as gratuitous — as extraneous, as gaudy, as distracting — is one way of looking at this version. On the other hand, there is an undeniable beauty as well as a comic undercurrent to them that cumulatively become mesmerizing.
There is one significant directorial change in the script: Anya’s suitor Pyotr Sergeevich Trofimov (John McGinty) is hearing-impaired. He converses by using ASL (American Sign Language). (Supertitles on a front-of-stage screen indicates as much, as well as many other pieces of information.) There is one truly notable addition to the script. Rocamora adds Kharkiv and Mariupol in the dialog, indicating that Ranevskaya’s acclaimed cherry orchard is in what we now think of as Ukraine.
Otherwise, Golyak’s notions are mightily carried out by lighting designer Yuki Nakase Link, sound designer Tei Blow, costume designer Oana Botez (who sticks to grey), projection designer Alex Basco Koch (often dropping cherry blossom petals on the proceedings), music composer Jakov Jakoulov, “Emerging Technologies designer” Adam Paikowsky, and robotics designer Tom Sepe.
Sepe must be the one seeing to the crane’s sometimes behaving clownishly, sometimes balancing items on its illuminated and illuminating top arm, sometimes taking on the aspect of a marauding monster. Is he also in charge of the mechanical dog often skittering about?
These creative-aspects contributors enhance the production’s enrapturing qualities. During several sequences, especially when photographs are taken by hanger-on magician Charlotta Ivanovna (Darya Denisova), the photos appear grandly on the front screen. During a sequence when Trofimov discourses on the universe, 3-D planets hurtle across the screen as theatrical eye candy.
There is just no dismissing the myriad special effects, which, while mesmerizing, allow the cast’s performances to glow in their own deserved right. Hecht’s Ranevskaya is a surprising and alternative interpretation. Usually, the romanticizing, squandering character is portrayed as a disillusioned grand lady. Hecht’s Ranevskaya is a childish woman. She’s someone who’s chosen not to grow up. She’s girlish. As often as not, she’s sitting or lying on the ground. She’s silly and chooses to be. It’s her way of dealing with, of denying, reality.
In the uniformly adept ensemble, which includes Ilia Volok as the obstreperous Passerby, there is a particular stand-out: Mikhail Barishnikov. Initially, it’s a shock to see the inimitable classical ballet dancer shuffling around on a cane as Firs, the aging family retainer. But this is Barishnikov, who has long since proved his seemingly effortless moves as memorable. Here he shuffles with Barishnikov-like style. He uses his hands and his voice with style. He delivers as unforgettable a Firs as any Chekhov lover will have seen.
Since the loss of the cherry orchard is established and, in deference to Ranevskaya, will not occur until she has left for Paris once again, the orchard’s demolition is intriguingly delayed. Again, Golyak and designers concoct the orchard’s end not simply by the sound of axes in motion. What they’ve held in store is not a whimper but a final devasting…okay, no details here.
Nonetheless, it’ll be the rare audience members leaving without the shock of the play’s conclusion — and the production itself — resounding in their head.
The Orchard opened June 16, 2022, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and runs through July 3. Tickets and information: theorchardoffbroadway.com
