It's not the easiest thing in the world to rewrite a classic but from the sounds of it, that's exactly what Hannah Rittner does with Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard"—a story about a family that returns to its ancestoral home just before it's auctioned off—to great success. "What Hannah's done is she's just taken his themes and his ideas and she's put that in her own subconscious and written her own play really," says director Mary-Colin Chisholm. "It's almost like a dialogue, like she's talking back to Chekhov. Like, here we are in this day and age and she's come up with an artist, feminist commune in the Annapolis Valley so the ideas that he had are all explored in this play but it's more than a re-contextualization, it's more like it is a re-imagining." It's a re-imagining that LunaSea Theatre is going all out for, with cast-created sound effects, projections and careful design. "We're going to be in the Neptune Studio which is an incredible opportunity for a small company—so we deliberately wanted to go in with some of the best actors in Halifax, you know, we wanna go in in style and use the facility because we can get good sound, use projections and lights. So we're going for it. We're going for more production value than the average small company can." It's go big or go home time, and we suggest going to see Estate instead.
Estate
Jan 8-13, Neptune Theatre
1593 Argyle Street, 429-7070, $15-$25
