‘El Nogalar’ doesn’t do Chekhov justice

“El Nogalar,” Tanya Saracho’s modernized North Mexican adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s 1904 Russian classic “The Cherry Orchard,” comes across as more of an interesting writing exercise than an emotionally confident drama in its own right. And that’s despite a very handsome world premiere coproduction by Chicago’s Teatro Vista and Goodman Theatre.

“El Nogalar” essentially translates from the Spanish as “nowhere,” an apt title for the play’s rudderless upper-class women whose economic woes force them to leave other countries and return to the shadowy Galvan mansion and vast pecan orchard in Nuevo León, Mexico. Compounding the Galvans’ troubles are the encroaching drug cartels that have designs on the family’s once grand estate.

Some “Cherry Orchid” admirers will enjoy contrasting where Saracho matches or diverges from Chekhov. But newcomers probably will be disappointed since Saracho’s 90-minute condensation hews so closely to the original’s uneasy stasis-filled plot (though Saracho seems to take some pleasure in defying Chekhov’s famous dictum that a gun introduced onstage must go off at some point).

Though the menacing drug lords are frequently referred to, they are strangely not personified onstage. Saracho also stumbles with her decisions to omit certain character confrontations or to just recount them after the fact.

Crucial scenes seem to be missing not only between the financially savvy former servant Mr. López (Carlo Lorenzo Garcia) and the spendthrift lady of the house Maité (Charín Alvarez), but with her eldest daughter, Valeria (Sandra Delgado), who has fading hopes that Mr. López will propose marriage. Saracho also oddly has Garcia delivering monologues when none of the other characters soliloquize.

If Saracho’s “El Nogalar” doesn’t fully satisfy script-wise, the bilingual acting company under Director Cecilie D. Keenan certainly does. As the American-raised daughter Anita, Christina Nieves gets across her character’s spoiled nature very well, while Yunuen Pardo’s Dunia shows plenty of spunk as a maid with grander ambitions.

Many scholars have praised Chekhov for foreshadowing the people’s overthrow of the Russian nobility in “The Cherry Orchid.” Alas Saracho’s depiction of drug money and crime displacing Mexico’s moneyed families seems to be a fate that is already playing out.