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Cherry Orchard
In Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard —the original play about gentrification—a wealthy Russian family learns that generations of wasteful, extravagant living have consequences: The son of a onetime indentured servant buys the deed to the family’s sprawling orchard and chops it down to clear vacation property for the new, rising bourgeois. As irritating as it is to have a classic play held up mirrorlike to contemporary times to demonstrate how far we haven’t come, if you can’t see Orchard as a post-Bush economic allegory, you should probably call your broker. You’re about to lose your condo.
Curt Columbus’s Chicago-speak adaptation premiered at Steppenwolf in 2004 under Tina Landau’s delicate direction, and chief among its pleasures was its welcome conservatism. Making her acting ensemble the main priority, Landau demonstrated how a single design element, namely the ever-present bolts of gauzy white lace that shrouded the stage and reconfigured Steppenwolf’s upstairs space, can create a lasting visual metaphor without breaking the bank on a meticulously re-created period set or a stunt-cast movie star. It was a sensible strategy that probably wouldn’t have occurred to anyone dwelling on the Orchard estate except the servants.
Over at Strawdog Theatre, the kind of storefront stalwart where sensible producing has always been the name of the game, Columbus’s adaptation is getting a second Chicago life. And while it could be well argued that in a new era of innovation and forward thinking, another trip to the same old Orchard is hardly necessary, Kimberly Senior’s quietly staged, achingly acted production is full of modest but considerable rewards and, yes, feels totally in sync with the moment.
Painting over Strawdog’s chalky concrete walls with faint sky-blue hues and filling the makeshift, pillar-dominated stage with incandescently lit pink-blossoming trees, designer Anders Jacobson gives Senior and company a raw, elegant urban orchard in which to play out Chekhov’s hefty scenes of domestic pathos. And as always, company sound designer Mikhail Fiksel finds new ways to slowly release sound into the world of the play, like a cautiously opened hissing soda can you don’t want to shoot out of control. The distant chirping of birds that underscores a moment of hot three-way courtship among the serfs or a haunted memory that floods over the estate’s flighty matriarch during a reunion with her drowned son’s former tutor showcases Fiksel’s ability to remain invisible and vital at once.
But the success of any Cherry Orchard rests in the hands of the cast and its ability to play the caste. Chekhov’s amoral look at a crumbling family from the gentry, the rising class of aspiring lowborn, high-minded friends around them and the servants who are treated almost (but, crucially, not quite) like family was once a radical commingling of social stations. Now it’s simply the dramatic template, as the word Chekhovian has become shorthand for true ensemble-based storytelling, from the plays of George Kaufman to the films of Robert Altman. Every character’s story gets equal consideration, regardless of status.
Although Chicago theater’s Daley Machine–like tendency to give work to pals rather than the most qualified applicants can often result in a sea of homogenized and noticeably miscast plays, on this outing the Strawdog tribe is surprisingly suited to the task at hand.
In particular, longtime company members make their gifts known here: Jennifer Avery, who plays the featherbrained, financial reality–denying Lovey; a distinguished-looking Tom Hickey as her passive-aggressive brother; John Henry Roberts, the lean and fierce actor who plays her barely behaved personal attendant; dark, muscular beauty Michaela Petro as her exasperated daughter; and especially gravely concentrated Jamie Vann as the slave’s son who cautiously warns the family about its forthcoming foreclosure only to buy the property himself when his advice is ignored. (And they’re flanked by several equally textured supporting performances, including Sean Sinitski as a well-meaning freeloader, Amy Dunlap as a bored and frisky governess and James Joseph as that disregarded elderly coot who seems to live inexplicably in every house in every Chekhov play.)
In an effective Cherry Orchard, we care about everyone, in spite of our better instinct that Lovey’s foolish behavior and willful disregard of basic financial realities led to just about everyone’s misery. (The production’s contemporary resonance feels particularly acute here.) Yes, this dumb, rich broad is probably getting just what’s coming to her and then some, but the more we learn about the loss of her child, the more we see that her natural charity, while ultimately disastrous, is rooted in a kind, bohemian humanity.
In approaching both its characters and the production itself, Senior’s unexpectedly emotional storefront Orchard succeeds primarily in its levelheaded, egalitarian approach. Whereas some Chicago theaters are currently facing terrible financial realities, the Strawdog ensemble appears to have figured out a way to keep the farm.
