One of Anton Chekhov’s most enduring works, The Cherry Orchard, found a new home in Brooklyn’s Red Hook Labs from June 11 - 21. A large industrial warehouse with high ceilings and large windows, the space is perfect for a futuristic interpretation of the highly adaptable text. Director Reg Flowers combined the modern with the historical in a production by Falconworks Theater Company that reflected the timelessness of Chekhov’s words.
The set and costume design by Pete Ascolese successfully altered the clinical atmosphere of Red Hook Labs. Gold and beige fabrics draped a makeshift entrance while numerous chandeliers hung center stage. The furniture, chic yet minimal, was accentuated by the bright yellow of flowers strewn across the living room in one scene and a metallic, mobile bar that appeared in another. The old and new collided in the costume choices for characters. A-line skirts, colorful dresses, tailored trousers with vests and hats juxtaposed against skinny suits and overalls hinted at an imagined, surreal world.
The most impressive part of the set was the depiction of the cherry orchard itself. Just beyond the living room, naked logs hung, ominous yet surreal. If it seems like I’m spending a few too many words on the arrangement of inanimate objects, it’s because every carefully selected revealed the nuances of the subtext in Chekhov’s words. If the living room, all shiny and bright, is where the characters are speaking, the orchard, dark and mysterious, is where their hidden desires and motivations lie. It is in the cherry orchard that Luna (originally Lubov) sees the shadow of her dead son and it is from the hanging logs that the homeless man emerges to disrupt a family picnic. The contradictions and juxtapositions that make The Cherry Orchard a classic have been beautifully expressed in the production’s make believe world.
Bringing the subtext in Chekhov to the surface, mining it to find character, also set a high bar for the cast. In one of the more affecting scenes of the play, Misha (originally Yasha, played by Eusebio Arenas) and Mr. Disasters (originally Epikhodov, played by Brent White) competed for Mikayla (originally Dunyasha, played by Angela Fraser) through a shared rendition of "When a Man Loves a Woman". It was a complex scene, where each of the characters’ latent feelings emerged. It showed us Chekhov at his best – evincing character through the distance between the spoken and unspoken.
The unspoken remained underutilized in the production as the cast often sped through the text. The adaptation packed in most of the original text in less than two and a half hours, but the pacing often felt sluggish. Connections between the characters could have been further developed for more energetic exchanges. Overall, though, the production was cohesive.
