What could Anton Chekhov have ever done to playwright-director Benedict Andrews that would have prompted the latter to go after the former’s beloved The Cherry Tree with such an unforgiving adapter’s cudgel. Here we have another adaption—announced as “a new version”—of a classic being modernized for a contemporary audience.
Andrews certainly translates freely, and in the process does what too many of today’s new-versioners do: insert obscenities as if grinding pepper over the proceedings. The f-word and the s-word, spoken by men and women alike, are ubiquitous.
The c-word is spewed only once, but once is more than enough, when the capital C-word—which would indicate the Chekhov word, well, words—is too often belittled with the result that the (original) playwright’s acknowledgment of class distinction is obliterated. Here, everyone is on the same plain and plane and often sprawled on the floor. Even Firs is twice asked to utter the word “f***wit,” the second time in the production’s final throes when Karl Johnson is alone on stage and giving the only performance in the nearly three-hour “new version” that is genuinely moving.
The other travesties committed throughout—vaping the least of it—are too many to itemize but include a three-person, drum-loud band during the smoky, dance-till-you-look-drugged party that Liubov Ranevskaya Andreevna (Nina Hoss) throws. There’s the lollipop that brother Leonid Gaev Adreevich (Michael Gould) sucks between curses for a while.
There’s the mic the band brings along and into which Yermolai Lopakhin (Adeel Akhtar) bellows when he’s announcing he’s purchased Ranevskaya’s estate, an acquisition he apparently thinks frees him to jump her bones. There’s Ranevskaya’s entrance, her long-awaited return after five years in Paris, with no one awaiting her. (Huh?) There’s Andreevich announcing, “It’s colder than a witch’s tit in here.”
Oh, well, the above should give an adequate idea of the silliness transpiring. And although the actors don’t seem to be shying away from anything director Andrews is asking them to do—they are committedly immersing themselves deeply into the demands on them—their dignity as actors in addition to the dignity of the characters they’re playing is severely compromised.
Only a brief look at their bios indicates they deserve better. Hoss, Akhtar, Johnson, Gould may already be well known to ticket buyers and therefore expecting more from them other than the drudging they’re getting.
The actors, it needs to be noted, can’t be held responsible for the humilities to which they’re exposed. It’s all due to Andrews. Some of the players even get away with it, foremost of them Sarah Amankwah as magician and Ranevskaya hanger-on, Charlotta Ivanovna. Executing the actual party tricks, she is humorously domineering. Daniel Monks as Pyotr Trofimov Sergeevich, Marli Siu as Varya, and Sarah Slimani as Yasha aren’t severely embarrassed in the overall mêlée.
Incidentally, one of the Andrews concepts is having the actors seated with the audience, always in the front rows of the four sides, as the auditorium is arranged. It may very well be that the adaptor-director intends this as a metaphor. Perhaps the seating plan is a reminder that as the world turns, we’re all in this together. But are we? Always?
Actually, Andrews arranges that a few ticket buyers are truly in the cock-eyed world he’s fabricated—where, by the way, the only scenery that designer Magda Willi provides is a large geometric-patterned rug on the floor and a matching one on a wall. One surprised woman at the performance I attended was pulled into the action to represent a bookcase. She acquiesced politely and then stood awkwardly, as ticket buyers usually do when things of this forced notion turn them into involuntary volunteers.
When the first half ended and the intermission started, an audience member seated near me edged by, volunteered that he wouldn’t be returning, and said, “Would they do this to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky?” It was a stunning rhetorical query, a truly brilliant one, to which the answer couldn’t be more obvious: No, they absolutely wouldn’t.
The Cherry Orchard opened February 20, 2025, at St. Ann’s Warehouse and runs through April 2. Tickets and information: stannswarehouse.org
