Normally, a play that bills itself as an "unusual approach" to a classic work causes some uneasy theatergoers to run far, far away from said play, especially if this approach promises "theatrical deconstruction" and the use of multimedia. It's hard enough to get people to choose any play over a musical, much less an off-Broadway show that so much as hints at being experimental.

Those who cringe at most modern interpretations of the classics, though, have the chance to rethink their sensitivities with a new production of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard by Columbia MFA student Juan Souki. Souki's production does what all modern approaches should aim to do: it makes the play both comprehensible and relevant to contemporary audiences. "Studying the piece I felt a deep connection between the text and our present reality," Souki said, "and decided to explore how the different relationships in the play would function today." That his decision has an appeal to younger theatergoers is evidenced by the prevalence of twenty-somethings packing into his show.

Souki's success is proof that schoolwork doesn't always have to remain in the classroom. His production began as an assignment for Professor Brian Kulick's class on directing Chekhov last semester. The 25-year-old multimedia artist from Caracas, Venezuela teamed up with a diverse group of New York actors and artists. Marcelo Añez, a Grammy-winning sound engineer, and Benjamin Edelberg, set designer for the films Big Fish and Minority Report, to bring the production to its current off-Broadway location, home of the Classic Stage Company. Souki's low-budget, minimalist interpretation is served well by the small but sufficient space, which saw another Columbia MFA student-directed Chekhov production, Three Sisters, by Pavol Liska at this time last year.

Souki drew his interpretation of Chekhov's masterpiece from the Paul Schmidt and David Mamet translations, reworking the text into palatable scenes of intense interaction between its feisty characters. The Cherry Orchard is less about the title object and the drama surrounding it than the way its characters react to them through their individual neuroses.

The story itself follows the financial woes of a family returning to its longtime ancestral estate, who find that they must sell the home and its magnificent orchard in order for the family itself to survive. In the process, they face their own personal demons concerning relationships, power, and the past that make parting with the land so complicated.

Calling the play "an invitation to look at the way our lives function," Souki said that "Chekhov's characters work as individuals, but every decision they make affects the whole world that surrounds them."

In his production, external elements like the landscape, including the cherry orchard itself, hardly appear in favor of the actors' immensely energetic performances. Throughout the show, the switching of one or two pieces of furniture and a digital display hanging from the ceiling are the only indications that the scene or setting has changed. Dramatic lighting and music and the actors' concentrated physical movements further draw attention to the way that the characters' inner concerns touch on larger issues.

Souki's use of multimedia is most striking at a core moment of the play, the sound of a breaking string. At the end of the first act, the characters sit in a line across the stage, watching a video of Columbia professor Arnold Aronson discuss the meaning of the breaking string, which sounds twice during the play and which he describes as "the moment we enter the modern era." Hearing the characters listen to an academic describe the play as it's being performed is as unusual a feeling as that of the breaking string itself; the point is, in both cases, that we can't explain its significance. The placement of this situation, right before intermission, makes for a remarkably fluid transition as we leave the world of the play for a fifteen-minute return to our own realities.

Just as Souki changes the way we experience a major part of the play, The Cherry Orchard itself comes off quite effectively as a portrait of the way we experience change. The importance of family property changes with the generations; family members are forced to seek changes in occupation and location; and power structures are reversed over time.

Souki prompts his cast to channel their reactions to these changes into highly personal representations. Each individual's responses remain memorable yet never lose the feel of being part of an ensemble, providing a sense of how change affects a broader sphere of people. Even the frequent nudity works: instead of seeming gratuitous, as such an effect often does, it reveals (in more ways than one) the characters' essential features and conveys their understanding of human relationships.

As such, Souki's production is a worthwhile venture for those afraid of change in the theater. While emphasizing elements of the play that make it a classic that can be revived again and again in various forms, Souki offers a modern sensibility that clarifies, rather than obscures, the human experience as Chekhov saw it.