Quoth

"The important thing is to have a play in which one can feel the author's shaping idea.  In the contemporary plays that I have read there is no author; they are all manufactured in the same factory, in the one machine."

Anton Chekhov
1903

Chekhov on Ross Street

"Modern playwrights begin their plays with angels, scoundrels, and clowns exclusively.  Well, go seek these elements in all Russia!  Yes, you may find them, but not in such extreme types as the playwrights need.  Unwillingly, you begin forging them out of the mind and the imagination, you perspire, and give the matter up.  I wanted to be original: I did not portray a single villain, not a single angel (though I could not refrain when it came to the clown), did not accuse anyone, or exculpate.  Whether all this is well done, I do not know."

Anton Chekhov 
commenting on his early play Ivanov

In 2012 I wrote about watching Chekhov plays on DVD and video, lamenting that North Coast theatres hadn't done a Chekhov in decades.  This year we came closer with Christopher Durang's delightful comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, done so well at Redwood Curtain.

Recently I've gone back to the DVD collection of Chekhov plays I mentioned.  I watched the 1981 National Theatre version of The Cherry Orchard, the Chekhov play most often produced these days, directed by Richard Eyre, with Judi Dench.  I watched the 1970 BBC production of The Three Sisters. And though I didn't look at The Seagull again, another viewing of the 1991 BBC version of Uncle Vanya confirmed my feeling that this is my favorite Chekhov play.  (I also took the very rare opportunity to see The Wood Demon, Chekhov's earlier play which contains much of Uncle Vanya verbatim, although there are significant differences between the plays.  The 1974 BBC production preserved in this collection is probably one of the few ever attempted.)

The character of the doctor (Astrov in Uncle Vanya) is present in both plays, and in both of these productions, seven years apart, he is played by Ian Holm.  My impression of Ian Holm was formed from the supporting roles he played in various Hollywood films--everything from Greystone: The Legend of Tarzan to Time Bandits to The Day After Tomorrow.  Many know him as Bilbo Baggins in various Tokien films, including the most recent Hobbit movies.  He is competent and sometimes memorable in the movies, producing a sense of confidence and ease when he appears.

 But his ease is deceptive--there are depths to his wonderful tour de force as Astrov. David Warner is an excellent and very relatable Vanya, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is fascinating in the very tricky role of the professor's young wife who everybody else is in love with.  But Ian Holm is a revelation, and it makes me want to find his King Lear.

Seeing this production again led to two firm conclusions: First, this 1991 version of Uncle Vanya is the best I've seen, and the best I ever hope to see.  The 1994 American version captured in Louis Malle's last film, Vanya on Forty-Second Street, is almost as good, but it is almost too contemporary and American.

Uncle Vanya is the only major Chekhov play I have never seen on the stage.  My second conclusion is that, with this version on DVD, I don't need to see it on stage.  A corollary of that conclusion is that no North Coast theatre appears capable of doing it well enough.  I suspect not many theatres are.  So I take back my lament that North Coast theatres don't do Chekhov.

Elsewhere:

Suzan-Lori Parks has an ambitious new play opening at New York's Public Theatre to high praise by the New York Times.  Her play Venus was produced at HSU in 2012.

Dan Kois at Slate on the pleasure of reading plays, specifically Annie Baker's The Flick.

Stephen Booth is a Shakespeare scholar I didn't know about until this article.  He's written specifically on Macbeth, the next Shakespeare on North Coast Rep's schedule for January.

Trouble in Chekhovania: A Review

 Once upon a time there was a man whose parents had named Douglas Fir Tree. His sister was Mary Christmas Tree. Carolyn Clay, long-time drama critic for the Boston Phoenix, told me this. Clay and Tree were engaged. If you made this up, would anyone believe you?

 So given what parents in the so-called real world are willing to do to their children, imagine--as playwright Christopher Durang did—that two American parents who are also college professors name their three children after characters in famous plays by Anton Chekhov. The result for Durang eventually was the 2012 comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, now on stage at Redwood Curtain in Eureka.

 Additional inspiration came when Durang noticed that his home in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside resembled the bucolic settings of several Chekhov plays in which aging characters expressed regrets for wasted lives. Durang, whose first stage hit was Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You in 1981, was himself entering his 60s.

