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At St. Ann’s Warehouse, a Cherry Orchard for the In-the-Know
Benedict Andrews’s finely wrought, deliberately underdressed production that may leave Chekhov newbies jogging to keep up.
There’s Ranevskaya (Nina Hoss), impractical, romantic soul and cash-poor aristocratic matriarch of Chekhov’s doomed country estate, in her flowery blouse; her brother, Leonid Gaev (Michael Gould), a sad clown at heart, in joggers and a tired old T-shirt featuring a cat in Groucho glasses. Semyon Yepikhodov (Éanna Hardwicke), with his constantly squeaking shoes and the pistol he carries around in his pocket, “can’t decide whether to drink my coffee or blow my brains out.” The total wild card Charlotta Ivanovna (Sarah Amankwah, fully embracing the role’s Everest of oddity) was raised by carnies and has no birth certificate. Andrews clearly sees parallels in the present, though it’s hard to believe that our current aristocracy — devoid of poetry and nuance, heirs not of Ranevskaya and Gaev but of Lopakhin, the businessman intent on chopping down their orchard and subdividing the land for dachas — is headed all that gently or swiftly into that good night.
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