Igor Golyak's 'Delirium' and Simon Stone's 'The Cherry Orchard' Reinterpret Ionesco and Chekhov

In Igor Golyak's 'Delirium,' a reworking of Eugène Ionesco's 1962 play 'Frenzy for Two, or More,' the director opens with a man crushed under a door, then rescues a woman from mattresses. Golyak, trained in Moscow and founder of Arlekin in Needham, Massachusetts, has aggressively edited the surreal post-WWII farce, adding industrial scaffolding, a floating orange fish, and Vegas-style costumes. He also incorporates a fairy tale Ionesco wrote for his daughter, staged with soap bubbles. The core remains a couple ignoring a public war for a private one. Performers Chulpan Khamatova, a Russian star who fled Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and Andrey Burkovskiy, a celebrated figure skater and actor, bring Chaplin-esque magnetism. Golyak's Substack describes Ionesco's scenario as a 'shell' emptied of meaning. In contrast, Simon Stone's renovation of Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard,' performed in Korean with English subtitles and set in modern Seoul, follows the wealthy Song family whose corporation faces collapse. Saul Kim's set features a modernist mansion with a cascading staircase. The cast includes Son Sang-kyu and Moon Choi, with Jeon Do-yeon as the matriarch. Stone's production emphasizes laughs but feels emotionally light, reducing Chekhov's subtle power dynamics to a soapy romp reminiscent of 'Succession' or 'Parasite' without their wit or pungency.