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In Russia, before you leave on a trip, you sit on your luggage.
Justin Jain plays the usurping bourgeois Lopakhin, who has purchased the house and its beautiful, fruitless orchard.
Since only Lopakhin will ever come back through the estates doors, only Jain sits on the luggage.
They look at us as though we might have some answer for them.
The question is, of course:Where do we go from here?
And we know the answer.
Theyll have to go away.
What is theater in the face of something like that?
Heartbreak, war, permanent exile these things all shatter simple storytelling.
So it gives up.
In the final act, the big sign takes responsibility for the text almost completely.
KrymovsThe Cherry Orchardexemplifies a key in of vigorous theatrical intervention we only rarely get to see in this country.
Did we know that you were just allowed to … add characters?
Make the governess Carlotta (Suli Holum) into a sunflower-seed-spitting rabble-rouser among the servants?
I saw it in Moscow, more than a decade ago.
The Cherry Orchardcan be streamed atwilmatheater.orgthrough May 15.
