Theater: American Airlines / 227 West 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
Set in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, "The Cherry Orchard" chronicles a noblewoman's return to her family estate after a five-year absence to escape troubling memories of her son's death. Lyubov Ranevskaya arrives home to find the cherry orchard in full bloom, but the finances of the estate on the verge of ruin. Lyubov and her brother, Gaev, find themselves scrambling to retain a vision of gentility amidst a climate of huge social and economic transition.
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October 16, 2016: Toward the welcome end of the Roundabout Theater Company’s terminally confused production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” a character who has just exhausted himself by dancing like James Brown on steroids laments, “Oh, if only we could move faster through this next part.”
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October 16, 2016: The more you see Anton Chekhov’s final play, the weirder it seems. Approaching the end of his life, the Russian master was pulling away from his preferred, tragicomic-naturalist mode and veering toward symbolism. Before he died from tuberculosis in 1904, Chekhov had been talking about a new project involving a ghost, marooned arctic explorers and a ship crushed by ice. The Cherry Orchard contains distinctly bizarre touches: unexplained offstage noises, ominous portents of revolution and a morbid ending that’s nearly Beckettian. It makes sense for the designers of the Roundabout’s revival to opt for expressionism and for British director Simon Godwin to steer the actors—including the luminous Diane Lane—into extremes of emotional volatility.
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October 16, 2016: Diane Lane stars in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway revival of The Cherry Orchard. This beautiful film actor (Trumbo, Unfaithful) can hardly be accused of helicoptering down to the Broadway landing pad: Last year off-Broadway she and Tony Shalhoub anchored one of the best plays of the season, Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery Of Love & Sex. As a very young thespian she appeared in the ensemble of a memorable Cherry Orchard with Irene Worth as the undone land-owner Mme. Ranevskaya, in a cast that included Meryl Streep, Raúl Juliá, Mary Beth Hurt, Michael Cristofer and Jon De Vries; Lane also performed in the original Broadway production of Elizabeth Swados’ Runaways, recently revived by City Center’s Encores Off-Center.
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October 16, 2016: There was every reason to be excited about Stephen Karam tackling one of Anton Chekhov's late masterworks. In his 2016 Tony-winning play The Humans, Karam balances humor and melancholy with exquisite naturalism. The subtly shaped text is light on narrative but alive with a compassionate sense of very real people from a specific social class, seeking familial comfort amid encroaching anxiety, loss and disappointment. What could be more Chekhovian? That makes the thudding failure of Karam's new version of The Cherry Orchard all the more deflating.
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October 16, 2016: “The Cherry Orchard,” Chekhov’s final play and a timeless tragicomedy about how people choose whether or not to respond to a changing world, proves to be less powerful than usual in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s disjointed and flat revival, which stars Diane Lane alongside an accomplished ensemble.
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