 Durang has written parodies and farces (including an unproduced screenplay with my favorite of his titles: The Nun Who Shot Liberty Valance.) This is different. It riffs on Chekhov but also stands alone as a contemporary take on perennial themes of regret and hope, disappointment and new beginnings, in Durang’s unique off-center comic voice.

 Chekhov thought of his plays as comedies, but he usually neglected to include a happy ending. Durang doesn’t make that mistake. In 2013 Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike became Durang’s first Tony Award winner.

 The plays opens with Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia, both in their 50s, watching for the blue heron that visits the pond outside their farm house in a Philadelphia suburb on a late summer morning. They’ve spent 15 years taking care of their dying parents, and fear their own lives are over.

 Their stasis is stirred first by their prophetic housekeeper Cassandra, whose every sentence seems to begin with “Beware!” Their sister Masha arrives—she is a rich and famous Hollywood actress (Sexy Killer, Sexy Killer 2 etc.)-- accompanied by Spike, her much younger boyfriend and aspiring actor (a finalist for a role in the reality series Entourage 2.)

 Masha organizes them all to attend a costume party (she’ll be Snow White, her siblings will be the dwarfs), and incidentally has decided to sell the house. She’s been paying the mortgage (and to support her siblings), but she’s also aging and her career isn’t what it was.

 Meanwhile Spike finds Nina, an even younger aspiring actor visiting nearby relatives. She is thrilled to meet the immediately jealous Masha, and decides to call Vanya uncle. Though several offstage characters are important in causing what ensues, the focus is on these six as they deal with the consequences of the past, the illusions of the present and the possibilities of the future.

 The Redwood Curtain production is superbly cast. Though there are elements of caricature, these characters become individuals with their own minds and emotions, so the actors are required to inhabit and express their individuality.

 Gloria Montgomery confidently navigates Masha’s alternating flashes of ego and affection, anxiety and awareness. She also credibly works towards one of those sudden moments of emotional practicality that women seem to access while men remain swamped in clueless confusion.

 Christina Jioras creates a believable and sympathetic Sonia as she breaks out of her gloom and doubts, yet can’t believe her luck. Nadia Adame brings a sharp comic energy to the household as the psychic Cassandra, who mixes the exotic and the everyday with a feather duster that doubles as a ritual instrument, and a surprisingly effective voodoo doll.

 In their important supporting roles, Geo Alva plays Spike’s casual narcissism with a California flavor while Mira Eagle embodies Nina’s youthful spirit as she innocently discovers wonders of the past.

 Masha drives the action and Sonia makes the most transformative move, but the soul of the story is Vanya. Raymond Waldo (who has played Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya) performs brilliantly as this gentle man who misses the past and worries about the future.  Vanya’s angry, rambling monologue, accompanied by aimless wandering around the stage, seldom rises above cliche but still comically conveys his heartfelt fear of a dangerously thoughtless present.

 Even with such strong characters, some of the best moments are interactions. Jioras and Montgomery perform an amazingly realistic crying scene that is simultaneously heartrending and hilarious. The last scene strains for a feel-good finish but gets there anyway.

There are lots of laughs along the way. Most of the time Durang is so unpredictable that it seems the play is being written before your eyes.

 Director Jyl Hewston ensures her actors play the human nuances as well as the comic set pieces. Scenic and sound design are by Liz Uhazy, lighting by Telfer Reynolds and costumes by Jenneveve Hood. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is onstage at Redwood Curtain Thursdays-Saturdays through July 26. 443-7688, www.redwoodcurtain.com.

More Notes From Chekhovania

These are some additional notes on Durang and the Chekhovania play--but unlike the review, there be SPOILERS here arrrgh!

Speaking of which, Durang quotes a number of other works in this play, sometimes as "quotes," sometimes not.  One of the quotes ("fame, thou glittering bauble") someone attributes to Captain Hook in Peter Pan.  It's funny, especially because it's true--this is where the quote is from.  In the play Masha says "such an interesting thing for a pirate to say."  Gloria Montgomery goes a little further and tries it out pirate style: "Fame, thou glittering bauble, arrrgh!" A funny line which is not in my copy of the script.

