Russian characters found their way into the imagination of playwright MK Wolfe, who noticed parallels to people she knew about and boldly went on to adapt Anton Chekhov’s 1904 play “The Cherry Orchard” to a local setting.
“A Cherry Orchard in Maine …,” the final production of a season full of Maine-based plays by the Snowlion Repertory Company, borrows from the Russian classic to look at some of what’s happening today in the Pine Tree State. Although there’s some cultural translation involved, the Knox County folks populating this engaging production, as portrayed by a dozen mostly local actors under the direction of Al D’Andrea, are, like their Russian counterparts, a confused but likable bunch capable of drawing both laughs and sympathy.
IF YOU GO
What: “A Cherry Orchard in Maine….” by Snowlion Repertory Company
Where: Portland Ballet Studio Theater, 517 Forest Ave., Portland
Reviewed: April 20; continues through April 29
Tickets: $20
Contact: 207-518-9305; snowlionrep.org
The play concerns the effects of social and economic changes on some longtime landowners, their friends and employees as a tax auction looms. Laura Houck plays matriarch Lily, who, as the play opens, is returning after spending years away when she squandered most of what was left of the family fortune. She’s greeted warmly by her erratic brother Leo (David Arthur Bachrach) and daughters Anna (Casey Turner) and Veronika (Holly Brown), the latter two hoping that romance will open avenues to exciting new lives.
The upwardly mobile townsman Jerry (Tom Handel) tries to convince Lily to take the step of selling prime parts of the estate to the acquisitive “summer people.” Various other friends and hangers-on try to find ways, often ineptly, to land on solid ground financially and psychologically as issues of dislocation and homelessness arise.
A retreat into various degrees of eccentricity seems the solution for several characters. The crotchety Fiske (Christopher Horton), the mystical Charlotte (Kim Gordon), the boisterous Bernard (David Lee Vincent), the idealist Peter (Andre T. Demers) and the lovelorn Simon (Jonathan D. Raines) are all given moments to consider their diminishing options.
Welcome softer notes can be found in the potential romances, as between servants Dee Dee (Mary Randall) and Yank (Meredythe Dehne Lindsey), and in quieter moments of reflection by Lily and others.
The sets by Craig Robinson create a rustic charm, as do the class-defining costumes by Brittney Cacace. The sound design by Joseph Blough, which includes some relocated bluegrass music, and lighting by Iain Odlin help to complete an impressive and absorbing production.
With an eye to what makes us all human, Wolfe and company have placed this “Cherry Orchard” along the right path.
Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.
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