Time Out Theater Review: "The Cherry Orchard"
By: David Cote - Time Out New York
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"The Cherry Orchard" is back on the boards, this time at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, under the direction of Sam Mendes and starring Ethan Hawke and Richard Easton. Contributing critic David Cote of Time Out New York filed the following review. In theater circles, there are longtime clichés about English actors versus American actors. The English speak better, whereas Americans shout. Brits are restrained, but Yanks like to smash furniture. They have technique; we have honesty.
Well, you can leave most of your transatlantic preconceptions at the door; a deeply satisfying revival of "The Cherry Orchard" at BAM features an Anglo-American cast that meshes quite nicely.
Once you get used to the mix of accents, you'll find it quite easy to slip into Chekhov territory, where the melancholia shades into comedy, and trivial chitchat barely covers up the quiet desperation of the characters.
Director Sam Mendes marshals his solid, seasoned cast in Chekhov's last play, which revolves around a Russian country estate and the adjoining cherry orchard that holds sweet and tragic memories for Madame Ranevskaya, its shabby-genteel owner. Sinéad Cusack, last seen in Tom Stoppard's "Rock & Roll" on Broadway, sparkles through the pain as the deluded grande dame. She won't heed the advice of family friend Lopakhin, who wants to help Ranevskaya save it from the auction block. Lopakhin, played by the lively and incisive Simon Russell Beale, is an ex-servant who's become rich.
More than any other Chekhov, "The Cherry Orchard" hints at the class upheavals which were to come with the Bolshevik Revolution, and Mendes plays up the menace with images of grim peasants. Such stage pictures may remind you of Tom Stoppard's recent Russian-history-themed "Coast of Utopia," and sure enough, Stoppard provides the brisk and witty adaptation.
In other ways, this is a Stoppard reunion: Josh Hamilton, Ethan Hawke, and the wonderful Richard Easton, who all appeared in "Coast," return to explore the soul of a Russia in transition. Mendes pulls it all together with a visually stark but emotionally rich production that achieves the right Chekhovian blend of clinical detachment and human suffering.
Unlike "The Seagull," which we've seen plenty in recent seasons, "The Cherry Orchard" is less produced -- just one more reason to get out to Brooklyn and catch this masterful new production.