"The Cherry Orchard" at the Roundabout Theatre Company American Airlines Theatre (through December 4, 2016)

Harold Perrineau, Diane Lane and John Glover   Photo: Joan Marcus

It takes chutzpah as well as a fair amount of integrity to mess around with what is arguably Anton Chekov’s greatest, if also loosely structured, play. I can imagine nitpickers and purists are already lining up en masse to berate and decry the liberties taken by both Stephen Karam for his almost tipsy adaptation and by Simon Godwin for his equally shaky yet surprisingly energizing direction: the result being as jarring as it is also justifiably anarchic. I’m not sure if I can truly and credibly explain why I loved every minute and everything about this Roundabout Theatre Company production even as it becomes as removed in time, place, behavior and temperament as it is possible to be from the goings on in the lavish home and wasteful household of Madame Ranevskaya. All are either the victims and victors of cultural and economic changes.

Despite the lack of traditional atmospherics that usually enhance a classic as this one surely is, you won’t see any decorative excess or even a hint of cherry trees in blossom. Like all great plays with universal themes, “The Cherry Orchard” finds a way to communicate to us, sometimes in a very personal way. It is this personal way that this production affected me, perhaps fully realizing how letting go of the old to prepare for the new (actually the point of the play) is really the only way to survive.

What we see through the minimalist and in significant ways miniaturist decor provided by designer Scott Pask but in accord with the director’s and the adaptor’s vision, is an estate that offers little substantive influence or inspiration, and is purposely no more or less evocative or compelling than its inhabitants. I suspect that Karam and Godwin have made a concerted effort to make Russian aristocracy breath through its own disconnected reality. Certainly the newish text has some startling contemporary references and has a lightness of tone that understandably may not exist in the original Stanislavsky-directed production. It’s impossible to say whether all of Chekhov’s comic intentions shine through but there were enough for me.

Unless one is completely willing to forego and forget what is typically Russian in sentiment and style, there are moments when we may be inclined to wonder if the actors, most of whom have distinguished credits, are really intending to connect with the simple honesty, humor and hubris of Chekhov’s characters, or are they forcing us to see them in multiple worlds.

Diane Lane, whom I only know from her film roles, radiates graciousness as she also dispenses her gratuitous authority over her household. As the aristocratic matriarch who is unwilling to be either practical or prepare for the inevitable, Lane appears, however, to be otherwise fully prepared to accept the inevitable. She has a lock on Ranevskaya that is neither pathetic nor poignant in the face of disaster. And that is what makes her performance so interesting to watch. After all, Ranevskaya is a woman as oblivious to her situation as she is condescending to those around her. This does not preclude her being charming enough to fool herself as well as those in her charge, even as she tosses around money like so many falling cherry blossoms on her estate. She is a woman whose life is framed by romantic delusions.

Refusing to allow her estate to be turned into a summer colony and unable to see that her extravagances are destroying her family, she proclaims and reaffirms her aristocracy. There are no grandiose blandishments and flurries that can make Ranevskaya simply wearisome. Instead Lane allows a few smiles and some half-hearted regrets of a wasted life serve as her reflection of a woman as useless as her cherry orchard.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my review, Godwin, an associate director at the National Theatre, has made a real effort to time to take the play beyond its traditional frame and making the place, the behavior and temperament of the characters universal and timeless. The stunning costume designs by Michael Krass certainly make that clear. All the performances have a contemporary edge that seems perfectly suited to the skittish proceedings and the abrasive nature of a new society and changing times.

Godwin’s intentions appear to let the actors create flesh and blood people who live together but in separate worlds. Although the whole family is in a precarious situation, they do appear a bit nuttier than usual as a parade of eccentrics Tavi Gevinson plays Anya, Ranevskaya’s daughter with the kind of radiance, charm and also conflicted inner life that we look for in a play by Chekhov. John Glover only knows how to be terrific and is as Gayev, Ranevskaya’s slightly balmy brother. His endless speechifying is done with a well-bred instinct to amuse and to survive with elegance and dignity.

Although almost perpetually angry, Celia Keenan-Bolger, as Varya Ranevskya’s adopted and romantically frustrated daughter, is the most poignant of the characters as she fails to get Harold Perrineau, as the ex-serf Lopakhin who now own the property, to propose. Kyle Beltran is fine as the fidgety Trofimof, the forever-the-student-prophet who discovers the significance of life while boring us with his lectures. Maurice Jones, as the young butler, seems more than able to resist the advances of the flirtatious maid Dunyasha (Susannah Flood).

Joel Grey, who has had a distinguished career but mostly celebrated for his role of the emcee in “Cabaret,” plays the senile Firs the 87 year-old valet exactly as if he were a senile 87 year-old valet. However, it is Tina Benko, as the governess Charlotta with magic up her sleeve and Chuck Cooper, as Pischik, a landowner always looking for a handout who have been given some spectacularly entertaining feats to perform that I will not divulge lest I spoil the surprises. Here is “The Cherry Orchard” for those who are eager to see it refracted through a new and adventurously universal lens.

“The Cherry Orchard” at the Roundabout Theatre Company American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street.

"What Did You Expect" at the Public's LuEsther Hall (through October 9)

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Some of the Gabriels seated around the kitchen table.
Photo: Joan Marcus

This is the middle play in a purposely timely trilogy about one family’s personal travails during the current election season set in Rhinebeck N.Y. Playwright  Richard Nelson further calls it “The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family. With that said and with all that is said during the talky, occasionally interesting and occasionally touching gabbing in the kitchen among the Gabriel clan as they gather and prepare a dinner and talk about their financial woes amidst digressions that define them all as progressive, intelligent and literate, one does grow to care about them. Yes, I know that was a long sentence, but I hope it makes my point.

This new cycle is not too dissimilar from Nelson’s previous consideration of the various dilemmas confronting the slightly more affluent Apple family that I finally caught up with on TV amidst my own distracting digressions necessitated by the dullness of their  conversations. I suspect that getting a hearing device for “What Did You Expect” (no pun intended) helped a lot as I didn’t miss as much dialogue as I did sitting through the first in play in the series “Hungry” that dealt mostly with the mourning of the family patriarch.

Despite the play’s atmosphere of realism and general lack of theatrical pretensions (although it is in its own way totally pretentious) it succeeds in its own high minded way to bring us close to the bone of each of the six members of the family as we watch them enter and exit the kitchen, slice and dice, stir and eventually serve a meal. Play over. Not exactly. Nelson’s gift is creating characters that ring true on every level as we listen to them collectively consider what can and cannot be done given their progressively dire financial states. Also considering what the future may hold for them following the election is also a factor and an essential dramatic point.    

I suppose it will help to say that following the death of Thomas, the family patriarch, a novelist and playwright who has presumably no marketable legacy except for the home that his elderly mother Patricia (a superb Roberta Maxwell) worries she won’t be able to maintain if Trump is elected. It appears it is up to Thomas’s brother George (the always terrific Jay O. Sanders) to figure things out except that his work as a piano tuner and carpenter doesn’t hold much promise for support. He get emotional support, however, from his wife Hannah (a lovely and empathetic performance by Lynn Hawley) who works as a caterer’s assistance.

The real question is whether Thomas’ first wife Karin (Meg Gibson) can find something of value in the pile of papers the deceased left behind. This, on top of the failure of Thomas’ grieving widow Mary to keep up her medical license. Then there is Thomas’ sister Joyce (a lively Amy Warren), an assistant costume designer who lives in Brooklyn who can do little but empathize, hit and run. By the time we get to the final episode and the election results, we will all have to decide, along with the Gabriels, whether to stay, stick it out, or run.