The Cherry Orchard (St. Ann’s Warehouse)

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Anton Chekhov, who died at the age of 44 in 1904, left us with four classic plays in the repertory: The Three Sisters, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and The Cherry Orchard. The richness of his work continues to inspire a remarkable amount of posthumous collaboration. These days, it’s not enough for writers to simply translate the Russian master’s works – they must drag them kicking and screaming into the present day.

Simon Stephens’ Vanya, currently at the Lucille Lortel Theater off-Broadway, with all the characters to be performed by one actor, repositions the action in Ireland and reimagines one character as a famous filmmaker. Thomas Bradshaw’s The Seagull/Woodstock, NY (a huge success for The New Group last year) transforms the self-absorbed actress Arkadina into a Broadway diva, dishing out gossip about actor/playwrights and all-female True West revivals. Director Sasha Molochnikov in association with En Garde Arts presented Seagull: True Story, the surprise hit of the Under the Radar Festival this year. The adaptation returns to La Mama this June for an extended engagement.

Now it’s The Cherry Orchard’s turn to get the radical reworking treatment, courtesy of writer and director Benedict Andrews, whose vision of the classic play is nothing if not unconventional. Here, Firs, the aging servant, casually drops the word “fuckwit” in reference to various characters, Liubov, the lady of the house, puffs on a joint, and two characters engage in a discreet lesbian affair. As for the existential despair that pervades the play, it’s expressed through downbeat rock ballads – not exactly the serene Russian melancholy we’re used to.

The results of this updating are bold, and Andrews’ intellectual ambition is undeniable. At times, his revisions might seem questionable but when the production clicks, it strikes with a thrilling originality. The production pulses with an urgency often missing from more traditional revivals of The Cherry Orchard, a play about people running out of time. The central conflict remains: Liubov, the bankrupt widow haunted by the ghosts of her past, returns to her family estate for the inevitable sale of the land that defines her family’s history. Practical solutions are needed, but neither she nor her hapless relatives can take decisive action.

In this stirring reimagining of the Russian classic, the family’s tragic willful blindness to their precarious situation unfolds with devastating inevitability. Even as Lopakhin, the ambitious “new money” merchant of peasant origins, offers a possible escape from their fate, the characters’ refusal to acknowledge the truth mirrors the stubbornness that doomed them. Though the play is rooted in the historical drama of the Russian Revolution, its themes of masters, peasants, and the lingering shadows of serfdom transcend time, resonating deeply with our contemporary anxieties about wealth, class, and dispossession.

Designer Magda Willi has crafted a visual experience that is equally unforgettable. The production’s in-the-round staging places the cast amidst the audience when not performing, creating an immersive atmosphere. The entire space—floor and back wall alike—is enveloped in an intricate pattern of rugs, blending a ‘70s color palette with the sharp geometric lines of ‘80s design. Sans furniture, the effect is strangely timeless, yet oddly out of place, as though it exists in a world between decades.

This sense of dislocation is echoed in Merle Hensel’s costume design, a hallucinatory fusion of shell suits and hippie chic that feels like a fever dream Ken Russell would have passed on displaying when he directed Altered States. The result is a visual feast that is both humorously unfashionable and effortlessly evocative, conjuring multiple distinct time periods without ever resembling any actual reality. It’s a masterclass in style that is as captivating as it is surreal, making the audience feel like they’ve stepped into a universe entirely of the production’s own making.

While this reimagining infuses the play with a fresh and biting perspective, Andrews also maintains much of its emotional depth. The production removes the aching heart at the core of Chekhov’s story, replacing it with a sense of panic and impending disaster. Liubov, portrayed by Nina Hoss with a heavy-hearted fatigue, teeters on the edge of a nervous breakdown, burdened by grief and loss. Her return to the estate offers the characters an opportunity for salvation, but no one can grasp it, and the feeling that everything is spiraling out of control is palpable. Adeel Akhtar’s Lopakhin, a cold, materialistic pragmatist, is the only one with a feasible plan – to sell the estate and convert the land into vacation dachas. His frustration and rage are presented with such force he personifies the living breathing antithesis of the polite nobility of which Liubov and her daughters are last in the line.

In an exceptional pairing, Hoss and Akhtar — both renowned for their screen work — bring formidable depth to their roles. Hoss, with her naturally aristocratic bearing, expertly conveys the delicate vulnerability of her character, contrasting it with her self-absorbed, almost childish entitlement. Her performance is heart-wrenching, particularly as she succumbs to waves of grief over her drowned son and the irreversible loss of her family estate. Akhtar, meanwhile, delivers a mesmerizing performance as the fiery, bling-clad Lopakhin, whose initial brashness evolves into a searing, volcanic fury as he confronts the oppressive legacy that has defined his ancestors. Together, they inject the play with a powerful emotional urgency, leaving a lingering impact long after the curtain falls.

