Cherry Orchard

photo by Julieta Cervantes

Chekhov’s classic play Cherry Orchard was brought to New Yorkers by Maly Drama Theatre of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Director Lev Dodin is known both at home and abroad for his edgy interpretations of Russian classics, and he didn’t disappoint this time either.

Dodin brought the entire play in one set, the old noble family mansion where its owner, Lubov Ranevskaya, is returning from a five years stay in Paris. BAM Harvey Theater seems like a perfect backdrop for the play with its raw uncoated walls. The house furniture is arranged on the floor of the orchestra along the stage and a pool table is sitting in the middle of the audience. Chairs in the orchestra are covered with the same white linen covers as the furniture on stage, expanding the set to the entire theater.  

By partly moving the action to the orchestra, Dodin engages the audience and makes them participants of the action. The same way as actors hang out on stage, even if they don’t have any lines in the scene, members of the audience are also sitting right there, moving their heads and torsos in order to see the speaker. This physical activity trick the audience into action and makes them part of the play themselves.       

Ranevskaya, her daughter Anya and other family and servants arrive through the door from behind the audience. In silence, the landowner makes her walk through the orchestra and then through the backstage, of which we only hear footsteps. She marks her domain and the premises of the action, which will be happening in three arias: the orchestra floor, the narrow strip of the proscenium and a vast empty stage behind a movie screen which a merchant, Lopakhin, is about to erect.   

This long silent entrance of Ranevskaya and her companions also gives us the key to watching the Cherry Orchard. As in Chekhov’s play, in Dodin’s production the sounds are very important. This includes the sound of silence, which in the Harvey Theater consists of chairs squeaking, resembling the sounds of an old house. Elongated pauses in speech and gaps between dialogues filled with accentuated and meaningful actions seem to be another important method in Dodin’s directorial vocabulary. This inevitably affects the way the audience starts feeling time – unbearably long and swampy.

The odd timing of the performance is contrasted by the film, a sort of “home video”, which Lopakhin demonstrates to the amusement of Ranevskaya. The film projection, although not a part of the original play, is a brilliant idea of Dodin’s. Instead of looking out of the window at the real garden, people admire a ghost of it. Ranevskaya is ecstatic in her reminiscence about the past. She hugs the screen then runs to the projector and we see the shadows of her hands playfully grabbing the blooming branches. Meanwhile her fortune is slipping through her fingers and her mansion is being sold at the auction to pay for the debts.

The entrepreneurial merchant Lopakhin, in his dynamic presentation, proposes that Ranevskaya divide her land into pieces and rent it out as summer cottages. The aristocratic woman is shocked. In her worst nightmare she couldn’t imagine her orchard and her house being destroyed. She continues to remain indecisive and nostalgic till the end of the play, keeping up with her eccentric life style even though she cannot afford it.

Rappoport brought her character a good amount of bohemian mannerism, which I found an interesting take on Ranevskaya. The way she talks, accentuating sometimes multiple words in the sentence and not those, which you might accentuate in everyday speech, might first throw one off. In fact, the speech of almost all of the representatives of the “old order”, the landowners and their servants, might seem vocally odd and at times artificially over-the-top.

Chekhov wanted us to be attentive to sounds and Dodin takes it to the next level by highly stylizing the speech of his cast. Sometimes it demands too much from the audience by not letting us through the text and shoving our face in every single word. Sometimes it feels quite appropriate, for example the dialog between Varya and Lopakhin, after the intimate moment between them behind the curtain of the screen. She goes from flirting to demanding to crying in desperation, and all of it in one sentence.

Although there was no weak link in the cast, the performance of Danila Kozlovsky, playing Yermolai Lopakhin, is worth mentioning separately. His rendition of the merchant was surprisingly humane. First introduced to us as a smart and unsentimental businessman, he later becomes someone who we pity. The deep trauma of his origin from a family, basically of slaves, made him a cruel destroyer of other people’s lives. In his wild dancing and singing of Sinatra’s My Way towards the end, we see not only triumph but also pain and deep disturbance.  

Nobody wins, so to speak. Everybody is leaving the house except for the ancient servant, Firs. Slowly he travels through the stage to check every door only to find out that all of them are locked. He approaches the giant screen and realizes that there is a wall behind it now. He bangs on it until the screen falls down uncovering the fence of planks, reminiscent of a coffin lid. A projection is cast on it. In the video, the actors wearing white robes step forward one after another and make a line side by side as though before a firing squad. Dodin’s finale leaves us with no hope for anybody.

