Theatre in Review: The Cherry Orchard (Roundabout Theatre Company/American Airlines Theatre)

	Kyle Beltran, Tavi Gevinson, Diane Lane, Celia Keenan-Bolger. Photo: Joan Marcus

The clock is ticking more insistently than ever in Simon Godwin's production of the Anton Chekhov classic, about a landed family on the verge of being dispossessed of its estate. As the once-wealthy, now-fading Ranevskaya and her family and friends go about their foolish pursuits, living in the past and failing to plan for the future, a way of life vanishes before our eyes. In a staging device that has proven to be controversial, these feckless souls are visibly dragged into modernity. This choice, and a few others, may divide audiences, but in this Cherry Orchard the sense of opportunity slipping through the characters' fingers is painfully apparent.

Diane Lane, not seen on Broadway since 1978 (in the musical Runaways) is a fine, foolish Ranevskaya -- beautiful (if no longer young), heedless, possessed of a faultless sense of the dramatic, and chronically unable to face her mounting problems. Having fled Paris, where she left behind a dying lover and a pile of debts, she is a woman on the run -- from her past and from herself. Ranevskaya lives and dies by grand gestures. Entering the house's nursery, she reverently kisses a cupboard, treating it as a reliquary that houses the memories of her childhood. Greeting Trofimov, the student who tutored her late son, she takes him in an embrace and sinks to the ground, quietly sobbing. Receiving her daily letter from her cast-off paramour, she carefully tears it in two -- and yet we can see the wheels turning in her head as she plans her return. She cuts a fine figure at a fancy dress party in a form-fitting gypsy costume, but we sense the gnawing anxiety as she awaits news of the estate's sale. When she learns that Lopakhin, the nouveau riche family friend, is the buyer, she flies at him in an unrestrained fury, only to shrink into a small chair, a suddenly diminished figure, as Lopakhin, for once, fights back.

Lopakhin, as played by Harold Perrineau, and, for the first two of the play's four acts, he is arguably too restrained as he tries to rouse Ranevskaya and the others into a state of action. (I found myself missing John Turturro, whose Lopakhin, at Classic Stage Company in 2011, was a much larger figure, bursting into gusts of nervous laughter as he sounded the alarm on the encroaching estate sale.) But hang on, for this is a considered characterization that takes its own time to come into focus. Even in the early acts we see the discomfort of Lopakhin, who rose from poverty, among these people of privilege; as an adult and the possessor of considerable wealth, he is still trying to ingratiate himself with them -- while engaged in the business of trying to save them from themselves. (He keeps urging Ranevskaya to turn the estate into vacation villas, a plan that would provide the family with considerable income for years to come, but which would entail cutting down that cherry orchard, which she cannot accept, even if no one has harvested the cherries for years.) When Lopakhin announces that he has bought the orchard, we suddenly see a lifetime's worth of bottled-up feelings -- frustration, rage, and triumph -- finally uncorked. Having spent decades wanting to be like them, he will be just as satisfied if he can destroy their idle existence.

Perrineau also makes a poignant thing of his perpetually delayed romance with Varya (Celia Keenan-Bolger), Ranevskaya's adopted daughter and housekeeper. Keenan-Bolger, her posture ramrod-straight and her voice tuned to a permanent note of hushed denunciation, is the household's worrier, scrambling after every ruble even if it means feeding the servants leftover scraps of food. She dearly wants Lopakhin to take her away from all of this, and he seems to want to oblige her, but they can never close the deal. In Act IV, with the household breaking up, Ranevskaya urges Lopakhin to seize the day before it is too late; what follows is a near-wordless pantomime of missed opportunities beautifully executed by Perrineau and Keenan-Bolger, ending with the latter, alone in an empty room, quietly realizing that the train has left the station once and for all. It's a quietly shattering moment.

