Chekhov’s ‘Cherry Orchard’ Blooms in Korean

No playwright has captured the struggles of a society in transition more wittily or movingly than Anton Chekhov. A physician by trade, the Russian dramatist, who was born just a year before serfdom was abolished there, examined his country’s troubled soul as industrialization reshaped its economy and social order.In his later work, Chekhov addressed with increasing directness how these changes rattled the aristocracy and provided new opportunities for the lower-born but ambitious. His final play, “The Cherry Orchard,” first produced in 1904, follows Ranevskaya, a middle-aged woman who returns to the estate she inherited having squandered her wealth; a successful businessman, Lopakhin, whose father and grandfather were serfs on that property, conceives a plan to save it and relieve the debt she and her brother have accumulated, but his advice is rejected.Now Simon Stone, a director and writer known for his imaginative, intuitive takes on a range of classics dating back to Euripides and Seneca, has brought this story into the present. Mind you, his adaptation of “Cherry Orchard,” now having its North American premiere at Park Avenue Armory, is still set thousands of miles away, in Seoul, South Korea, where this production was introduced in 2024. But Song Do-young, the glamorous, dissipated matriarch who now stands in for Ranevskaya, and Hwang Doo-sik, the hungry entrepreneur who has taken Lopakhin’s place, seem as instantly familiar as a local politician being lambasted on social media. The world has shrunk considerably since Chekhov set pen to paper, and our own fraught journey into the digital age has made the aches and pains of a culture in flux as relevant as ever.No matter, then, that this “Cherry Orchard” is performed entirely in Korean. Mr. Stone, his translator and dramaturg, Yi Dan-bi, and a superb cast, with help from English supertitles, make both its comedy and its pathos thoroughly accessible. Saul Kim’s sleek scenic design reimagines the setting as a glass house, gifted to Do-young as a teenager by her late father, who also left her and her elder sibling, Jae-Young, in charge of a massive empire known as a chaebol — think Samsung or Hyundai.Do-young, a widow, arrives from New York as Ranevskaya had from Paris, fresh from a failed attempt to recover from the death of her young son with a love affair that proved expensive both financially and emotionally. Played by the acclaimed Korean actress Jeon Do-yeon, she remains a charismatic beauty — she glows, by her own account — but both her physical charms and her destructive frivolity have taken on a strained, brittle edge.In contrast, Doo-sik, whose dad was the family’s chauffeur, is a bundle of energy and yearning, and as portrayed by Park Hae-soo, known to Netflix viewers for his role in the series “Squid Game,” he emerges as the most complex and compelling character here. Though romantically involved with Do-young’s older, adopted daughter, Kang Hyun-Sook, he is drawn to Do-young partly out of genuine sympathy, and Ms. Song, the performer, and Mr. Park also bring a distinctly sexual frisson to their interaction.Only after numerous attempts to get Do-young and the proud, impractical Jae-Young, drolly played by a rumpled Son Sang-kyu, to save their conglomerate and themselves fail does Doo-sik reveal his own pride and indignation, and the evolution is shattering. It actually made me rethink the times I’ve dismissed some tech and finance bros and other corporate honchos as crude sharks, because Mr. Park’s Doo-sik is not, even in the end, completely soulless.Moon Choi and Lee Ji-hye are by turns funny and poignant as, respectively, the perpetually frustrated Hyun-Sook, whose efforts to make reforms to the family company have, she insists, been thwarted by her uncle, and her earthier younger sister, Hae-na. The latter character is attracted to Byun Dong-lim, a perennial student whose burning idealism and bombastic erudition make him a foil to Doo-sik. Nam Yun-ho mines the humor both in the resulting conflict and in Dong-lim’s awkward courtship of the more sensual Hae-na.One of the most harrowing scenes in this “Cherry Orchard” unfolds during Hae-na’s birthday party, when while waiting for word of the company’s and estate’s fates — neither will be rosy — she tearfully confronts her mother, after Do-young has fixed her magnetism on Dong-lim as well. Having lost her father and her brother, Hae-na chastises the woman who was supposed to be her last source of support, whom she has instead had to rescue time after time.We’re reminded, as we are throughout this production, how universal and profound the questions raised by Chekhov’s fundamentally comic plays are — even as Mr. Stone and his players also milk the laughs. You don’t have to speak a word of Korean to appreciate and enjoy the duality.

Chekhov’s ‘Cherry Orchard’ Blooms in Korean

Chekhov’s ‘Cherry Orchard’ Blooms in Korean

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