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Theater review: 'The Cherry Orchard'
McCarter production fast, passionate and not-so-terribly funny

By Stuart Duncan
Princeton Packet Theater Critic
Sunday, April 2, 2000

    It is always great fun to watch American audiences attempt to understand the comedy in Anton Chekhov's plays. Visitors from London tell us that the playwright's works there are indeed funny. And every-so-once-in-a-rare-while an American company finds real humor in a Chekhov piece — Mark Nelson's delicious production of "The Sea Gull" several seasons back at George Street comes to mind. But, for the most part, Chekhov stubbornly defies what most Americans think of as funny.
   Emily Mann's adaptation and staging of "The Cherry Orchard" at Princeton's McCarter Theatre is being advertised as "fast, passionate and terribly funny." Two out of three isn't bad.
   Ms. Mann has tightened the play to a very comfortable two and a half hours, including intermission. She has shortened those damnably long Russian names to managable lengths, substituted modern spacial for Russian realism (with set designer Adrianne Lobel's help), breezed through set changes in time and location, and made sense out of petty polemics.
   But you won't find many guffaws in the evening. Part of the problem certainly is Mr. Chekhov's insistence on sour-tasting plots: the estate of Mme. Ranevskaya is about to be sold for debt. She and her brother and daughter turn a deaf ear to the plan of Lopakhin, a rich neighbor of serf ancestry who suggests that they cut down the orchard and turn it into suburban lots. They talk excitedly and at length, but do nothing, and when the sale comes, Lopakhin buys the estate and carries out the plan himself.
   Not a lot of laughs in that setup. And when the ancient servant Firs dies at the final curtain, one is hard put to find the humor. But George Bernard Shaw adapted the play to his own purposes in "Heartbreak House." And Chekhov himself always insisted the play was close to farce.
   The large McCarter cast comes from different schools of acting, which gives the evening a mixture of classical and realism. Interestingly, this works very well for Chekhov, who broke with tradition often. Jane Alexander plays Ranevskaya as a slightly dotty grande dame; Avery Brooks finds a giddy realism as Lopakhin. Rob Campbell plays the student Petya with earnest sincerity; Barbara Sukowa does a few simple magic tricks to flesh out the cameo role of the governess Charlotta.
   Kate Goehring finds real character in the role of the maid Dunyasha and then adds touches of the comic that are most appealing. Allen Swift does the same as Pishchik, the old neighbor. But John Glover clearly steals the evening as Ranevskaya's brother, blending a guileless disfunctionality with boyish wisdom to win both laughs and applause.
   In the end, for all of the new adaptation, the open spaces of the set design, the blend of acting styles, this production of "The Cherry Orchard" breaks surprisingly little new ground. And one wonders what a revival of "The Wisteria Trees," an adaptation 40 years ago that premiered on the McCarter stage, directed by Josh Logan and starring Helen Hayes, might have looked like with this company. That production was set in the deep South after the Civil War. One can only wonder.

   "The Cherry Orchard" will continue at McCarter Theatre, 90 University Place, Princeton, through April 16. Performances: Wednesday to Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets $35 and $39. For information, call (609) 258-ARTS.


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