Robert Falls may have turned over the reins to Susan V. Booth after 35 years as Artistic Director, but he remains a protean force in the director’s chair in Anton Chekhov’s towering tragicomedy The Cherry Orchard.
This is Fall’s final offering as artistic director. It is a fitting gesture as The Cherry Orchard is the last of Chekhov’s seven plays, the most famous of which are The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters.
Any student of drama can attest to how truly vexing and challenging Chekhov’s plays are. Falls himself has wrestled with them over the past 30 years. His Goodman production of Three Sisters in 1995 is said to have ignited his passion for this master of twentieth century stagecraft.
The Cherry Orchard was Chekhov’s final play. He died of tuberculosis just sixth months after its 1904 world premiere at the age of 44.
With Chicago theatrical cyclone Kate Fry leading a monumental cast of 19 characters, the play charts the slow decline of a once aristocratic family on the verge of losing their country estate in the dawning days of the Russian Revolution.
With the collapse of serfdom, many of the nobility of late 19th century Russia were driven into bankruptcy. The system of unpaid labor attached to small plots of land that supported the estate with a single crop, in this case a cherry orchard, were of no use in a social order that was crumbling all around them. Hence the title of the play and the growing atmosphere of angst, chaos and loss that permeates this depressing, but finely crafted dramatic presentation.
The characters are both indelible and symbolic. We meet the owner of the estate. Madame Lyubov Ranevskaya, played with irresistible magnetism by Chicago stage veteran Kate Fry, in the final days before the property is to be offered at auction.
We can’t take our eyes off her, even though we know the disastrous outcome that awaits. She is a human train wreck, yet a beautifully crafted one!
Faced with grim reality, Madame retreats into the past, often to the chagrin of her daughter Anya.
The two have just returned from spending the past several years in Paris. Madame ran away as soon as possible after the drowning death of her seven-year-old son in the river and the death of her husband. She has been wallowing in self-pity ever since. Although she has little money, she spends extravagantly to salve her wounded spirit.
Her daughter Anya (Raven Whitley in her Goodman debut) had been living with her in Paris, while Madame’s 24 year-old adopted daughter Varya (Alejandra Escalante-Goodman’s 2666, The Upstairs Concierge, Measure for Measure and Song for the Disappeared), was managing the estate in her mother’s absence.
Anya’s governess Charlotta (Janet Ulrich-Brooks- Goodman’s 2666, Chekhov’s The Seagull, Vanya Sanya Masha & Spike, Teddy Ferrara, and True History of the Johnstown Flood) also greets Madame upon her return. Her brother, Leonid Gayev (Goodman veteran Christopher Donahue-The Baltimore Waltz, Journey to the West, among others), and Boris Simyonov-Pishchik (Goodman’s Mat DeCaro-A Wonderful Town, The White Snake and more), a neighboring landowner.
The house servant, 87-year-old Firs (Francis Guinan, previously in Goodman’s production of Chekhov’s The Seagull and Pullman Porter Blues) is tied to the property by the rules of servitude. His fate rests with the sale of the property. While everyone else is making plans, once the property is sold, Firs’ future goes up in smoke. In many ways, he serves as both conscience and comic relief. He is also symbolic of the disintegrating social fabric of the play’s uncertain time. He is an anachronism from a bygone era, a useless relic of the past.
Plot points are realized through the words and actions of the characters. Yermolai Lopakhin (a smarmy yet charming Kareem Bandealy) presents a scheme to save the cherry orchard. He proposes chopping down the cherry trees to divide the orchard into tiny lots that will be sold to build summer cottages. Madame Ranevskaya finds the idea abhorrent. Lopakhin’s exasperation with her grows with every hour.
Lopakhin’s business proposal also sets him at odds with Petya (Stephen Cefalu, Jr. in his Goodman debut), a free thinker obsessed with absurd theories and drowning in a mountain of student debt while pursuing meaningless academic degrees. (We can all identify with that!)
There’s an undertone of bitter irony and a good deal of internal gamesmanship that is revealed in the emotional entanglements of this extended tribe of relations, suitors, and misfits. Their coming together is akin to a gathering at a wake for a beloved but troubled family member.
The madcap mélange of characters lends itself to some disarmingly charming moments that devolve quickly into scenes of heartbreak, rancor, and sadness. Gallows humor surfaces intermittently as the hour of the estate auction draws near.
There are contradictions aplenty. At the very beginning of the play, the cherry blossoms are in bloom, yet it is wintry cold and snowing outside. Madame Ranevskaya spent money like water on gourmet meals and the like while in Paris, tipping waiters lavishly although running out of money. She now proposes having a wild party for the house, hiring a traveling band, and drinking expensive champagne, yet she has but a few rubles left in her purse.
The quixotic twists and turns of The Cherry Orchard reveal the foibles of human nature, making for a fascinating theatrical journey. When all is said and done, it’s hard to believe that more than two and a half hours have flown by.
Fall’s deft hand as a director is apparent. The cast of seasoned professionals is absolutely superb. The sets and costumes by Todd Rosenthal and Ana Kuzmanic, respectively, give an almost painterly impression.
Although the play is brimming over with characters, with some actors playing dual roles, they each have a distinct contribution toward the advancement of the story.
Each character has an opportunity to strut their stuff in Chekhov’s cluttered dramatic landscape like soloists emerging from the cacophony of a jazz orchestra. They play against the backdrop of a tragedy of epic proportions.
Sometimes jarring, at times mellifluous, with moments of humor and tender pathos thrown in for good measure, The Cherry Orchard is a triumph for Robert Falls and the Goodman. It is a tribute to the brilliant, but truncated career of one of the world’s greatest playwrights and a fitting grace note to the long and illustrious career of Robert Falls. The Cherry Orchard extended through May 7. Tickets are going fast, and rightfully so!
