The Cherry Orchard
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
South Pasadena Theatre Workshop
Through August 6
RECOMMENDED
Watching The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov’s last play, you might somehow be put in mind of a horror movie where the characters blunder into the cellar knowing full well that a psychotic slayer is at large.
The foolishly feckless aristocrats in the play, whose beloved cherry orchard is about to fall under the auctioneer’s gavel, have every opportunity to avert disaster but are unable to act to forestall their doom. Trapped in the rapidly congealing amber of their generational privilege, they are deaf to the echoes of revolution in the wind.
As for the play’s current production at South Pasadena Theatre Workshop, I have a simple question: Where has this venue been all my life?
Apparently, the Workshop has been around for the past dozen years or so, and although their production history has been somewhat scant, this solidly realized production, seen here in Tom Stoppard’s definitive translation/adaptation, establishes it as top-notch entity on the local theater scene.
The aristocrats we meet here are not of the boot-on-the-neck, crush the peasants variety. Essentially well-meaning albeit tragically oblivious, they have simply been over-bred to the point of Darwinian extinction.
Lyubov Ranevskaya (Sally Smythe) has just returned to her ancestral estate from Paris, where she was robbed and jilted by her lover. Nearly bankrupt, she still opens her purse to anyone with a hard luck story, much to the frustration of her eldest daughter Varya (Roshni Shukla), who has been running things on a shoestring in her absence.
Ranevskaya’s boorish, verbose brother Gaev (Lawrence Novikoff) has been kept in almost infantile dependence by his childhood servant Firs (Robert Cesario), a fast-failing elderly retainer who fusses over his charge like a mother hen.
Perpetual student and firebrand Trofimov (Anthony Adu), former tutor to Ranevskaya’s little boy, who drowned on the estate, dredges up painful memories for Ranevskaya. Trofimov soon falls in love with the impressionable Anya (Michaela Ivey), Raneyvskaya’s 17 year old daughter, whose head is turned by his passionate speechifying about shedding the past and embracing a new world order. We fear for her.
Other servants and hangers-on populate this hectic, comical/tragic microcosm, but the voice of reason trying to penetrate the babble belongs to wealthy Lopakhin (Hossein Mardani). The son of a drunken, abusive serf, he has made the most of his ascension into the Russian middle class. Sincerely fond of Ranevskaya, he tries to convince her and her brother to rent out estate parcels to holiday-goers, which will not only pay off their debts but assure their future prosperity. When all his efforts fail and he purchases the property at auction, he is giddy with triumph, disbelieving of this “dream” that has transformed him from slavery to supremacy in one generation. Yet, in true Chekhovian fashion, he is also mired in inaction, letting his opportunity to propose to Varya slip sadly by.
Among the outstanding design elements, Clay Wilcox’s set is particularly eye-catching. Puffs of cherry blossoms cannot distract us from that desiccated tree in the corner – a striking symbol of the fate that awaits this soon-to-be demolished orchard – and, by extension, its owners.
Director Sam Cass and assistant director Kila Packett make the most of their superb cast in a staging that brims with quietly effective moments so subtle, they are gone almost before we are aware of them. Yet they also handle crowd scenes, in particular a lively dance sequence, with brisk assurance.
Solidly realized in every particular, Cherry Orchard plays in repertory with Dakin Matthews’s adaptation of The Seagull through August 6.
South Pasadena Theatre Workshop, 1507 El Centro St., South Pasadena. Sat., 5 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Aug. 6. https://SouthPasadenaTheatreWorkshop.com. Two hours 15 minutes including intermission.
