Perfect ëOrchardí Round House Production of Chekhov Play Proves Moving by Gary Tischler On Lyubov Raneskayaís old estate in the Ukraine, someone is chopping down the cherry orchard, and Firs, the old servant, has been left behind to die. Everyone leaves and the lights go out. But the lights have again gone up on Anton Chekhovís ìThe Cherry Orchard,î and on the luminous Lyubov, a dying aristocracy, and a stage full of regret, lost opportunity and oncoming social change. The tones are that of the incomplete, halting, repetitive rhythms of translator David Mamet and the setting is the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., but the play is still and always will be pure Chekhov, the Russian doctor, short-story genius and playwright of four nearly perfect plays who died in 1904 at the very young age of 44. This theater season, in fact, is full of Chekhov. In addition to the illuminating, moving Round House production, there has already been a ìThree Sistahsî at Metro Stage, providing a case for cultural transfer, and there will be a production of ìUncle Vanyaî at Classika Theatre (March 21-May 4) in Arlington, Va., and ìThe Seagullî at the Stanislavsky Studio Theater (Dec. 19-Jan. 19), starting wi th previews on Dec. 12. Classika and Stanislavsky are both Russian-oriented theater companies in the Washington area, so doing Chekhov might be as natural as breathing in and out for these companies. Yet, Chekhovís plays have survived not because theyíre Russian but because theyíre so full of human types and situations. Character, in Chekhovís plays, is everything, which is always good news for actors. Chekhov is still considered a master of the short story, which may say something about his theatrical gift for stories that often rely on characters quickly and incisively sketched. In his plays, nothing much seems to happen except for the occasional suicideóas with the son in ìThe Seagullîóor, as Chekhov himself once said, if there is a shotgun hanging on the wall in the first act, it will go off in the third act. As a playwright, the idealistic and pragmatic doctor got off to a couple of false starts, but there are few better plays in any language than ìThe Three Sisters,î ìUncle Vanya,î ìThe Seagullî and ìThe Cherry Orchard.î The problems of translation aside, they are darn near perfect and universalóin spite of the fact that they are tightly and cleanly particular in time and place. Chekhovís plays are about change, unfulfillment, missed opportunities, and the impact of social, if not political, revolution, and within the framework of these themes, they are very, very Russian. Chekhov wrote the plays, and they were produced at the Moscow Arts Theater within the space of a few years at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. His characters were countesses, aristocrats fallen on hard financial times, former serfs risen to the middle class, strivers and schemers, dreamers and careless lovers. They were members of incomplete families, groups of people thrown together constantly by their condition, realigning under the pressure of change. Chekhov saw a revolution of a kind coming, but he probably never would have imagined a Stalin. You will rarely, if ever, see a modern-dress production of a Chekhov play, and yet the plays never date. Much of course depends on the translation: A bad translation wonít necessarily date a production, but it can choke the life out of it. Mametís translation in the Round House production seems apt, his style and rhythms adding a flavor that fits the way the characters speak. His own plays are of course often salty in the extreme, but beyond that, his characters canít finish a sentence. ìThe Cherry Orchardî is full of wounded personas. Thereís the faded beauty whoís married badly, taken a worse lover, and now, back from Paris, finds her fortunes ruined coupled with her own inability to act because sheís lost in her own memories. Her brother is a man of many words and few talents, unable to rid himself of the arrogance of his class. The serf, who is now a wealthy merchant, canít shake his own past, one that chokes him half to death and stifles his feelings. It goes on like that. For the characters, the past is full of land mines and the future is undiscovered country. The sisters will never get to Moscow in ìThe Three Sisters,î and the aristocrats lose the orchard, the actress loses her son, and Nina loses her innocence. We often laugh at these characters, but they also break our hearts. Perhaps Chekhov invented the idea of tragic-comedy. Perhaps, when all things seem to work perfectlyóas they do in the Round House production of ìThe Cherry Orchardî with actors such as Kathryn Kelley as Lyubov, Marty Lodge as Lopahkin, and a director like Nick Olcott returning to Chekhov after an earlier ìUncle Vanyaîóyou canít help but be moved. Gary Tischler is a contributing writer to The Washington Diplomat.