In his compact comedy The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov captures the surface of society, the polite speech of casual pontifications and daily complaints. What’s beneath is a desire to succeed socially; to confront mortality; to be pitied for one’s troubles or saved from them entirely; to cope with the horror of change. In Middlebury Acting Company‘s production, director Melissa Lourie uses a spare set to let us see Chekhov’s surface while setting the actors to work deep below, revealing the play’s funny and beautiful truths.
Chekhov can be hard to perform since the dialogue is rarely about what’s going on inside the characters. The audience has to interpret their thoughts and then decide if they’re worth caring about. Truth is, it can be easy to dismiss them, but Lourie’s strategy is to win us over with warmth.
Fourteen characters in lush costumes portray the economic breadth of society in 1903. The formerly wealthy Lyubov Andreyevna’s circumstances are dire. She can’t pay the mortgage on the estate that’s been in her family for generations, having failed to marry a nobleman, been bilked of much of her money and squandered nearly all the rest. She returns from Paris to her childhood home and its beautiful cherry orchard a few months before the estate is due to be auctioned if she can’t resolve the debt.
Chekhov’s comic subject is the willingness to hide trouble behind a veil of words.
A modern American might see this as a problem to solve, but Chekhov captures the terror of change that incapacitated so many Russian aristocrats faced with the loss of their land and power. For the duration of the play, Lyubov tries to listen to something other than the truth. It isn’t that hard — her family and servants will talk at length about anything else, sticking to life’s daily irritations with grand but meaningless observations. Chekhov’s comic subject is the willingness to hide trouble behind a veil of words.
The characters are servants, a merchant, a student and newly poor grandees. All are keenly conscious of the hierarchy that governs them, but they nevertheless feel free to tease, confront and judge each other. They’re skilled at disregarding others’ clever or caustic opinions, dismissing advice while dispensing their own thoughts to equally deaf ears. What they want leaks through, though. They’re seeking love, respect or a way of holding back time.
Lourie turns the governess into a narrator for a comic kick. Direct address felt like a gimmick to this reviewer, but the audience at Friday’s opening loved it, especially the rippling German R’s and the adorable lapdog. Adding a starched, German clown helps the audience accept the show as a comedy from the outset. Points for boldness, and for the dog.
The large cast mixes performers of various dramatic and comic styles, and the script contains more subtle possibilities than any group could fully mine. The missed opportunities don’t detract from the moments that land beautifully, particularly because the show is anchored by Jena Necrason’s shining, subtle portrayal of Lyubov.
Throughout, Necrason kindles a light in the character that circumstances cannot dim. All Lyubov’s flaws arise from her virtues. She is too trusting and too foolish. Too unrealistic and too passive, too generous and too careless. Necrason shows Lyubov holding hope but never clutching at it. As the character floats on incomprehension, the clock ticks on the cherry orchard until it is too late to do anything but cry.
As Lyubov’s daughter, 17-year-old Anya, Peyton Mader enchants with eagerness, so open to life. In her optimism, she’s carrying the best part of her mother. Maren Langdon Spillane plays Varya, the adopted daughter who takes on management of the household. Langdon Spillane lets Varya melt with true affection for Anya while maintaining strict austerity in her own life. Like Lyubov, Varya is headed straight for a sad future and pretends not to see it.
Perfectly barbered and dressed, Lyubov’s brother Gayev has been dodging problems all his charmed life, and John Nagle plays him with sunny ease. Gayev is almost equipped to help save the estate but, alas, remains prone to rambling reflections that don’t even amount to philosophy. Nagle endows him with infectious, doomed confidence.
Phin Holzhammer plays the self-important young footman Yasha with sly contempt, conveyed with half-mast eyelids and expressively arched eyebrows. As Firs, the aging valet, Jim Stapleton makes every move a little challenge for the stooping character. But his halting pace conveys a permanently stately bearing. Stapleton radiates the certainty that everything depends on Firs.
Tyler Rackliffe plays Trofimov, the tutor who still hasn’t finished his degree but has mastered the haughtiness of youth. Rackliffe also reveals his sweeter side, when he woos Anya with gaiety and without calculation.
Jordan Gullikson plays the arriviste Lopakhin, who has climbed to wealth but was shaped by ancestors who were serfs. Gullikson keeps him nervous, without the confidence of his accomplishment. In one of the play’s best scenes, Lopakhin and Varya freeze into strained pleasantries as they reach a last chance to agree on marriage but choose the safety of noticing the weather instead.
Costume designer MaryKay Dempewolff brings the period and the characters to life with sumptuous fabrics and remarkable details, from Lyubov’s jaunty traveling hat to Varya’s crisp, dark pinstripe dress. Every character’s fierce little rays of vanity blaze in their clothing.
In this production, the characters always say a little less than they feel. Trofimov and Anya shiver with joy as they consider love, but they talk about it with philosophical grandeur. Firs might mask some thoughts with muttering, but everyone knows what he thinks. And Lyubov can dally with trifles all she likes, but she’s only thinking about endings. The Cherry Orchard is wistful, a tender comedy that lets us laugh to see ourselves in people who are not quite communicating because they’re so good at hiding behind their words.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Impractical Jokers | Theater review: The Cherry Orchard, Middlebury Acting Company”
This article appears in The Tech Issue 2024.
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