| . | 01/17/2009
The Cherry Orchard AT BAM : The Bridge Project
By: Wickham Boyle
Photo credit Joan Marcus
Ethan Hawke, Simon Russell Beale and Josh Hamilton
Sometimes American celebrity theater projects go astray, but if you add the Brits to the mix the result can be stunning. One such shining example is The Cherry Orchard now blooming in Brooklyn.
The Bridge Project, collaboration between the Old Vic in London and The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), brings together a mix of Brits and Yanks that navigates seamlessly between accents and acting styles to create a moving evening in the theater. Director Sam Mendes uses the entire Harvey Theater: musicians are stowed in the arches; a line of serfs are so far upstage that they appear in perspective signifying the coming of a new working class. There are moments when chairs are flung to the floor presaging the chopping down of the orchard and another where the stage is lit by candles as the cast dances while the orchard is being sold at auction. There appear to be no random moves or choices and the piece is well served by that directorial control.
The Cherry Orchard is a play about change or the resistance of it, and with change playing constantly as our new National anthem, is the perfect time to wave the banner of what happens when we cling to the old and resist change. Tom Stoppard’s new, edgy translation allows the audience to see the parallels to modern life without slogging through the more antiquated language of Chekhov; and that it is a treat.
The actor who leads the change charge is Simon Russell Beals, who plays Lopakhin, a former serf whose grandfather and father toiled on the very estate, that by evening’s end, he will own. Beals brings humor and pathos to the role. Lopakhin alternately spurns or teases the hapless Varya, played tragically by Rebecca Hall and flirts or taunts Ranevskaya, the landowner and mistress of the house, envisioned flawlessly by Sinead Cusack. Cusack’s character is the epitome of the class, or group of citizens who see the snowball of change looming, it maybe the economic or global climate, it may be the need for more frugal living, but whatever morphing is in the offing, she cannot achieve it. Madame Ranevskaya stares and parties until at the final moment she weeps, hearing her beloved cherry orchard being chopped down and that dull thudding melds with the uneven, sometimes evocative, often jangling music of Mark Bennett.
The American “star” in this production is Ethan Hawke who portrays in Chekhov’s constant words, “the ugly, the mangy student” The description, as it is bandied about, always gets a laugh as Hawke really does have a scraggly beard, hair that looks as if it was styled with an egg beater and a voice that resembles nothing short of someone who was been howling at the moon all night long and then showed up at work; but here it is perfection.
What amazes about Chekhov’s final play is that he has taken all the classes and placed them equally under a theatrical microscope: The perennial student, the upper class mistress, her spoiled daughters, her blowhard brother, the surf who has achieved economic prowess and poor Firs the ancient servant, acted achingly by Richard Easton, who clings to service for life.
We see ourselves mirrored on the stage at BAM; now in modern times, we may not be as fractionalized as the characters in Chekhov, but we all cling or move forward, we all wish to be saved or want to be the saviors. The world we know is changing at warp speed and art is here to remind us that it was always thus.
Through March 7. BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St. Tickets: $30-$90, (718) 636-4100.
"The Winter's Tale," which will run in repertory with "Cherry Orchard," starting Feb. 10.
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