Why a quote from Peter Pan?  Who knows, though it's likely that someone of playwright Christopher Durang's generation would know of Peter Pan through the Disney animated movie.  The Disney animated movie of Snow White (and what various generations know about it) becomes a droll plot point.

There's another quote that's given as a quote, though the author is never identified:
"True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment."  Masha thinks maybe she remembers it from some play she's done.  Maybe, but it was originally written by William Penn.  Penn was not only the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but Bucks County--where this play takes place--is one of the three oldest counties in PA, named by Penn.

There are other quotes and partial quotes, especially within the prophetic rambles of Cassandra, housekeeper and psychic, whose namesake in Greek mythology is talked about.  Some of her lines quote the Greeks, but also "The Owl and the Pussycat" by non-Greek Edward Lear.

Chekhov Echoes

Some are obvious, such as Sonia crying “I am a wild turkey!” instead of “I am a seagull!”  Or the debate on whether 11 or 12 cherry trees constitutes a cherry orchard. Or the famous actress watching an experimental play by her son (in The Seagull) or in this play, her brother.  In this play Vanya at least mentions the repeated theme of Uncle Vanya: we must work!  However this Sonia has a more contemporary and probably practical point of view.

 There are many other echoes, some quite elegant. Durang’s Vanya is concerned about climate change, as is a different character in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya--Dr. Astrov who says at one point: "We have destroyed the forest, our rivers run dry, our wildlife is all but extinct, our climate ruined...but I pass by the woods I’ve saved from the ax. I hear the forest sighing...I planted that forest. And I think: perhaps things may be in our power. Perhaps the climate itself is in our control.”

Vanya's Tirade

Nina persuades Vanya to present the play he's written to all the others. Most are attentive but Spike doesn't understand it and grows bored, texting and "multi-tasking."  This sets Vanya off on a tirade about what's been lost in a speedier world where experiences aren't shared in the same way.

But his specific examples are oddly off.  He talks of them--mostly from the 1950s--as his own childhood experiences, but the character is supposed to be 57 in 2012, and a lot of what he talks about came earlier.  The Disney version of Davy Crockett, for example, first aired in 1954.  Vanya wasn't even born until 1955.   These are memories of somebody a decade older.  And some sound wrong.  He says he watched Bishop Sheen on Sunday evenings before Ed Sullivan.  Bishop Sheen was certainly a TV phenomenon, but he was broadcast nationally on Tuesday evenings opposite Milton Berle. This show went off the air in 1957.  He came back with a syndicated version in the 60s-- individual stations picked the air time so it's possible that some stations aired it on Sundays then.

In fact, a lot of the culture clash in this play doesn't make specific sense unless the "present" indicated as the play's time is actually about ten years ago.  But maybe it's worth it just for Vanya's observation on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet": "In retrospect they seemed medicated."

The Tony Award

This play earned Durang the Tony for Best Play on Broadway in 2013, in what I dubbed the "Resurrection Tonys."  Career-wise (not that we care about such things), Durang hadn't been hot since the 80s--say around the time that Cyndi Lauper broke big in the pop charts with "Girls Just Want To Have Fun."  But in 2013 both Durang and Lauper got Tonys--as did the 88 year old Cicely Tyson, whose decade was the 70s.  It's a tribute to hanging in there, doing your work, staying visible, maintaining and expanding your friendly contacts, being open to being asked, and mostly, hanging in there.

Generations

This play profits from Durang's experiences since his early success.  He's been one of the most successful teachers of playwriting anywhere, nurturing new talent at the Julliard School.  So he's been in touch with younger people, particularly in the theatre.  Nina in this play may learn towards a cliched innocence--and at first there's a hint of All About Eve in her heroine-worship of Masha--but she winds up as an appealing and important character, even younger than Spike and also with ambition, but with a very different sensibility that is nourished by the best of the past.

When she talks about sensing a decision point in what kind of actor she will be, Nina also has some very droll lines that are (like a lot of Stoppard's in Shakespeare in Love, for example) inside the profession humor but very funny.

Style of the Play

In my review I assert that this is not one of Durang's parodies, and stands on its own.  Here's a different view on that by a critic who reviewed the pre-Broadway New York production.  He calls it a "vaudeville"--a series of sketches more or less--and suggests it is for "educated" audiences who will grasp all the Chekhov mixes and matches (he describes a bunch of them.)

