CHERRIES AND ROSES

posted by James Reel

    I saw two very good productions last weekend, and you can see them, too, if you hie thee to the theater in time. One was the Rogue Theatre’s version of The Cherry Orchard:

    The question that drives the action of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard will resonate with Tucsonans: Should a cash-strapped family sell its land to a profit-driven developer?
    Yet that question isn't what the play is really about. The Cherry Orchard is a snapshot of Russian society in disintegration, a story of well-meaning fools who can't manage change; as we now know, not even the reformers would handle it with any decency or competence.
    That this 1903 play—Chekhov's last—can strike a chord with contemporary audiences despite being tied specifically to its original time and place proves that it's a classic, not just a relic. The Rogue Theatre is giving it a production worthy of a classic, with an exceptional cast and intelligent direction.

    If it's hard to get the tone right in Chekhov, settling on an approach to Frank Gilroy's The Subject Was Roses is as daunting as deciding between paper and plastic.
    Gilroy won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for this work about a dysfunctional family, and so it must be a Serious Play. Yet much of it can be read as comic. The trouble is that the characters don't usually realize that they're being funny, and so the audience--to say nothing of the actors--constantly has to wonder: Is it OK to laugh at that?
    Live Theatre Workshop usually emphasizes the humor, and even the campiness, in its chosen material, and indeed, its production of The Subject Was Roses reliably draws titters from the audience. Yet the actors and director Chuck Rankin never strain for laughs; they refuse to undercut the bitterness and anger behind most of the lines.