Most traditional revivals of The Cherry Orchard revolve around Liubov, paralyzed by her predicament, and Lopakhin, who, with a mixture of admiration and resentment, attempts to impose a solution on her. But in this version, the spotlight often shifts to Trofimov, the perennial student and idealist, originally brought to the household as the tutor to Liubov’s young son Grisha who drowned (the child’s death being the catalyst for Liubov and her “retinue” leaving for Paris five years before). In this production, he becomes the play’s third unexpected central figure. The character’s famous diatribe against the intellectuals of Russia, who gather around the samovar and philosophize while the country’s underprivileged suffer, has been given a decidedly modern twist. Here, Trofimov takes the floor with impassioned remarks about immigration, climate change, overconsumption, and economic inequality. “Not one of you…has any idea of the debt you owe the past, the human cost of your privilege,” he declares, before decrying the isolation of the upper class. Delivered with volcanic intensity by Daniel Monks, this rendition of Trofimov’s speech reinvents The Cherry Orchard as a critique of the spiritually and financially bankrupt elite, fiddling as the world collapses around them.

Monks delivers a blistering performance as the radical student, channeling the fiery energy of a campaign trail alongside Senator Corey Booker the week of his 25-hour speech. “We’re being held hostage by proto-fascist tech oligarchs while they amass obscene wealth, rob the rest of us blind, so they can fly off to Mars leaving us on a dead planet,” he spits, his fury palpable, as the Brooklyn audience erupts in applause. If this line doesn’t sound like it came from Chekhov’s pen, you’re absolutely right. Director Andrews has taken the bold step of updating Trofimov’s rhetoric to reflect modern-day anxieties, inserting references that resonate with a 2025 crowd—an audience that might understand the stakes with a sharper clarity than a 1904 Moscow theatergoer, just one year away from revolution. And perhaps it’s something Trofimov’s newly converted voters might want to ponder, too, given the turbulent times that lie ahead.

The rest of the ensemble delivers solid performances, though they are often undermined by Andrews’ tendency to direct with an overemphasis on fidgeting and needless audience interaction. The moments where characters drag audience members into the action—such as when Liubov and her brother Gaev pull a front-row patron onstage to represent a cherished bookcase—feel  awkward.

Despite a misstep or two, Andrews’ Cherry Orchard offers a strikingly original take on Chekhov’s work. The minimalist set, with its rug-rolling finality, under lighting designer James Farncombe’s appropriately spare fluorescence coming from a huge box of garish white light and the haunting sound design by Brendan Aanes which includes the unsettling buzz of a saw in the final scene (Liubov didn’t want the chopping down of the cherry trees to start until she left), underline the production’s purposefully bleak, industrial tone. Though the intrusive rock underscoring sometimes feels out of place, with music that seems lifted from a low-budget thriller, it does contribute to the sense of existential unease that permeates the play.

The second half of the production introduces unexpected twists: a smoke machine, and a live band taking center stage, (musicians for which Liubov spends money she doesn’t have.) What initially seems like a playful detour soon evolves into something far more emotionally profound. The pace slows, shifting into a more somber and atmospheric mood, but it remains delicately tinged with an undercurrent of dread as the characters await the fateful news about the estate.

When that news finally arrives, the impact is devastating, yet the tone once again transforms, striking every note in Chekhov’s signature blend of lightness and darkness. We watch as the family, entrenched in their idle privilege, remains willfully blind to the suffering and poverty just beyond their reach. One standout moment is a powerful scene involving a child beggar, which cuts through the complacency of the family’s existence. Yet, despite all the levity and irony that have punctuated the narrative, the magnitude of their loss is undeniable by the end leaving the audience to grapple with the painful weight of it all.

In the end, as Liubov and her family make their final exits from the estate, there’s a sense of something irrevocably lost. Andrews’ vision of The Cherry Orchard is a jagged, grunge-steeped take on Chekhov’s original, a production that at times offends but ultimately sheds new light on the characters’ existential struggles. This is a version of The Cherry Orchard to wrestle with—a provocative, sometimes uneasy exploration of privilege, time, and decay. Though the road may be rocky, Andrews proves himself to be one of the more interesting modern-day collaborators with Chekhov’s legacy.

The Cherry Orchard (through April 27, 2025)

St. Ann’s Warehouse presents The Donmar Warehouse production

Joseph S. & Diane H. Steinberg Theater, 45 Water Street, in Brooklyn

For tickets, visit http://www.stannswarehouse.org

Running time: two hours and 45 minutes with one intermission