“THE CHERRY ORCHARD – A SEQUEL” in Romania

 

The National Theater of Cluj and ArtAct – Romania, produced THE CHERRY ORCHARD – A SEQUEL, a play written, directed and designed by Nic Ularu.
The official opening and the National premiere was on October 29, 2009.

The Cherry Orchard Sequel is an intriguing original theatrical work based on the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard, that premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904. Chekhov's universal themes examining the transformation from a waning aristocracy to society’s newfound materialism have kept the play in constant production since its first presentation. 

The Cherry Orchard Sequel uses a continuation of the original storyline to reexamine these themes from a current cultural context. It is eighteen years after Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” and his characters are struggling with the rain, the mud, and the grand innovating ideologies of the Russian Revolution.  In this production of The Cherry Orchard Sequel everything is lost in a turmoil of booze and blizzard.

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club of New York City has produced The Cherry Orchard Sequel in NYC in the spring of 2008.  The production received good reviews in New York Times and Variety. See please the attached reviews.

In the fall of 2008 one of the most important theatres in Poland asked the permission to translate The Cherry Orchard Sequel in Polish in order to be produced in the next future.

The National Theatre of Cluj is the most important theatrical institution in Transylvania and one of the most prestigious in Romania. With an elegant Neo-Baroque style auditorium of 928 seats, a permanent company of 45 actors, 4 directors and 2 designers, The National Theatre of Cluj is one of the most important institution of the contemporary Romanian Theatre, subsidized by the Romanian Ministry of Culture.

In the spring of 2009 The National Theatre of Cluj, invited Nic Ularu to direct and design The Cherry Orchard – A Sequel on the main stage. An American artist, born in Romania,  Nic Ularu is a recipient of the prestigious OBIE Award for outstanding achievements in Off Broadway productions in New York.

The Cherry Orchard – A Sequel project offered a unique opportunity to demonstrate the artistic quality of his American achievements in a Romanian professional venue. This project will provided a rigorous professional experience to both the author / director and to the Romanian actors.  

The cast of The Cherry Orchard - A Sequel includes some of the best actors of the National Theatre of Cluj.

Nic Ularu’s short bio

Nic Ularu’s plays were performed at KO Theatre Festival, MA, Theatre South Carolina, Sibiu International Theatre Festival-Romania, Teatrul Foarte Mic, Bucharest-Romania, “O” Teatret – Sweden and National Theatre of Constanta – Romania. Besides writing and directing his plays Nic Ularu has extensive design credits in USA, Sweden, Northern Ireland and Romania. Prior to his activity in the USA, Nic was the head of scenography at the National Theatre of Bucharest and has taught scenography in Romania, Germany, Sweden, England, Italy, Denmark and Hong Kong. Recent credits includes: 2003 OBIE award for the Talking Band’s Painted Snake in a Painted Chair; 2005 co-designer of the exhibit World Stage Design, Canada; 2007 lead designer and curator of the USA National Exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial Exhibition of Scenography.

Communism’s comic

A review by Mircea Ghitulescu  published in the “Luceafarul” magazine

Who would have expected designer Nicolae Ularu to write plays after an intensive course of drama with the famous novelist Kurt Vonnegut? The answer is simple: the National Theater in Cluj-Napoca, where Nic Ularu (that is his American name) became the total author  - writer, designer and director - of his own play. If in The Cherry Orchard - A Sequel, [ Ularu] will introduce as one of his comedy characters, the author of the original Cherry Orchard (as Matei Vis,niec did in “The Chekhov machine”), I think Ularu could be an actor too. With the melancholy of his intellectually myopic glasses he could be just right for the role of Anton Pavlovich.  Ularu’s comedy is exactly what the title says, and something more,  because what Chekhov's successor add is the political comedy, and  the comic pamphlet with a political subject, just as the Americans like. The sequel, however, was written by the history before Nic Ularu, so the feeling is that this piece comes a little too late. But, what comes just in time is the humor, both literary and theatrical. It is throughout a spirit of caricature, that makes the great conflicts of the past, memories worthy of laughter, and the fact that we can laugh now about “the communism as a joke”, it  means that we are finally relaxed. It is disturbing to get contact with Nic Ularu’s memories about communism, now, when he is so far off of the Soviet communism and so close to "American democracy".  Ularu has read with flair Chekhov's play and found in the perpetual student, Petia Trofimov, a communist theoretician who’s ideas will be crushed by the practitioner of communism, Comrade Boris, the only character invented [by Ularu](in which Emanuel Petran plays a neuropath, sanguinary and irresponsible), who becomes a toy who sparked laughter in the end, when he is killed "completely by chance" by the master of misfortunes, Yepikhodov. Symbol of the Leninist’s communism, Boris is severely affected by tuberculosis, and that communism’s phthisis invented by the author is really funny. But Petia Trofimov in the interpretation of Dan Chiorean remained the same ardent naive of Chekhov's play, though he doubts the practical expression of his utopian communism. Yepikhodov is undoubtedly the best character written by Nic Ularu, excellent represented by Ovidiu Crisan in the style of the simple people who knows how to make fool by themselves. He join the communists because they have promised him to be a writer, which for Yepikhodov is a miracle. Nicknamed "22 of misfortune", Yepikhodov is everywhere the bell, latter on he became by mistake the murder of the communism itself.