Judging from original cast photos, I suspect it was in fact played more broadly in New York than it is being played in Eureka. ("If you hate exaggeration," playwright David Hare wrote, "New York is never going to be the city for you.")  I think that's probably true of most New York comedies, especially when the characters represent stereotypes or at least familiar types to New York audiences.  Conversely, North Coast productions quite often find the more universal aspects of these plays.  That's partly because the actors generally can't play (or are uncomfortable playing) stereotypes, including variations on ethnic types.  And audiences here are less familiar with the nuances of such approaches.  For example, a recognizably Jewish character may be very funny to a New York (and Jewish) audience, but here, even if it could be done well, maybe not so much.

(Another factor mandating a more fundamental approach here is the necessarily simpler set, lighting scheme, effects etc.  This is taken to an extreme at Redwood Curtain, at least since NCRT performed Les Miz on pretty much the same set as Oedipus.  The Durang play set is really generic. You'd think they could at least have the wicker chairs called for in the script.)

What's interesting about how the play is performed is what it says about the play itself: is it strong enough to entertain, or simply to hold together, when it isn't done so broadly?  The plays that succeed here are.  The ones that aren't become painfully obvious.

There's also the intimacy of Redwood Curtain, where very broad acting may not work so well--especially by those without the skill levels of the best international actors New York can access.  Still, to make it work as a kind of burlesque may requires another level than we have available here.  Durang wrote Masha for Signourney Weaver, who played the role in New York: an aging movie star who arguably short-circuited a stage career to make a series of blood-drenched movies, played by somebody with pretty much that resume.  The interplay of actress and character had to be part of the experience for the audience.

But here the actors played their parts as people North Coast audiences might well recognize from their lives rather than their media consumption.  Geo Alva's portrayal of Spike was stylized but only slightly.  His Spike might not be part of daily life here, but he probably is in certain parts of southern California.  The other rather sly bit of stylization was Raymond Waldo's portrayal of Vanya, but it was to emphasize the Chekhovian qualities, the Uncle Vanya crossed with Konstantin in The Seagull, whose play within that play he attempts to emulate.  That Vanya in this play is gay becomes a slight part of the plot, but like Durang himself, he doesn't draw attention to it, at least thematically.

Characterizations like this make it a different play perhaps, but the play is up to it.

Where Have You Gone, Uncle Vanya?

This is a considerably longer version of a column I wrote for the end of August, which was postponed due to space considerations until the Sept. 6 North Coast Journal.  But since the new theatre season is getting started by then, I thought I'd post this now, the traditional last weekend of summer.

As the 2011-12 theatrical season was ending, I took the opportunity to set aside the year's musicals, contemporary comedies and clown shows, for some different theatrical experiences.  Unfortunately my travel budget doesn’t even extend to Oregon, so I must bring contrasting productions home, where I can travel in time as well as space.

My interlude started when I ran across a movie version of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov on Turner Classic Movies. Featuring a young Vanessa Redgrave and David Warner, and James Mason in his prime, it is a luminous film directed in 1968 by Sidney Lumet. More famous for such movies as Dog Day Afternoon, Network and The Verdict, Lumet also made definitive film versions of a number of plays, including O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh, as well as 12 Angry Men and Equus.  Still, he regarded this as his best film (the TCM introducer said.)  TCM seems to be the only place it's available.

This prompted a kind of longing, especially when I realized that I hadn’t seen a Chekhov play ever on the North Coast, nor given the present configurations and situations of theatres here, is it ever likely I will. I checked around, and nobody could remember one here for maybe 25 years. Director, actor and professor James Floss recalled Pacific Art Center Theatre productions of The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters (with Terry Desch, Toodie Dodgen and Bonnie Bareilles,) both decades ago.

  It doesn’t take long for conversations with veteran North Coast actors to turn to the late lamented Pacific Art Center Theatre. It’s clear now that it left a niche in the local stage ecology that’s never been filled, not just for Chekhov but an array of classic modern playwrights.