The Body of an American

photo by James Leynse

“If you will do this, I’ll own you forever” – photojournalist Paul Watson hears before taking a picture of a dead American soldier in 1993 in Somalia, where he was covering a civil war for the Toronto Star. This picture got him a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. The words he heard haunted him for many years. These words and Mr. Watson’s story captivated the attention of the playwright Dan O’Brien when he heard an interview with him on “Fresh Air” on NPR. He decided to reach out to Paul, and so began a two-year pen-friendship, which later became the grounds for the play, The Body of an American.

The New York production by Primary Stages features two actors Michael Cumpsty and Michael Crane. The physical resemblance between actors and their real life prototypes won’t leave you confused, as Michael Cumpsty looks very much like Paul Watson, and Michael Crane’s dark hair and thick beard are reminiscent of O’Brien’s. Though sometimes, more so in the beginning, the actors swap roles as if they are settling into them. The two actors on stage also impersonate other characters in the play, which, along with the intensity of the story of that famous picture in the first scene, creates a swirl of a tornado-like force and takes your breath away for the remainder of the show.

Minimalistic set design by Richard Hoover consisted of two chairs and the white siding of a house in the back, functioning as screens for video projections by Alex Basco Koch. Projections were helpful to give the audience a necessary visual context in the beginning as not everybody is familiar with the picture of a dead soldier that Paul Watson took in 1993. As for the use of them as backdrops with snowed branches in Wisconsin or palms on the beach in LA, I am not sure it was necessary.  The words and the characters were powerful enough and carried the piece. More than that, I found the scenes with no projections the most captivating as they were stripped down to the two essential components of theater – the play and the actor.        

There is a recurring theme of feeling foreign to your own life and your own body and of the shifts between the words and the speakers. “If you will do this, I’ll own you forever”, to whom do these words belong? Was it the ghost of the American soldier William David Cleveland, one of many soldiers who died protecting interests of the USA in the international war conflicts? Was this voice inside the head of a war photographer, covering these conflicts for fame, adrenaline and money? Or do these words belong to a writer who is trying to summarize somebody else’s experience?

It is striking how lifelike and complex the portrayal of Paul Watson by Michael Cumpsty is. Paired with the character of the playwright Dan O’Brian, they create a very interesting duet. Juxtaposed against each other as a celebrity and his biographer, as a fearless war reporter and a writer who is fighting his wars in the comfort of his study, Watson and O’Brian look at each other as if they were looking in the mirror. Both haunted by their ghosts, both struggling to find, not the words, but who they belong to.       

Women Without Men

Set in a teacher’s lounge in a private girl’s boarding school in Ireland in the 1930s, Women Without Men features an all female cast of eleven. It was written by Hazel Ellis in 1938 and produced the same year in Dublin for the first time. Although greeted warmly by the critics, the play hadn’t been on stage since then. Not until the Mint Theater Company decided to produce it in New York following their mission of returning forgotten plays to the stage.

Extended historical research is an important aspect of the company’s work, the results of which are partly brought to the public in two articles included in the program. The historical and political background information as well as the biography of a playwright sets the mood properly, besides also giving a chance to kill time before the beginning of the play. I thought it’s worth mentioning because theaters don’t do that enough. The educational preview also suits the setting because, after all, we are in school.

We are being introduced to the staff of Malyn Park Private School through the eyes of a newcomer, Jean Wade, young and enthusiastic about her first job and meeting her coworkers. She soon finds herself in the midst of a tense and unfriendly environment where teachers are constantly insulting and picking on each other. The cozy teachers lounge where they are supposed to get rest from pupils and be able to work quietly becomes a snake pit where you are at constant risk of being bitten. Of course being true ladies they do it with grace and dignity to the delight of the audience.

The play is witty and lively, and the entire ensemble of actresses is very strong and well put together. Hazel Ellis gave us a broad range of personalities, every one of which gave the actresses and the director, Jenn Thompson, a rich ground to build on. The performances of some of the actresses made this play set in a realistic and specific setting a timeless story. Mary Bacon (Miss Strong), Kate Middleton (Ruby), Aedin Moloney (Miss Willoughby) and Emily Walton (Miss Jean Wade) created truly three-dimensional characters.

