Archives for August 28, 2009

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I report on a recent visit to the Los Angeles area, where I saw the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum‘s production of a modernized adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, which is currently being performed in repertory (along with five other classic plays) in the company’s woodsy outdoor amphitheater. I liked it very much, a couple of quibbles notwithstanding. Here’s an excerpt.
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Whenever I hear about a new staging of a Shakespeare play, my first question is, “Where’s it set?” Contemporary production style all but demands that the action of Shakespeare’s plays be moved to a different time and place–but the language is never changed accordingly. On the other hand, it’s become equally common for the plays of Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen to be performed in up-to-date English-language “adaptations” that depart widely from the original Russian and Norwegian texts–but the period settings are almost always retained. Now the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum has split the difference with a biracial rewrite of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” set in Virginia in 1970. Does it work? Most of the time, and even when it doesn’t quite come off, it’s still worth seeing.
In this version, written by Heidi Helen Davis (who also directs) and Ellen Geer, the Ranevskayas, Chekhov’s impecunious Russian aristocrats, become the Randolphs, a cash-poor upper-class family from Charlottesville whose plantation estate is about to go on the block. Not only are their servants black, but so is Lawrence Poole (Steve Matt), the American counterpart of Lopakin, the ex-serf turned status-hungry businessman who buys the Ranevskaya estate and chops down its beloved cherry orchard at play’s end. This transposition gives the Davis-Geer adaptation a sharp-edged racial angle that is its most telling feature, in part because it arises so naturally from Chekhov’s original play….
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Read the whole thing here.

Mrs. T and I hit the road today. Our final destination is Spring Green, Wisconsin, where we’ll be seeing American Players Theatre perform two plays by Shakespeare, one by George Bernard Shaw, and one by Eugene O’Neill. That’s a lot of theater to consume in a single weekend, and it also entails a lot of driving–we’ll be flying into Chicago this afternoon, renting a car, and driving north to Wisconsin. I’d be skeptical about pouring so much time and energy into a single reviewing trip were it not for the fact that my previous visits to American Players Theatre have been enormously satisfying. I have similarly high hopes for this one.
On the way back home, we’ll be spending a night at Muirhead Farmhouse, the only Frank Lloyd Wright house (so far as I know) that is currently being operated as a bed-and-breakfast. It’s just far away enough from O’Hare Airport to serve as a convenient stop for travelers en route between Spring Green and Chicago, and our last visit there was so pleasing that we decided to go back this year.
We won’t return to Connecticut until Tuesday night, so don’t expect to hear from me again before Wednesday or Thursday (though I might surprise you). I trust that Our Girl and CAAF will keep you properly amused while I’m out and about.

“Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now.”
Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God, Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess