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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
A lovely ‘Cherry Orchard’ at Georgia Shakes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. “The Cherry Orchard” at Georgia Shakespeare. Through Aug. 5.
All is lost, all is lost. Lyubov Ranyeskaya’s husband is dead, her little boy drowned, her fortune squandered by her French lover. Nothing to be done but sell the family estate, a vast cherry orchard that, at the beginning of Chekhov’s last play, is festooned with funereal, ice-white blossoms.
The Bolshevik Revolution was still 13 years away when “The Cherry Orchard” was first performed, in 1904. But you can already feel it in the air, and in every syllable spoken by Chekhov’s vanishing milieu.
It’s not for nothing that Georgia Shakespeare pairs Chekhov’s elegy to the vanishing order of serfs and aristocrats with Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in which the ghost of Belle Reve hovers as angelically as Madame’s beloved cherry plantation.
While Chekhov sketches quiet interior portraits in which emotions flutter beneath the surface, Williams pushes his characters to the brink of claustrophobia and hysteria. But both men are preoccupied with the decline of morals and manners in the modern world —- and both have an especially rich understanding of the complex psyches and quivering nostrils of their female personas.
At Georgia Shakespeare, Carolyn Cook has slipped out of Blanche Dubois’ steamy bathtub and into the cool springs of Lyubov’s glamorous melancholy. As directed by Sabin Epstein, Cook gives a performance of luminous, frosty dispassion —- a smart foil to the kooky, comedic figures that populate this rambling estate.
Likewise, Diany Rodriguez makes a sweetly tender 17-year-old Anya, and Park Krausen conceals Varya’s feisty underside beneath layers of starched frocks and dire expressions.
Though Leonid (Allen O’Reilly) is a bigger bore than written and Dunyasha (Crystal Dickinson) is way more worked up than she ought to be, Charlotta (Megan McFarland) is a wunderload of brittle Aryan stereotypes and Yasha (Joe Knezevich) is delightfully smarmy.
But the actor who steals the proverbial show here is Chris Kayser as the 87-year-old butler, Firs. A veritable compendium of tics and tremors, Firs is as irascible as Scrooge and as vulnerable in his way as Lear’s fool.
Epstein is smart to punctuate Chekhov’s plodding tone with a good deal of comic bedlam, and, together with his production team, he shows the musicality of the play’s language and structure. As such, some of the more striking images are visual ones.
“The Cherry Orchard” may beg for grander scenic statements than Angela Calin’s minimal picture windows and barren pillar-trees, but Christine Turbitt sends out a procession of elaborate period costumes, and Liz Lee bathes the stage in soft, luminous light.
The breaking down of the rose-colored banquet scene becomes a beautifully choreographed sequence of silhouettes moving furniture to a dazzling piece of chamber music. And when Firs goes down in the final scene, it’s accompanied by the slow thud of distant axes —- as if the cherry trees’ executioners have arrived.
In sum, this “Cherry Orchard” has the effect of a samovar half full, and in Chekhov, that’s a good sign. We must cherish what’s not there, as much as what is.
THEATER REVIEW
THE VERDICT: A forest of sighs.
THE 411: “The Cherry Orchard.” 8 tonight-Wednesday; 8 p.m. Saturday and other dates through Aug. 5. In repertory with “The Comedy of Errors” and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” $10-$35. Georgia Shakespeare, Conant Performing Arts Center, Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road, Atlanta. 404-264-0020, www.gashakespeare.org.
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