‘Cherry Orchard’s’ subtlety lost amid cast’s hyperactive antics

In the common wisdom, Chekhov’s plays are comedies. And indeed they are -- fragile but durable stuff that, given just the right handling, can be subtly hilarious.

In the current staging of “The Cherry Orchard” at A Noise Within, director Adrian Giurgea takes a trowel to Chekhov, shoveling artifice onto a magnificently structured play (translated here by Paul Schmidt) that cries out for emotional sincerity and wit.

Deborah Strang plays Lyubov Ranevskaya, the Russian aristocrat who, along with her feckless brother Leonid Gayev (Robertson Dean), has mismanaged the family estate right onto the auction block. A luminous and able actress, Strang almost salvages her character from the weight of twitching mannerisms that Giurgea imposes. Almost, but not quite.

At the top of the play, Strang and her entourage, including her daughter Anya (bland Maria Bergman), who are returning home after a long sojourn in Europe, caper onto the stage like horses released from a chute, wild-eyed and prancing.

That antic, falsely energetic tone persists for much of the play. Even Varya (Ann Marie Lee), a mousy hausfrau with an unrequited crush on the wealthy peasant Lopakhin (Daniel Reichert), romps like a schoolgirl as she goes about her daily rounds. With few exceptions, the actors appear to have been directed to always run, never walk -- or worse, amble. With nary a hint of Chekhovian languor, these characters comport themselves like moths in a candle flame, when they should more properly be flies taking a last lap in the congealing amber.

The play opens in the house’s nursery -- a room dominated by an enormous white dollhouse in Danila Korogodsky’s otherwise stark set. That set piece is emblematic of Giurgea’s dominant theme -- that these aristocrats are desperate children, weighed down by centuries of privilege, treading water in the rising tide of mercantilism and social change. Certainly, on the surface at least, that tack would seem appropriate to Chekhov’s prevalent view of the Russian aristocracy as extravagant and colorful relics of a vanishing order.

But by relentlessly infantilizing the characters -- particularly the women, who gasp and quiver with unvaryingly histrionic intensity -- Giurgea idiot-proofs Chekhov’s intentions to an unnecessary degree, bludgeoning home every symbol and meaning and plot point with a heavy hand. Instead of trusting his audience and Chekhov’s gentle, rhythmic humor, Giurgea simply amps up the pacing on his energetic but trying interpretation.

A workmanlike cast struggles valiantly to keep the action flowing, with some success. Although he is slightly miscast, Reichert is a dynamic Lopakhin, until Giurgea lures him into foot-stomping excess. And Ken Grantham, who plays Boris Semyonov-Pishchik, gives a delightfully authentic performance in defiance of the prevalent artificiality.

*

‘The Cherry Orchard’

Where: 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale

When: Plays in repertory; call for performance times

Ends: Dec. 8

Price: $22-$38

Contact: (818) 240-0910

Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes