Ithaca College

On Friday, February 21st at 6 p.m. in the Handwerker Gallery, On the Verge will present a staged reading of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard.  The cast will feature Frank Wood, a stage, film and television actor who was honored with a Tony award for his performance in Sideman in 1999. Wood also recently performed in the Broadway casts of August: Osage County and Clybourne Park, and he played the role of Roy Cohn in the acclaimed 2010 off-Broadway revival of Angels in America.  The Cherry Orchard cast will also include IC faculty members Paula Murray Cole, Kevin Murphy and Michael Twomey; students from the IC Theater and English departments; and local professional actor Jesse Bush. The reading was directed by Claire Gleitman, a faculty member in the IC English department.

The Cherry Orchard, which Chekhov wrote in 1904, is a tragicomedy about the decline of the landed gentry in early 20th century Russia and its replacement by a more muscular, practical and forward-looking mercantile class. Whether we are to find in that burgeoning middle class a more hopeful or egalitarian promise for the future is a question that is decidedly open to debate, as is the question of whether the play tilts more strongly toward comedy (as Chekhov insisted) or tragedy (as his great champion Konstantin Stanislavski believed). What is certain is that the play captures--with exquisite humor as well as sadness--the experience of catastrophic change as it descends upon a group of people who, to varying degrees, barely see it coming and are ill-equipped to adapt when their world is washed away.

All Handwerker Gallery events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.; Thursday, 10.00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m.; and weekends, noon to 5.00 p.m.. The gallery is closed to the public on Tuesdays unless otherwise specified for an event but can accommodate group or class visits by appointment.
For further information or individuals with disabilities requiring parking accommodations, please contact Mara Baldwin at mbaldwin@ithaca.edu or 607.274.3548. Please make requests for accommodations as far in advance as possible.