The casting for the part of Madamoiselle Vernier (Dee Pelletier), an older French teacher was not so fortunate. Maybe it had to do with the French accent, maybe it was the somewhat carelessly chosen wig, but Madamoiselle came out as a rather comical character with a very little depth in the performance. I wonder, though, if it was done deliberately to give the tension in the room some comical release?  

Miss Connor, the older English and History teacher, was the most complex and interesting character in the play. In this case, the actress, Kellie Overbey, was also younger than her character but the impeccable styling made her look like anything between 25 and 55, which was exactly what was needed for the role. Her performance was very subtle and intricate and it took some thought to really appreciate its nuances.   

Women Without Men is a workplace drama on the surface but it also offers us a glance of a woman’s struggle to find her place in society. Ironically, for a lot of us things haven’t changed much since the 1930’s. Much like discussed in the play, a woman today has to make a living and often support her family by working multiple jobs, which she doesn’t necessarily like. The only other option to improve living conditions seems to be marriage. But this endeavor is a big lottery in itself and doesn’t always show a big rate of success. Besides, a lot of women don’t find themselves “marketable” for various reasons.

The teachers of Malyn Park School share their fears and concerns with each other when they are not fighting. But mostly they are at each other’s throats. “Look at us, - Miss Strong says to Miss Wade, - a small group of women all cooped together with no relief from each other, saving the privacy of our bedrooms. Women brought together not by choice, not by liking, but by the necessity of earning our living”.          

Women Without Men draws an honest picture of human souls. When crammed together in uncomfortable conditions (they constantly suffer from cold and lack of a hot water) and loaded with work, and when they feel insecure because of the political and economical situation, they inevitably start to show each other their ugly sides.       

Hughie

Written by Eugene O’Neill in 1942, Hughie is a short two-character play taking place in a hotel lobby in Midtown Manhattan at an early summer morning hour in 1928. It mostly consists of a monologue by Erie Smith, a gambler and a hustler, who recently lost his friend Hughie and claims he lost his luck since then. The new night clerk reminded Erie of a beloved companion, or rather he was just looking for any set of ears to pour out his sole. And so begins an hour-long monologue full of grief and self-pity.

What a wonderful opportunity for a talented actor to shine, one might think. Forest Whitaker was cast for the fourth Broadway production of Hughie, another movie star making his Broadway debut. Clearly the producers bet on a famous and beloved movie actor for this intimate play, which is basically a sketch of one character. Unfortunately the “horse” they bet on did poorly, the first night of previews was a disaster.

I want to believe that there were some external forces and circumstances that caused Whitaker’s terrible performance. There is simply no way that an actor of such experience in a production on such a level could not memorize his words. It was too obvious that he was concentrating on just pronouncing everything the prompter was saying, which caused unnecessary pauses and was, over all, a very flat and dull performance. It was painful and sad watching him stumbling through the play. His movements seemed inorganic and rehearsed, his energy level very low.

At times I could identify myself with the night clerk falling asleep and having trouble following the story. Frank Wood did well in this role but unfortunately it didn’t read distinctly because his partner failed him.

The monumental scenic design by Christopher Oram looked gorgeous by itself. It consisted of a lobby and a stare case and even had an elevator. Furniture, lamps and every little detail were deliberately placed. The tile floor alone was a masterpiece and I hate to admit but I enjoyed examining it more than following what was happening on it. The entire movie could be shot in this set and director Michael Grandage barely used it.

The lighting design by Neil Austin was rich and moody. A revolving door and a large window above it occupied a large part of the back wall, which gave an opportunity to play with the light coming through it. The Hotel sign was peeking in from outside and filling the entire room with cold green light during the pauses in Erie’s monologue. Along with the sound design by Adam Cork, which consisted of remote street noises and instrumental pieces, flashes of colored light defused by haze created an atmosphere of some weird limbo or purgatory. Large windows and noises form the street gave the illusion of a presence of the outside world. Sometimes Erie came to the door as if he was checking something outside. But the glass is matte and we can’t see anything except for the hotel sign. This again suggests that we are trapped in this world with its guard, a night clerk.           

Unfortunately the show didn’t come together. I don’t know what was the case but it seemed that, while designers spend a good amount of time and money preparing the stage, Forest Whitaker had only three days to memorize his text and one and a half days to rehearse, of which the first day the director, Michael Grandage, was present via Skype. I hope that as the show runs Whitaker will improve his performance and will stop walking on stage like he is afraid of performing. Otherwise it will be a terrible failure and an embarrassment for everybody involved.