Godwin orchestrates a parade of telling moments from the rest of his cast. As Simeonov-Pischik, a perpetually out-of-pocket landowner, Chuck Cooper is a genial, talkative fool, whether fitting his enormous frame into a tiny nursery chair or trying, yet again, to chisel a few hundred rubles out of Ranevskaya. Tavi Gevinson is touching as Ranevskaya's daughter, Anya, falling asleep, out of sheer exhaustion, in the middle of a crucial conversation, and teaming up yet again with Varya to silence Ranevskaya's brother, Gaev, played by an amusingly garrulous John Glover. As Firs, the aging servant slipping into dementia, Joel Grey is a spectral presence, talking to himself and sitting in quiet judgment on his betters: Surveying the crowd at a raucous party, he notes that, in better days, the house was filled with the cream of society. "Now we invite the mailman," he notes.

As Trofimov, Kyle Beltran could use more fire when prophesying a better world around the corner, although when Ranevskaya, who has always treated him sentimentally, tears into him, his frozen posture and look of horror are most effective. Tina Benko captures both the madcap and the melancholy qualities of Charlotta, once the family's governess, now a hanger-on, entertaining the family with magic tricks. Among the servants, Susannah Flood's gawky maid Dunyasha, Maurice Jones' ambitious, Paris-minded Yasha, and Quinn Mattfeld's feckless accountant, Yepikhodov, all offer finely judged portraits.

Scott Pask's set design places each location -- the nursery, a field, and a reception room -- on a raked stage with a few pieces of furniture; this skeletal approach is fairly typical and is an effective way of suggesting that the estate is already lost. Donald Holder's lighting adds enormously to the feeling of each scene, with moonlight giving way to morning in Act I and the sky turning purple as the sun sets in Act II. The designers collaborate most effectively in Act III; the room is neatly defined by a hanging piece of curved molding, and, much lower, a series of lamps. Holder creates a warm, lamplit interior look with strong red undertones. When Lopakhin enters to report his triumph, he casts an enormous, menacing shadow. Christopher Cronin's sound design includes a soundscape of melancholy tones before the play begins, as well as such important effects as the whistle of the nearby train and that mysterious twang that Chekhov has written into Act II, as well as the sound of cherry trees being chopped down. (The production also features live music, keyed to an appropriately nervous tone by the composer, Nico Muhly).

The production has drawn weak notices, with reviewers objecting to the thread of abstraction running through Godwin's production. These are not without foundation. For example, the cherry trees are rendered as a series of Alexander Calder-style mobiles, a gesture that I found both rather striking and suggestive of the evanescence of the family's inheritance, but which some have faulted as being rather chichi. Also, for three quarters of the way, Michael Krass' costumes feature some stunning examples of period wear (especially Ranevskaya's wardrobe) -- but one quickly notices that Lopakhin's suits are surprisingly -- and distractingly -- of the 21st century. It's a jarring note until the fourth act when, the house sold and the family breaking up, everyone is dressed similarly. It's a fascinating idea -- not only is the estate lost, but Lopakhin is the avatar of a new and more vigorous capitalism that transforms the lives of everyone and it would have worked better if Godwin had found a stronger way of signaling his intentions earlier in the play. This concept may explain the number of contemporary locutions -- "I get it" and "She's so uptight," among them -- that have crept into Stephen Karam's adaptation. Or these could be evidence of sloppiness. I can't be sure. The production tries to maintain a foot in two different centuries, but the execution of this idea should be stronger, even more daring, to work fully.

Nevertheless, the center holds as this production has its share of telling moments. It ends with two deeply poignant images. The first shows Ranevskaya and Gaev, alone in the empty nursery, standing shoulder-to-shoulder and facing the door that leads to their futures. (It seems clearer than ever in this production that the family is also breaking up for good.) The second happens a minute or two later, as Firs, whom everyone thinks has been bundled off to a hospital, wanders onstage, for the first time his clothes in a state of disarray. Realizing that he has been left behind, he lies down on the ground and falls asleep. As a representation of desolation, it's worthy of Beckett. An entire existence -- of servants, parties, trips, and cultured idleness -- has been wiped out. For better or for worse, today has arrived. -- David Barbour