The Cherry Orchard
Anton Chekhov, Translation by Tom Stoppard
Los Alto Stage Company
While Anton Chekhov categorized his 1904 premiere, The Cherry Orchard, as a comedy with some elements of farce, the great work now seen as a literary classic is often produced more as a tragicomedy as it dramatizes the fall of the Russian aristocracy at the turn of the twentieth century and the parallel rise of a middle class struggling to find an identity. Such is certainly the case in Los Altos Stage Company’s current production of Chekhov’s masterpiece with Tom Stoppard’s translation clearly bending in both the direction of occasional hilarity as well in that of the tragic denial of an old moneyed and privileged class who are portrayed much like ostriches with their heads in the ground. Under Gary Landis’ direction, exaggerated sentiments of quirky characters abound amidst a growing tide of societal shifts with some clinging hopelessly to the past and others callously pushing aside the old for their own material or ideological gains.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 3 E
The Cherry Orchard continues through May 10, 2026, in a two-hour, thirty-minute (with one intermission) production by Los Altos Stage Company, 97 Hillview Avenue, Los Altos, CA. Tickets are available online at https://losaltosstage.org/; in person Thursday and Friday, 3 – 6 p.m. at the theatre’s box office; or by phone at 650-941-0551.
Photo Credit: Evelyn Huynh
