BATH
This will be the last weekend for Howard Waxman’s production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”, billed as a comedy.
But of course it’s Russian, so it’s not really a comedy. While there are farcical elements to “Cherry Orchard”, most of the characters never quite resolve their various pathea and never quite get shot of their various bad habits and character flaws. Even as some of them embrace the future, it is clear that the majority will find themselves in the same unhappy condition they find themselves in at the beginning.
In the play, an aristocratic family consisting of Lubov Renevskaya (Mimi Sorg) and her brother Gaev (Wayne Otto) and Lubov’s daughter Anya (Molly Turner) and adopted daughter Varya (Liz Kneebone) are on the verge of losing their home to an auction to pay the mortgage. A former serf who had made good in business, Lopakhin (Lee Leiner) comes to them and tells them he can help them save the property, if they’ll turn the fabled cherry orchard into vacation homes. Varya is in love with Lopakhin, but because of the class differences, he doesn’t feel he can approach her and ask for her hand, even though his money, too, would be a way to save the estate. However, the family prefers to dream about ways to save the property that won’t affect their quality of life, even as it dwindles, and even as the money slowly runs out.
The element of class is an undercurrent that runs through the play, even as the class structure is collapsing around them. One former serf will buy the estate; another will choose to go down with the family ship. Even among the servants, class plays a role. Dunyasha (Kendray Elizabeth Rodriguez) prefers Yasha (Sean McGuire), Lubov’s valet, who is dying to go back to Paris, to the honest but bumbling Yipihodov (Corey Jacques), a clerk who will at least stick around. Firs (Ann King), a loyal former serf, who realizes only at the close of life that he’s never really had a life separate from the family he’s served all his life, enslaved and free. The governess Charlotta (Tamara Lilly) doesn’t know who her family was, or what her future holds, even as she plays card tricks and tells fortunes. She doesn’t really even have a real role to play in the family, as her charges are now adult women.
Max Ater plays Petya Trofimov, a permanent graduate student and the tutor of Lubov’s son, who drowned in childhood. Petya is a bit of a revolutionary and dreamer. He encourages Anya to envision a future without the aristocracy. She is falling in love with him, but he doesn’t see that, and fancies himself “beyond love”.
When the crisis inevitably comes, the family reacts as if they’re hearing this news for the first time instead of knowing about it for years. Only Anya and Petya are looking forward to a different kind of future, as the first of the cherry trees fall to make way for a new world.
“The Cherry Orchard” was written late in Chekhov’s life, in 1904. a decade before the Great War, and 13 years before the true fall of the Russian aristocracy in the Communist Revolution. But the play presages the upheaval that Chekhov never saw, as it also makes sport of those who stubbornly clung to the old order.
Of special note was the performance of Ray Libby, who played clarinet at various times throughout the performance. It was spectacular!
“The Cherry Orchard” will play at the Chocolate Church in Bath tonight, Friday, and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and on Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. Call 442-8455 for ticket information.
ghamilton@timesrecord.com
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