You’re Famous
by Abigail Cote
You’ve got the part! You are the new addition
to The Cherry Orchard, but you don’t
have to act. Come in, take a seat and take part in the humor and drama of this crazy
love story.
Walking into the Dane Estate transports
you to another time. It is a perfect fit for the play. The Dane Estate was
built in 1891 and the play takes place in the 1860’s. Already off to a good
start and it hasn’t even begun yet.
The naturalness and realistic feeling of
the production continues when a character is up on the balcony and sits down in
a chair, before the play even starts. He is casual about it and draws little to
no attention unless you are looking around. Then, the play officially begins and
he is in place to start acting.
The wit and dry humor calls for a
particular audience. Gaev, the uncle whom everyone is forever shushing and
rolling eyes at, rambles on about anything and everything and even has a
conversation with, or in other words, to
a bookcase. Remember to be open-minded to hopeless romantics and governess
jokesters.
Connections to characters are made without
sob stories or horrific pasts. The lightness of the situation at hand is paired
well with the realizations that the past has to be left behind. These connections
catch you by surprise when you realize you’re on the edge of your seat begging
Lopakin to propose to Varya. Or when Trofimov has his a heart-warming goodbye
with Lopakin. Or when Gaev’s short memory of watching his father is the biggest
story he told throughout the whole play. The way that the actors surround you
with these everyday relationships and struggles is capturing and entrancing.
At first, the word over-dramatic comes to
mind, but as the performance plays out the drama is accepted as intentional and
required to make the play entertaining. Near their departure, Trofimov is
desperately in search of his galoshes and when Varya throws them at him he
shouts in dismay, “these aren’t even my galoshes!” This exaggeration is done
for humor.
Another form of humor comes in the form of
silence. Lopakin in the span of 10 seconds makes the decision to propose to
Varya. She comes down the stairs and
they stand there looking at each other. Both of them wanting marriage, but
neither of them making the move. The silence speaks volume to the hopelessness
of their situations. The choice of dragging out the silence between the two for
one whole minute, at the least, makes you twist and turn in your chair. It
becomes hard to bear. The way the actors convey the, for lack of a better word,
awkwardness of what is happening is remarkable.
You are put in the play, I mean actually in it. At one point, an actor who was
running out the door literally bumped into an audience member. It is an
unusual, but a fascinating feeling. Go and be in a play, but subtract all the
stress and anxiety of putting on a show.
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