Review - The Cherry Orchard: Strange Fruit

Whether it's historic Off-Broadway theatres being replaced by chain stores and condos after their rents are tripled or beloved long-time Coney Island businesses facing eviction if they don't conform to the bland, antiseptic vision of new planners, New Yorkers are very familiar with the culture vs. commerce issues Anton Chekhov was writing about in The Cherry Orchard.

His 1904 comedy, which was interpreted by original director Constantin Stanislavski as a tragedy, has naïve Russian aristocrat Madame Ranevskaya about to lose her estate due to the hard financial times that have hit landowners since the emancipation of the serfs. Successful businessman Lopakhin, who grew up as a peasant on the estate, proposes a plan to ward off an eviction by cutting down the property's historic cherry orchard and renting the land for summer cottages. Ranevskaya thinks the plan unspeakably vulgar, but she has nothing better in mind, leaving her brother, Gaev, and her daughters, Anya and Varya - as well as those whose lives revolve around the doings of the estate - to either consider or completely ignore the inevitable drastic changes.

John Christopher Jones' perfectly serviceable new translation cuts out the role of the beggar and clocks in at a quick, for this play, two hours and fifteen minutes (including one intermission). And while director Andrei Belgrader's production contains many fine contributions from his ensemble, there are also some oddball directorial choices and clashes of styles that keep the evening from gelling into a satisfactory whole.

Dianne Wiest's Ranevskaya may not offer a traditional noble bearing, but her sweet fragility is touching; her indecision about her financial choices shown to be a result of distraction by thoughts of her unfaithful lover back in Paris and her deceased son. The plummy-voiced Daniel Davis scores highly as Gaev, making his aristocratic air a mask for insecurities and his habit of breaking into billiards lingo a security blanket.

By contrast, John Turturro's Lopakhin seems to have arrived at Madame Ranevskaya's via the L train. His initial soft-spokeness - perhaps an attempt to fit in with those from a higher class - comes off as a bit too soft but by the time Lopakhin is celebrating his action that resolves The Cherry Orchard issue the man is roaring with self-satisfaction and dancing in defiant victory around the room. Unfortunately, Belgrader also has him ripping open a chair, sending its feathers flying through the air; some staying airborne long after the moment is over and causing distraction as they slowly make their way onto the floor, or into the audience.

There's some lovely work by Juliet Rylance as Varya, the daughter who would marry Lopakhin if he would just step up and ask her, subtly indicating her growing distain for the man while acknowledging that the wealthy merchant could bring her a better life, and by Alvin Epstein as Fiers, the aged footman with a sentimental view of the past. Katherine Waterston's Anya has a contemporary nerdy feel, but she's frequently inaudible.

As the clumsy clerk, Yepikhodov, Michael Urie is made to look a bit like a circus clown, with his short-hemmed trousers revealing colorful mismatched socks and the squeakiness of his shoes sounding like helium leaking from a rubber hose. While the director has Turturro speaking some of his lines out to the audience, Roberta Maxwell's unappealingly hardnosed Charlotta, the governess raised by circus performers, smashes through the fourth wall to involve audience members in her antics; rewarding one "lucky" guest with a half-eaten pickle.

Photos by Carol Rosegg: Top: Dianne Wiest; Bottom: John Turturro and Juliet Rylance.

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"Being on Broadway is the modern equivalent of being a monk. I sleep a lot, eat a lot and rest a lot."

-- Hugh Jackman

The grosses are out for the week ending 12/4/2011 and we've got them all right here in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Up for the week was: ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER (16.3%), BONNIE AND CLYDE (11.6%), OTHER DESERT CITIES (11.0%), STICK FLY (6.3%), ROCK OF AGES (4.7%), SEMINAR (3.6%), SISTER ACT (3.1%), PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT (2.3%), VENUS IN FUR (2.2%), PRIVATE LIVES (0.8%), RELATIVELY SPEAKING (0.2%),

