In Wilma’s ‘Cherry Orchard’ the set design is the star

The late, lamented train flipboard at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station was at best a pallid cousin to the one serving as the centerpiece of the Wilma Theater’s reimagined version of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

The nearly two-hour, intermission-less show, a world-premiere adaptation by Russian director Dmitry Krymov in collaboration with the Wilma HotHouse Acting Company, leans heavily on that massive flipboard. It functions alternately as an all-knowing seer, a wise-cracking comic, and a stand-in for Chekhov himself, spewing the original text too quickly for us to absorb.

It’s an inventive theatrical device, and the mechanics are impressive. But the joke palls after a while. So, too, do the repeated shout-outs to contemporary technology, from bitcoin to smartphones, interpolated into the show’s belabored potpourri of slapstick, screaming, profanity, dancing, singing, audience participation, theater jokes, improv, and direct references to the current crisis in Ukraine. Sound exhausting? It is. This is Chekhov run through a blender of 20th-century experimental theater tropes.

There’s a reason that playwrights — not directors and theatrical troupes — generally write plays. They’re better at it.

Chekhov called The Cherry Orchard, the last play he finished before his death in 1904, a comedy. But its emotional tone hovers nearer to tragedy. Set on an early-20th-century Russian estate, it depicts the crumbling of the old aristocratic order, symbolized by the cherry orchard, and its replacement by an increasingly powerful merchant class. Displacement, social transformation, and the tension between truth and illusion are among its themes. But the play’s lack of action and profusion of characters, with their complicated names and relationships, may make it a slog for American audiences.

So, even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine made displacement newly relevant, it might have seemed an inspired idea to update The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov deconstructions and spoofs have become a genre in themselves. In October, the Wilma presented Minor Character, featuring multiple concurrent translations of Uncle Vanya. Christopher Durang’s comedic Chekhov mash-up, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, won a 2013 Tony Award and was produced by the Philadelphia Theatre Company in 2014. Two years later, the Arden Theatre Company staged Stupid F#*@cking Bird, Aaron Posner’s wacky adaptation of The Seagull.

The Wilma’s Cherry Orchard, as directed by Krymov, is infuriatingly self-indulgent, despite the efforts of its talented cast. Matteo Scammell, as the servant Yasha, gives an entertainingly foul-mouthed twist to the song “New York, New York,” and Suli Holum spews venom and sunflower seeds as the governess Carlotta. Justin Jain is an energetic and unsubtle Lopakhin, the rich merchant capable of both generosity and predation. Krista Apple plays an anemic Ranyevska, the estate owner who’s a fool for love.

This production’s strengths are mostly visual. Krymov shares set design credit with Irina Kruzhilina, who also designed the vaguely period costumes. Together, they have given us arresting images: that flipboard, topped with angelic statuettes; a stopped clock at its base; a photographic portrait of a woman covering the stage floor; a slick mess of squashed sour cherries; periodic plumes of smoke; a deracinated cherry tree, and a volleyball game between workers and landowners that compels Lopakhin to decide which side he favors.

“The Cherry Orchard” is presented by the Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., through May 1. Vaccination proof and masks required. Tickets: $25-$59. Information: 215-546-7824 or wilmatheater.org.