Brought to the current life "after twenty years”, as it is in the novel of Alexandre Dumas, the other characters such as LOPAKHIN (Petre Ba(cioiu), the short breath capitalist which cleared the cherry orchard, but now he is a drunkard, Liubov ANDREYEVNA (Elena Ivanca) the bankrupt gentlewoman and her brother, the senile GAYEV, or the “other” world, like the old servant Firs and Grisha, the drowned son of Liubov ANDREYEVNA. The underworld sequences have always a magic quality, thanks to Cristian Grosu (FIRS) who seems to levitate. White and strange as a werewolf, Cristian Grosu’s Firs is half phantom, half caricature. A caricature in full, almost indecipherable is GAYEV, played by Dragos Pop, in a ghostly grotesque style. It becomes a kind of scary when he wear all the clothes, alluding perhaps the famous closet from the children’s room, in the version of Chekhov. Those brakes from the reality of the show causes you to think that the world does not end where Chekhov said, nor where it’s pushed by Nic Ularu, but much further, where there is no suffering and no sorrow. In this way, we reach the beautiful final image with the white shadows of the victims, among the stylized beautiful trees.

Unfortunately, the last image with Dunyasha and Yepikhodov crossing the sickle and the hammer (so began the Soviet movies produced by the famous Mosfilm studios), is not only explanatory but also unnecessary, because “Comrade Communism” has just been executed by Yepikhodov. At least this is what we understood ...

Nic Ularu reaped major critical praise during the February 2008 run of his original play The Cherry Orchard Sequel at the revered LaMaMa E.T.C. Theatre in New York City.

The New York Times raved that the work "is a sparkling surprise, helped along by fine performances all around."They soon followed up this review by naming the play as a Critic's Pick and improving the play's category from Off-Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway.

Variety had equally positive comments, summing up the play as "good, enigmatic storytelling."

Out of Chekhov’s Orchard, Into History’s Frying Pan

The New York Times review

By NEIL GENZLINGER

Published: February 26, 2008

The title of the new play at La MaMa E.T.C., “The Cherry Orchard Sequel,” may set off the cringe reflex: isn’t that the kind of thing theater types think up during boozy cast parties? But the work, written and directed by Nic Ularu, is a sparkling surprise, helped along by fine performances all around.

Mr. Ularu, a theater professor at the University of South Carolina, moves Chekhov’s characters ahead 18 years. And if “The Cherry Orchard” found the aristocratic turn-of-the-century world fading away, “The Cherry Orchard Sequel,” of course, catches Russia at a moment of much more abrupt transition.

Lopahkin (Richard Jennings) still lives on the estate he bought when Madame Ranevskaya (Robyn Hunt) was forced to auction it. (Unless you’ve seen “The Cherry Orchard” recently, reading a plot summary is a prerequisite; Mr. Ularu assumes a fair amount of knowledge.) The hapless Epihodov (John-Patrick Driscoll) is still stumbling around, and the idealistic Trofimov (Paul Kaufmann) has latched on to the Bolshevik cause.

There are also two unexpected characters — the dead, it turns out, don’t stay dead — as well as a new kid on the block, a bully named Boris (Zachary T. Hanks) who comes by the estate to make sure everyone is on board the Communist bandwagon.