I’ve seen Three Sisters on stage at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, and two productions of The Cherry Orchard: one by Bulgarian-born director Mladen Kiselov at Carnegie Mellon University, and one at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2007, directed by Libby Appel, who did The Seagull at OSF this season.  I also was dramaturg for a production of several of Chekhov's short plays, directed by Margaret Thomas Kelso at a small college in central Pennsylvania where she taught before coming to HSU.

But the Chekhov play that grabbed me this summer was Uncle Vanya. Coincidentally (I later discovered on the Internet) there were two productions of Uncle Vanya in New York City this year, including a much-praised one at Lincoln Center featuring the film star Cate Blanchett, produced by her theatre company. Insert Chekhovian sigh here.

  My explorations were instead via DVD and VHS. I started with August, the 1996 film directed by and starring Anthony Hopkins. It transposes Uncle Vanya to Hopkins’ native Wales, pretty much intact. (It features Kate Burton, daughter of another famous Welsh actor, Richard Burton.) Outside the Russian milieu but in a corresponding context, it illuminates aspects of the play more sharply for English and American audiences. (Hopkins also composed the music.)

Next was Vanya on 42nd Street, the 1994 Louis Malle film of a production directed by Andre Gregory, starring Wallace Shawn (reuniting the trio that did the cult favorite My Dinner With Andre) and Julianne Moore, with lovely performances by Brooke Smith, Larry Pine, George Gaynes and Phoebe Brand.

The conceit here is that we’re witnessing a group of actors who’ve been exploring the play for many months in an abandoned old theatre. It starts with them arriving for a run-through, chatting with a few invited audience members, then with each other. And eventually you realize that this chat has actually become Chekhov—the play has started. Actor Peter Ustinov remarked that Chekhov’s characters are so self-absorbed that they don’t really relate to each other, and so the actors are all soloists. But in this intimate and low-keyed version, the actors and their characters do relate dramatically, even beyond a New York manner of exchanging accounts of their obsessions. It's a little like Chekhov as a Woody Allen movie.

This Vanya uses the adaptation by playwright David Mamet, as does a 1991 BBC version with Ian Holm, David Warner and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio which I’ve watched several times. Mamet gave the late 19th century dialogue a contemporary cadence, sharpening the humor and at times seemingly highlighting the relevance.  It's apparently the thing to do to use a new translation or version for a new production of any Chekhov, and a number of notable playwrights have done one or more versions, including Tom Stoppard.  Both Stoppard and Mamet have apparently done The Cherry Orchard, though I've seen or read neither.  (Stoppard's The Sea Gull is published in his collected works.)

The most startling contemporary relevance in Mamet's Uncle Vanya, is a speech by Doctor Astrov, who is passionately committed to saving the disappearing forest, partly because it moderates the climate:

“We have destroyed the forest, our rivers run dry, our wildlife is all but extinct, our climate ruined...but I pass by the woods I’ve saved from the ax. I hear the forest sighing...I planted that forest. And I think: perhaps things may be in our power. Perhaps the climate itself is in our control.”

It's startling of course because Chekhov was writing in the late 19th century, and people in our century are facing the consequences of ignoring even contemporary warnings.  But in the context of the play, it especially emphasizes for us now the themes of  dashed potential and waste throughout this play, and other Chekhov plays.  It also reflects Chekhov's including the future in the thoughts of a character in several plays.

So why multiple Vanyas, one after the other? Besides seeing and hearing how each of these great actors play these roles, there’s the experience of structure—not in the way directors may analyze it, but more like the way actors feel it. Acting in the same play multiple times in a run provides a unique sense of the play’s structure. Actors may see the play from their character’s point of view, but they experience the rhythm of it through their actions, their entrances and exits, and even where they take breaths. The structure of a Chekhov play in particular is difficult to absorb in a single performance, but it’s there. 

In 1958, the Moscow Art Theatre--originally, Stanislavsky's theatre that made Chekhov's plays famous--brought three of their latest Chekhov productions to London, where the great Kenneth Tynan reviewed them.  In considering the character of Uncle Vanya, Tynan zeroes in on his dignity.  "He clings to it even in the shooting spree, which becomes in its mad way a matter of honour, an assertion of principle rather than a display of temperament; and in tenacity like this there is a kind of heroism."  The actor's characterization in this production reminds Tynan of Don Quixote.  "This Vanya always looks capable of tragedy; his tragedy is that he is capable only of comedy."  This sense of Vanya does come out in these productions, particularly as played by Anthony Hopkins.

