‘The Cherry Orchard’ gets New York laughing

Korea Herald correspondent

NEW YORK — “I went to New York. It was an amazing city. A perfect place to live as an alcoholic.”

A burst of laughter rippled through the Wade Thompson Drill Hall.

The line comes from Song Do-young, the heroine of Simon Stone’s Korean-language adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” played by Jeon Do-yeon. Do-young is recalling the 10 years she spent in New York after the death of her son — a detail that, in this version, replaces Chekhov’s Paris.

It was an unusually fitting joke for a play making its North American premiere in New York. A story that began in Seoul had finally arrived in the very city so prominent in its dialogue. And audiences there got the joke.

When Do-young describes New York as a place where people talk openly about sex, “almost like a national sport,” another wave of laughter rises. So does one about the “people all over Manhattan who do nothing but talk about their startups.” Later, references to a Brooklyn loft, the High Line, the Whitney and even the subway prompt knowing laughter from the audience, sometimes before the line has fully landed.

“It was very on point! I didn't find anything wrong with what they were saying about New York,” said Karine, a theatergoer at the opening. “There are a lot of parties and everything is open whenever.”

Nissy, another audience member, said the references felt particularly familiar to New Yorkers.

“Every New Yorker can relate to that,” she said, pointing to the High Line and other details of life in the city.

“I have to admit, too, because New York was such a strong reference point in the show, it was amusing to hear how New York is viewed through other people’s interpretations,” said Jay Wegman, director of New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. “It’s nights like this that remind us why we live in New York City.”

For a production performed entirely in Korean with English captions, those moments provided an immediate point of connection.

“The Cherry Orchard” opened Wednesday at Park Avenue Armory, marking the final stop of its international tour after premieres in Seoul in 2024 and engagements in Hong Kong, Singapore and Adelaide. The LG Arts Center production, officially invited as part of the Armory’s 2026 season, runs through Sept. 26 for 11 performances.

Stone’s adaptation moves Chekhov’s 1904 Russian estate to modern-day Seoul. The fading aristocratic family becomes a wealthy but declining Korean chaebol family, while the threatened sale of the estate becomes a backdrop for questions of class, generational change, and a social order struggling to survive rapid transformation.

The cast includes Jeon, who won best actress at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, Park Hae-soo of “Squid Game,” Son Sang-kyu and Choi Hee-seo.

Chekhov described “The Cherry Orchard” as a comedy, with elements of farce, even as its first production was famously approached as a tragedy. That tension between laughter and loss remains central to Stone’s version.

The audience laughs at Do-young’s vanity, the family’s absurd inability to confront reality and the characters’ often self-defeating attempts to hold on to a world that is disappearing around them. But beneath the comedy is a familiar anxiety: what happens when the world that shaped you is no longer there?

That question appeared to travel easily across cultures.

Karine praised the adaptation for giving an old play contemporary identities and concerns while preserving its emotional core.

“It’s like it’s an old play, but the translation embraces modern ideas, modern identities, and the way people see the world,” she said.

Abigail Pogson, CEO of London’s Barbican Centre, also welcomed the chance to see a familiar classic through a different cultural lens.

“I really enjoyed seeing a classic piece that I know quite well, and have seen performed a number of times, played in that way and within that context,” she said. "And I thought, in 2026, with everything that’s going on in the world, to hear that director’s take on it, to see it performed by actors from Korea, and to see it staged so confidently while exploring its complexity, was really, really profound."

Wegman added, “It’s great to see a classic revisited by one of the best directors working in the world today, and with an international cast that was amazing. The translation and the adaptation were genius. Just taking Chekhov’s story and making it not only modern, but also contextualizing it from a Korean viewpoint."