The Cherry Orchard (Roundabout) NYC Reviews and Tickets

“Directed by high-profile new British director Simon Godwin, associate director of the U.K.’s National Theater, making his New York debut, this 'Cherry Orchard' seems to have no interpretation or explanation for a new staging. Stephen Karam, the author of last season’s acclaimed ‘The Humans’, has written a new version which seems to be heavy on American ideas in this Russian play, while both the sets and costume designs get in the way of coherence and understanding.”
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"While Karam and Godwin have mistepped in ratcheting up the timely connection between the entitled and resistant to change landowners of Chekhov's and America's world, the performances include individual standouts and some that capture the the play's most poignant Chekhovian moments...There are good performances from most of the cast, but intermittently so...Like everything about this production there's a 'yes-but' even for the praiseworthy ideas."
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"The accuracy, as well as the propriety, of the parallels between Chekhov's version and Karam’s remain doubtful...Godwin’s direction makes Chekhov’s monument of a play engaging, and the stellar cast brings much depth and complexity out of each character...However problematic the message of this version is, from a production standpoint, it has the quality of a meticulously tuned instrument, encompassing perfectly both the comedic and tragic elements the play endeavors to include."
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"It embraces the existential ennui that hovers above just about all of Chekhov’s plays. But at the same time, its mood is just a little lighter. Its dialogue seems fresh and its pace is quickened...Lane is a fabulous Lyubov...Director Simon Godwin has provided a dynamic, user-friendly production with Karam’s pitch-perfect script and excellent work from a gifted cast and a top-notch design team."
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"From the acting to the sets, it all feels forced: forced laughter and joviality, forced intimacies, forced pratfalls...The cast feels so disconnected it's as if they had never seen one another until this very moment on stage. All of them are dancing as fast as they can to entertain but no one is listening or supporting one another...This adaptation does have its moments, but those moments become just that, moments drowning in a two hour and fifteen minute production."
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"We need to feel something for these characters if we’re to invest ourselves in their plight. Unfortunately, we’re not given emotional access...Karam’s translation has an ear for contemporizing the jokes, but otherwise the language falls curiously flat...There is a decided tentativeness in the staging that suggests that the production isn’t sure if it should fully acknowledge what it is making an attempt to do. As a result, it becomes almost impenetrable to read."
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"The most adventurous directorial move is the hiring of black actors to play the serfs and ex-serfs, and the substitution of the word 'slave'...If the analogy ultimately didn’t quite work for me, I appreciated the way it forced me to consider the differences in the two histories...There are just too many fine, nuanced productions in memory for theatergoers to feel the need for an updated version, or to tolerate one that, to put it charitably, could use more time to find the proper balance."
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"All of the familiar elements of plot and character are here, but Karam hasn’t found a vocabulary with which to articulate them, nor Godwin a framework in which to realize them...Most of the actors seem jumpy, talking and moving and gesturing at speed, as though the stage manager had distributed Adderall while calling places. The performers seem to be in radically different plays. A couple of them appear simply lost."
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