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Essay on Anton Chekhov/Goethe
The handsome production of The Cherry Orchard served as the first theatrical production in Santa Fe's new Lensic Performing Arts Center, a 1930s Spanish-Moroccan movie palace painstakingly transformed at a cost of $8.2 million into a state-of-the-art, 800-seat Theater in what the locals choose to call the City Different.
Director Tom Moore, a two-time Tony Award nominee best known as the director of the stage and film productions of Night Mother and the original Grease on Broadway, has taken Chekhov's description of this play as a "comedy" to heart, and found much light and laughter in it to leaven the bitter tragedy of a way of living -- and a cherry orchard -- cut down in the name of progress.
The production, by Santa Fe Stages, is beautifully mounted, taking advantage of the Lensic's impressive technical resources. Scenic designer Yael Pardess and lighting designer Robert Wierzel have created light, airy settings with Impressionist landscape backdrops in front of which they fly in walls, furniture, trees and fences, and great, swagged curtains. It's not as oppressive or musty as one would expect of upper-class decor under the Tzars -- more territorial New Mexico than turn-of-the-century Russia -- but it provides a splendid playing space for Lyubov Ranyevskaya's family and assorted hangers-on.
Certainly Kevin Kilner's Lopakhin does everything short of hitting her with a two-by-four to persuade her to solve the family's financial crunch by cutting down the orchard and leasing off some of the land. Kilner has the appropriate energy for the role and is genuinely touching in his drunken amazement at his own financial success. His performance is marred, unfortunately, by a made-for-TV all-American voice that conflicts with the other performers' mid-Atlantic theatrical speech. Director Moore may have thought that casting Lopakhin, the representative of the new order, with the only pure....
