Marin Theatre’s new, high-spirited production of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” has a first-rate cast and stage design that detail in full color the decline of the Russian aristocracy as it was in the early 1900s before the revolution.
Liubóv Ranevskaya (played by Liz Skar) leaves her extravagant life in Paris to return with her entourage to her family estate in Russia, which will soon be sold to pay off her debts. Lopákhin (Lance Gardner), whose forbears slaved for the family, represents the new money that will buy it.
The setting is the mansion’s faded nursery, with its tattered silk curtains and collection of broken dolls. Nina Ball’s stage design and Lydia Tangi’s costumes are so true to the times that a samovar is used to serve the tea, and the entire family, dressed in high-Romanov attire, breaks into a waltz, something the Ranevskaya clan would likely have done.
The dance itself is so exuberant it raises the entire level of the production, which is directed by Carey Perloff, who headed San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater from 1992 to 2018 and commissioned the translation by Paul Schmidt.
If some of the roles haven’t come into full focus, company artistic director Gardner as Lopákhin is on point at every step, caring enough to help save the estate, but content when he lands the deed and begins the destruction of the orchard. Whether or not he will marry Liubóv’s intelligent adopted daughter Várya, powerfully portrayed by Rosie Hallett, is a significant bit of comic opera that weaves through the play.
Skar’s aristocratic Liubóv, in from her extravagant life in Paris, is a measure too gay at first sight and a step too fragile as the fate of the orchard is announced.
Her brother Gáyev (Anthony Fusco) doesn’t seem quite fully fledged, either. Sklar, despite some rough-voiced and awkward moments, is regal as regal as can be, but it is Anna Tayako as her daughter Ánya who fully captures the poignancy and desperation of the moment.
Trofímov, an aristocrat-turned- intellectual who welcomes the changes, is well crafted by Joseph O’Malley, and Danny Scheie’s loud-mouthed, heedless aristocrat Píshchik provides much of the comic relief Chekhov intended. He is the Chekhovian character who typically talks unguardedly to himself and fails to listen.
Jomar Tagatac as the self-conscious, squeaking-shoe accountant and Leontyne Mbele-Mbong as the governess add comic sparks to the mix as clownish characters—Perloff keeps the all-important comic elements always in hand—and housemaid Dunyásha, a pert Molly Ranson, dances around and flirts with Joel Morel, who is appropriately ill-behaved as the rude, pretentious valet Yásha. The two have big plans for the future.
But it’s Howard Swain as Firs who finally brings “The Cherry Orchard” home. Old and failing, he is the good-souled butler who faithfully served and is tragically forgotten at the end, left alone to die in the closed-up mansion as the sound of woodchopping begins.
“The Cherry Orchard” runs through Feb. 22 at Marin Theatre, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. Tickets are $15 (student) to $59 at marintheatre.org.