This Mamet version with Ian Holm is included in The Anton Chekhov Collection from the BBC, a multiple DVD set I've had on my Wish List for awhile and finally broke down and bought for myself.  There's also a 1970 production with Anthony Hopkins as Doctor Astrov, as well as a 1974 production of The Wood Demon, with Ian Holm.  This is an early version of Uncle Vanya with a lot of the same dialogue but very different structure.

There's something of a premiere here as well, of Chekhov's first known play, never produced in his lifetime.  Here it's called Platonov, starring Rex Harrison, broadcast in 1971.  It's long for Chekhov but much shorter than his original manuscript.  He wrote it in his 20s, about a kind of Russian provincial Don Juan.

There are several of Chekhov's early short comedies, including a one-act farce (The Wedding), in an English version by Eric Bentley.  Chekhov began as a writer of comic and satirical pieces for various periodicals, only gradually developing into the classic short story writer that made his literary reputation in Russia, and eventually worldwide. 

The first of Chekhov's great plays is The Seagull, represented here in a 1978 production, featuring Michael Gambon, Georgina Hale, Zoe Caldwell and Stephen Rea.  The ironies involved in Chekhov's experience with this play rival anything he wrote for the stage.  Early in this play, the son of a famous actress is staging an outdoor production of a play he's written, in revolt against the established theatre of his mother, and in favor of "new forms" for the future.  (This is a particularly effective scene in the Lumet movie, because Lumet could stage the outdoor scenes really outdoors.  This play within the play has the lake behind the country house as its backdrop, and Lumet shows us what this really looks like, with a makeshift stage in front of a real lake at sunset.)

But Chekhov's own new form of theatre had to undergo a year of struggle with official censors before it could be produced.  Then it opened with a theatre party celebrating a famous older actress who was not unlike the famous older actress in the play.  All her friends came, probably expecting to see her in the play.  But she wasn't, and it wasn't the kind of play she would have been in, or they were used to seeing.  So opening night was a disaster, and the production never recovered.  Chekhov vowed to give up the theatre forever.

But the Stanislavsky production two years later was a great success, and so Chekhov took another look at the manuscript for The Wood Demon, and quickly turned it into Uncle Vanya.

In this collection there's a 1970 production of Three Sisters with Eileen Atkins, Janet Suzman and Michele Dotrice (and I have another, an Actors Studio production, on VHS.)  There are two versions of The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov's last play. He died of tuberculosis not long after it opened in 1904, at the age of 44.  This play in particular has been interpreted in many ways.  The BBC collection has a 1962 production with John Gielgud, who also did the translation.  It also features a very young Judi Dench.  The 1981 production stars Judi Dench in a different part, and it won her several awards.

I ran across this paragraph about that 1962 production, which like several of these BBC television versions, was first done on stage.  It's about John Gielgud. " During The Cherry Orchard he became a kind of father-figure to some of the younger actors. Judi Dench had been bullied and mocked by [director] Saint-Denis in rehearsal, and was extremely nervous on the first night. As she prepared to go on again after the first act, Gielgud told her: 'If you had been doing that for me I'd be delighted.' From that moment she played it for him, and settled into the role. Dorothy Tutin also remembers his warmth: 'John was very sweet with Judi and me on stage, the way he put his arms around us, the way he looked at us, always in tears. Although he wasn't usually a physical actor, he was with us, he looked upon and treated us as children, and it was easy to nestle up to him and put your head on his shoulder.' "     The next time I watch this, I'll be thinking of this observation.

This collection also includes the dramatization of a Chekhov short story starring Patrick Stewart, and a few radio plays and short story readings.  So at least the year ahead will not lack Chekhov (or Shaw--I just got his BBC collection), if only on my screens.

The Cherry Orchard, Down the Rabbit Hole at OSF

North Coast stages were relatively quiet in recent weeks (which is about to change---see below) so it was a good time to catch the early offerings at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.

 Four of the eventual 11 plays this season are playing now. Two will continue through the summer (Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle—likely to be one of this year’s hits), so in this column I’ll concentrate on the two that end earlier: Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (on stage until July 8) and Rabbit Hole, a new play by David Lindsay-Abaire, which closes on June 22.