Down for the week was: MARY POPPINS (-26.7%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (-25.8%), HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING (-22.3%), CHICAGO (-19.7%), SPIDER-MAN TURN OFF THE DARK (-14.8%), GODSPELL (-12.0%), BILLY ELLIOT: THE MUSICAL (-11.3%), LYSISTRATA JONES (-11.0%), The Addams Family (-10.6%), MAMMA MIA! (-10.3%), AN EVENING WITH Patti LuPone AND Mandy Patinkin (-9.1%), WICKED (-8.2%), ANYTHING GOES (-6.5%), THE LION KING (-4.1%), CHINGLISH (-3.0%), JERSEY BOYS (-2.8%), MEMPHIS (-2.7%), War Horse (-2.5%), THE MOUNTAINTOP (-1.6%), Hugh Jackman, BACK ON BROADWAY (-0.2%),

No matter how early you enter the house for New York Theatre Workshop's production of Once, the play is already well underway. Most of the thirteen-member ensemble, all of whom play musical instruments, seem to have long been gathered inside designer Bob Crowley's cozy Dublin pub, playing traditional folk songs, dancing a bit and singing their hearts out. The festive mood resembles the kind of improvised jam session you might luckily stumble upon some night and never want to leave, especially since audience members are welcome to join them on stage, purchase a drink or two and linger a while.

Though patrons are gently scooted back to their seats near showtime, the causal off-the-cuffness continues for a bit but before we realize it's happening, director John Tiffany and lighting designer Natasha Katz have seamlessly brought us into the storytelling aspect of the play without ever letting go of the atmosphere of that friendly neighborhood bar.

I say "play" purposefully. Though Once is being pushed as a musical (Enda Walsh's beautifully written adaptation of John Carney's 2006 screenplay is credited as the book), it's really a play that happens to use a lot of songs as a realistic part of the plot The simple, bittersweet love story has a guitar-playing singer, simply referred to as "Guy" (Steve Kazee) ready to give up on music after a bad break-up, until he meets a somewhat intriguing Czech pianist called "Girl" (Cristin Milioti) who encourages him to not only keep playing, but to take out a loan, get a band together and make a studio demo recording. Though the two grow attracted to each other, each has baggage that would have to be dealt with before a relationship could be considered.

The score by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (who starred in the film) is an attractive collection of Irish folk/rock selections (including Oscar-winner, "Falling Slowly") that, in context, were written by the characters who sing them and the tricky part of having them presented is that, although some may be inspired by events in the story, they're never specific enough to keep the plot moving. This creates a few slow spots in act one, but Walsh and Tiffany generally do a fine job of making sure every musical moment is about something, even if it's not fully expressed in the lyrics. By the second act, Walsh's outstanding scene work has fully become the emotional guts of the piece, so much so that many of the numbers are completed without applause buttons because the characters' reactions to the songs become more important than the audience's. If you do insist on calling Once a musical, it's a rare musical where the spoken moments are the most memorable; particularly at a point late in the story where a climactic scene is played in its entirety for startling effect with just one sentence.

But when the music does take over, it's given a ravishing treatment. Players not involved with scenes remain on stage with their instruments, joining in at points to give the impression that the pre-show party has never ended. Music supervisor Martin Lowe keeps their collection of mandolins, fiddles, guitars and the like conveying the feel of an impromptu jam. If someone is inspired to dance, choreographer Steven Hoggett's movements are done with the same sense of improvised realism. It comes off so naturally that an isolated moment where the cast moves in unison rings false.

Milioti, who has been doing some excellent work in non-musical Off-Broadway plays, may be giving her breakout performance here; revealing Girl as an emotionally fragile young woman who can be forceful and comically direct with others but painfully timid about herself. She worries about having a cold exterior when she bottles up the love she's fearful of expressing. Kazee gives Guy a sturdy exterior to protect a wounded soul; the kind of man who can only share the many textures of his heart through his music.

Hours (maybe minutes) before Once opened Tuesday night, it was announced that the production has secured a Broadway theatre to move to later this season. Hopefully, the entrancing intimacy of the play can be retained in the larger space.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti; Bottom: Steve Kazee and Company.

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