Word: chekhovisms
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...ANTON CHEKHOV...
...Chekhov's plays extraordinary things usually happen in the most ordinary ways. Not so in the revival of The Cherry Orchard at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center. Director Andrei Serban emblazons even quite ordinary moments with extraordinary stage effects. Symbolic figures stalk in and out, backgrounds loom hugely, movement flows into patterns and tableaux. The results are bold, sometimes beautiful, but only partly successful...
...imposingly literal set of cherry trees all but overruns a house in Act I; a little girl bearing cherry blossoms self-consciously tiptoes into the old servant Firs' death scene. The high, deep stage-space forces the cast to play to a scale larger than that of Chekhov's text (here rendered into colloquial English by Jean-Claude van Itallie...
...Cherry Orchard is the most farcical of Chekhov's major works, and the cast (including George Voscovec, Raul Julia, Cathryn Damon, Marybeth Hurt and Michael Cristofer) whoops and tumbles through it with exaggerated zest. Especially delicious is Meryl Streep's housemaid Dunyasha, all borrowed gentility and sexual flutter...
...such moments Serban's penchant for formalized action fuses brilliantly with an actress's, and Chekhov...