When I read the play, The Cherry Orchard, in Anton Chekov’s The Major Plays, I did not enjoy the play much at all. I could not see how it could ever be considered to be a comedy. To me, it depicted a tragic tale of people with dysfunctional relations that was by no means funny. There was too much death for it to be funny. So much people were crying for God’s sake! The characters were too somber, too dreadful, too miserable to ever be part of a comedy.
But when I watched The Cherry Orchard at the Classics Stage Company(CSC), my whole opinion of the Cherry Orchard changed dramatically. The CSC did not change the vibe of the play, but rather, it brought the play to life. Right then, the reason why The Cherry Orchard would be considered a comedy made a lot more sense than when I was reading the play. “Actions speak louder than words” could never be a more effective phrase than it is when it comes to plays, especially Chekov’s plays. Unlike plays by Shakespeare and Greek plays, the words in the play are not parallel to the way the actions are. Although the words spoken in the play are not particularly comedic to me, the actions in which the characters portray the words are. I especially enjoyed that the play was modernized but not really changed, since it was able to appeal to a more modern audience(a.k.a. us), without losing Chekov’s distinct style to the play.
I also enjoyed the fact that the play was more interactive with the audience than the other plays were. CSC, unlike huger buildings such as Carnegie Hall, the Met, BAM and the 92nd Street Y. In the other buildings, we had to sit at the back of the theater and we were barely even able to see the people’s faces, much less their emotions. CSC, on the other hand, was a tiny building, with probably less than 100 seats, thus causing me to be able to see the emotion the actors portrayed as their roles in the Cherry Orchard. This caused the play to be even more entertaining due to our string connection with the actors. This was the reason why, the Cherry Orchard performance, although being the last performance we watched, it was certainly not the least.
