The Cherry Orchard

Having been completely taken with the production of The Seagull that took Broadway by storm this past autumn, we were very excited to see another Chekhov revival, this time in Brooklyn. The Cherry Orchard is the first play being put on by The Bridge Project, a collaboration between the London's Old Vic and the Brooklyn Academy of Music that is aimed at creating a global theater experience.

Under the direction of Sam Mendes, translated by Tom Stoppard, and featuring a cast that includes acclaimed actors from both sides of the Atlantic --- Simon Russell Beale, Ethan Hawke, Sinéad Cusack, Rebecca Hall --- Chekhov's final play is almost alarmingly resonant, taking as its dominant concerns the transience of money and the instability of values. While it lacks the verbal and emotional pyrotechnics that made The Seagull such an exhilarating experience, The Cherry Orchard's slow burn --- "Time, I said, it passes," remarks Beale's captivating Lopakhin --- and sense of endless foreboding make the play feel as if it were written for us, rather than for Russians a century ago on the edge of revolution.