 Anton Chekhov intended The Cherry Orchard to be a comedy, so the story goes, and was furious when Konstantin Stanislavsky directed its first production as a mournful tragedy. In her final play as OSF’s Artistic Director, Libby Appel strikes a lovely balance, illuminating both aspects.

The comedy comes in part from her own fresh adaptation, including choices of language (so this early 20th century stage classic ends with the accusation, “Nincompoops!”) She also injects some motion into staging the social whirl—not quite as frenetic as Renoir’s film classic, Rules of the Game, but to the same effect. The giddy movement behind designer Rachel Hauck’s gauzy screens in the party scene was particularly evocative.

 The tragedy is partly in the destruction of a home that embodied generations, and of the cherry orchard itself: Chekhov’s ecological prophecy of nature’s indifferent destruction. (Though oddly we never see even a representation of the orchard itself in this production.) But in this elegy to an aristocracy falling apart after Russia emancipated its serfs, there is also the tragedy of wasted lives, in the past and to come.

Like the Renoir film, this play exposes the destructive decadence of the upper class while honoring the characters’ humanity and individuality, including their pretensions, ambitions, weaknesses and superficialities: the human comedy.

 The play’s key character is Lopakhin, the businessman whose parents were serfs on this estate, and who eventually buys it, intending to cut down the cherry trees to build vacation homes for the new middle class. Often treated as the crass villain, he was played as the sympathetic voice of sanity in a production I saw at Carnegie Mellon University.

 Again, Appel strikes a Chekovian balance, with Armando Duran’s expansive portrayal of Lopakhin as a man of energetic contradictions. He embodies the Working Class Hero syndrome by professing shame for his crassness one moment, then reveling in it the next. He expresses admiration for the wealthy family, followed quickly by contempt. The scene in which he looks around in amazement at this great house he now owns, where his “father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren’t even allowed in the kitchen,” while another kind of shame paralyzes the former owners, is a riveting high point.

 Twelve individually drawn characters and their various relationships is a lot to absorb, so audiences take some of the drama with them, to sort out in recollection or in seeing the play again. The crispness and clarity characteristic of OSF productions (along with the courage to present the play’s full length) makes that possible, while providing a superior theatrical experience.

 Unlike Lindsay-Abaire’s fantasy/comedy Fuddy Meers (produced at OSF in 2001 and here at Redwood Curtain in 2002) Rabbit Hole is a naturalistic drama, about a contemporary middle-class family coping with the death of a young child. The conflicting ways that the husband and wife cope with their grief are further complicated by the wife’s pregnant sister, and her mother who is still dealing with the death of her own son.

 Despite this description, the play isn’t heavy. The playwright’s skillful storytelling and light touch seem designed to make the audience as comfortable as possible, but that may also result in characters that seem a little prepackaged, involved in situations out of a grief management manual (it’s not surprising that the play is being adapted for the screen).

But capable acting, evocative music and the usual superior production values keep it all afloat. The actors’ commitment is especially apparent—even in the fairly predictable role of the mother, Dee Maaske brings nuance and real emotion.

 One subtextual element I liked was the class difference between the mother’s generation and the couple’s, a change that adds to the confusion of living with this horrific break in the fast track middle class flow, for which our living-in-TV commercials society makes no allowances, and has no adequate rituals.

 But then, class awareness probably comes naturally to a playwright with a South Boston working class background and a Sarah Lawrence and Julliard education. I suspect many will find reasons to respond to this contemporary problem drama.

 Coming Up: North Coast Prep opens Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, directed by Jeanne Heard Bazemore, on Wednesday, March 21 in the Gist Hall Theatre at HSU, with performances through Saturday. North Coast Repertory opens Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I on Thursday, March 22 with a benefit for cast and crew.

McKinleyville High and the Shake the Bard company present the musical Oliver! at the D Street Neighborhood Center for two weeks beginning March 22. Clowns Without Borders perform on Saturday at 2 and 8 PM at the Dancenter in Arcata, to support expeditions by local performing artists to Mexico, Haiti, Guatemala and South Africa. And next Saturday, March 31, Ferndale Rep presents Repfest35, an all day series of events and entertainments to celebrate the Rep’s 35th anniversary.