Simon Stone Archives - TheaterScene.net

Simon Stone

The Cherry Orchard (LG Arts Center SEOUL)

September 21, 2026

What playwright and director Simon Stone does with "The Cherry Orchard" is less a conventional modernization than a cultural transplant: Anton Chekhov’s doomed Russian estate becomes a glittering Korean corporate dynasty, and the old anxieties about inheritance, class, obsolescence, and the inability to recognize that history has moved on to acquire the glossy, feverish atmosphere of a contemporary K-drama. Produced by LG Arts Center Seoul and arriving at the Park Avenue Armory after engagements in Seoul, Busan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia, Stone’s nearly three-hour reinterpretation retains the skeleton of Chekhov’s 1904 play while replacing its landed aristocracy with a Korean chaebol family whose sprawling business empire—cars, technology, hospitality, medical supplies, “and anything else from which money can be made”—is staggering toward collapse. The result is exuberantly theatrical, unexpectedly funny, and alive to the strange comedy that Chekhov always understood could coexist with catastrophe. [more]

Medea (Brooklyn Academy of Music)

February 9, 2020

While Simon Stone’s adaptation is engrossing for its surprising updates, it never captures the emotions, seeming more like a gimmick that a reworking of the Greek tragedy. With most of the actors underplaying their roles, the emotional temperature never really heats up even when the audience is confronted with various horrors. The use of the video screen and the all-white set somewhat distances the audience from the events on stage which undercuts the tragedy unfolding. Don’t blame Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale, who have given much more impassioned performances elsewhere, as they seem to be pawns of Stone’s concept. [more]