Mr. Ularu has a little fun with the premise (for instance, we find out why Epihodov is always tripping over things), but he also has an agenda. Born in Romania, Mr. Ularu, now in his 50s, seems to be no fan of the Soviet era, and it’s no accident that Mr. Hanks’s frightening Boris puts you in mind of classic film Nazis. In Mr. Ularu’s vision, the arrival of Communism squashes whatever glimmers of hope the social liberation explored by Chekhov offered.

Commendably, though, Mr. Ularu knows he can push his parlor game only so far, and wraps it up quickly, in less than an hour and 20 minutes. “This is one possible way the characters could have lived out their lives,” this brevity seems to say. “Now go have a good time imagining your own.”

“The Cherry Orchard Sequel” continues through Sunday at La MaMa E.T.C., 74A East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 475-7710, lamama.org.

The Cherry Orchard Sequel

The VARIETY review

By SAM THIELMAN

A La MaMa E.T.C. presentation of a play in one act written and directed by Nic Ularu.
Lopahkin - Richard Jennings
Firs - Steve Pearson
Grisha - Patrick Michael Kelly
Epihodov - John-Patrick Driscoll
Gayev - Bob Hungerford
Trofimov - Paul Kaufmann
Ranevskaya - Robyn Hunt
Comrade Boris - Zachary T. Hanks

Equal parts pastiche and Commie commentary, Nic Ularu's "The Cherry Orchard Sequel" takes an absurdly presumptuous premise -- the story begun in Anton Chekhov's masterpiece continues! -- and creates a strange world uniquely its own, haunted by the encroaching Red Army, a nostalgic ache for the time before the Bolsheviks and, of course, ghosts. Walking into the theater, the biggest surprise is that Ularu has chosen to tilt at windmills. Walking out, the biggest surprise is that he's managed to fell one.

The beginning of "The Cherry Orchard Sequel," set at the rise of Stalin 18 years after the end of the 1904 Chekhov play, throws things into disarray immediately. The first character to appear is Grisha (Patrick Michael Kelly) -- the deceased son of the aristocratic Ranevskaya (Robyn Hunt) -- who never actually appeared in Chekhov's play. Firs (Steve Pearson), Ranevskaya's elderly manservant, speaks to Grisha, but wasn't Firs doddering and near death in the other story? Isn't Grisha dead?

Yes and yes, in fact. They're both dead, and enjoying post-death existence as ghosts who haunt the house purchased by the former serf Lopahkin (Richard Jennings), an action that signaled both the beginning of Communism and the end of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard."

Ularu fleshes out his observations on Russian life under Stalin through the characters: Former serf Lopahkin is now as despised by the party as aristocratic Ranevskaya and is thus in danger.

Epihodov (John-Patrick Driscoll), once a clerk for Ranevskaya, bears witness to the inevitable chain of events: The Communists arrive in the form of Comrade Boris (Zachary T. Hanks), an amoral gangster who is a stone's throw from the KGB agents to come. Petya Trofimov (Paul Kaufmann), the impassioned leftist intellectual, returns as a Communist soldier and tries to subvert the Red Army's assault on Lopahkin and the rest of his adopted family. But the play sadly reveals that no one likes intellectuals, not the Tsar, and not Stalin.

The Romanian Ularu is nothing if not surefooted, but there are times during "The Cherry Orchard Sequel" when you might wish for an encyclopedia or at least a handy copy of "The Plays of Anton Chekhov." His reliance on the master text is a little tiring, even though he is actually building to something and needs to stand on Chekhov's shoulders to reach it.

At the end of this play's predecessor, Chekhov had created a careful tableau of impractical dignity and comfort around the lovable, silly denizens of the Gayev estate. He told us that -- with the rise of the uncultured Lopahkin --there was no way these lives could last, dropping the curtain to spare us the view of the fall.

Now, years after the fall and in the midst of the tentative renewal (with Vladimir Putin in charge, the very tentative renewal), Ularu refuses us that kindness, chronicling unsentimentally what happened to Russia during Stalin. It's hard to look at, but Chekhov was sadly predicting the future.

Ularu, on the other hand, uses Chekhov as a fixed point around which to sketch his outrage at history. It's timely, especially with history on the verge of repeating itself under Putin, but more than that, it's just good, enigmatic storytelling.

Set, Carl Hamilton, Craig Vetter; costumes, Kimi Maeda; lighting, James Hunter; sound, Walter Clissen; production stage manager, K. Dale White. Opened, reviewed Feb. 24, 2008. Running time: 1 HOUR, 20 MIN.