Previews & Abridged Reviews

 

 

The Press Release 

AMERICAN PREMIERE OF “A WINTER PEOPLE” AT THE THEATRE@BOSTON COURT FEATURES ASIAN CAST

 

PASADENA, Calif., July 30, 2004 – Chay Yew’s “A Winter People,” currently in rehearsals at Boston Court, features an Asian cast and is directed by the author, an internationally renowned playwright at the forefront of American Theatre.  “A Winter People,” the third play in The Theatre@Boston Court’s 2004 season, begins previews Aug. 5 and opens Aug. 14 in the state-of-the-art, 99-seat main stage.

“A Winter People,” a brilliant adaptation of “The Cherry Orchard,” is sexy, lyrical, and longing, and cleverly folds in pieces of Anton Chekhov's other masterworks to tell this ever-timely story.  A middle-aged chanteuse, Madam Xia, returns from San Francisco in the spring of 1935 to her family estate in the heartland of China during the last days of the Nationalist Government.  A portrait of the challenges of a family in transition, “A Winter People” is a poetic, haunting play.

The cast includes: Emily Kuroda, a regular on the WB’s “The Gilmore Girls” and frequently seen in Yew’s plays, including the recently staged “M Butterfly” at East West Players; Melody Butiu, who was recently nominated for her role in “The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” at South Coast Rep; Teddy Chen Culver and Dennis Dun, both acclaimed in East West’s “Masha No Home;” Lydia Look, who won acclaim for her role in Yew’s “Red;” Ken Narasaki, a prominent diversity activist currently in production on the feature film, “Only the Brave;” Elizabeth Pan, who toured the country for the past year in her one-woman show, “Faces of America;” Jeanne Sakata, recently on stage in The Theatre@ Boston Court’s “Summertime;” Greg Watanabe, a regular cast member of UPN’s “Off Limits;” and Ryan Yu, who will appear in the fall production of “Take Me Out” at the Geffen Playhouse.

The play is produced by Eileen T’Kaye, producing director for The Theatre@Boston Court, and Michael Seel, managing director.  Paula Mitchell Manning is associate producer, scenic design is by Yevgenia Nayberg, costume design by Dori Quan, lighting design by Jose Lopez, music composition by Nathan Wang, and sound design by John Zalewski.

“A Winter People,” which was given a critically acclaimed Singapore premiere in 2002 under the title of “The Morning People,” has since been retitled and reworked for this American premiere.  Yew is both a playwright and director whose original works include “Red” and the “Whitelands Trilogy” (“Porcelain,” “A Language of Their Own,” and  “Wonderland”); his adaptations include the Mark Taper Forum's recent “House of Bernarda Alba.”  Yew, who directs around the country and internationally, is currently the director of The Asian Workshop at the Taper.

“A Winter People” has been lauded by the European Cultural Review as “…an exquisite example of how the classics can be radically adapted and yet sound as if written by the original author (Chekhov)…” This year marks the 100th anniversary of “The Cherry Orchard” and Chekhov’s death.

“A Winter People” runs for six weeks of performances, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. through September 19. Tickets are available for $30 ($25 senior and student) and can be purchased online at www.bostoncourt.com or by calling (626) 683-6883.  

The Theatre@Boston Court season concludes with the October 23 world premiere of “Light” by Jean-Claude van Itallie.  The Theatre@Boston Court is the non-profit company that programs the 99-seat theatre in the Boston Court performing arts complex at 70 North Mentor Ave. (at Boston Court).  Z. Clark Branson is the developer of the complex and executive director of The Theatre@Boston Court.

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For reservations to Press Night (Opening Night, Aug. 14), contact sandy@aldrichpr.com

Opening night party will be catered by the Japon Bistro:  www.japonbistro.com

 

 

Theatre at Boston Court 70 North Mentor Ave Pasadena, CA 91106 Tickets: 626-683-6883 Price $30.00 $25.00 seniors/student > check for discounts

 

A Winter People Schedule: Thursday 8:00pm / Friday 8:00pm / Saturday 8:00pm / Sunday 3:00pm Opening Date: August 14, 2004 Previews Start: August 5, 2004 Closing Date: September 19, 2004

 

A Winter People A Winter People, Chay Yew's adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, is sexy, lyrical, and longing, cleverly folding the pieces of Anton Chekhov's other masterworks to tell this ever-timely story. A middle-aged chanteuse, Madam Chia, returns from San Francisco in the spring of 1935 to her family estate in the heartland of China during the last days of the Nationalist Government. Amid dangerous flirtations and yearnings for people and lives of which they cannot keep hold, Chia and her daughters - Mei, who has lived her entire life managing the estate, Swee, who longs for escape from her marriage, and Liang, who finds solace in the ideology of Communism - confront the loss of their home, family and way of life. A portrait of the challenges of a family in transition, A Winter People is a poetic, haunting play. A Winter People

 

 

Theatre@Boston Court

 

A WINTER PEOPLE Embroidered with the conversational cruelties and banal ruminations of the waiting classes, Chay Yew’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard moves Chekhov’s play to China and 30 years forward. The update is a clean fit, and, as this production’s director, Yew has assembled a visually elegant panorama of brittle misery. Emily Kuroda’s Xia is exasperatingly clueless as the family matriarch who squandered her family’s money on a five-year burlesque-show stint in San Francisco, while Elizabeth Pan turns in a heartbreaking performance as the sacrificial daughter, Wu. Theater@ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru Sept. 19. (626) 683-6883. See Theater feature next week. Written 08/19/2004 (Steven Mikulan)

 

 

 

CULTURAL EXCHANGE: New plays finds Chekhov in China

By Martin S. Gonzalez

 

The spirit of Anton Chekhov will be felt at the Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena with the opening night of “A Winter People,” written and directed by Chay Yew. The play, which premiered in Singapore under the name “The Morning People,” features an Asian-American cast and is an adaptation of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” with characters and scenes from Chekhov’s other masterworks folded in.

 

“Adding bits and pieces from Chekhov’s other works really made the play more full.” Said Emily Kuroda, who plays the middle-aged chanteuse Madam Xia in the play. Kuroda, who has a recurring role on the WB television show “The Gilmore Girls,” has worked on various productions with Yew over the past decade.

 

Yew, whose original work includes “Red” and the acclaimed play “Whitelands Trilogy,” was asked to adapt “The Cherry Orchard” by a Singapore theatre company. Yew, who is also the director of the Asian Workshop at the taper in Los Angeles, admitted that he was reluctant at first to take on the adaptation.

 

“As with all of the classics, you get a sense that it’s been done,” Yew said, “there’s no need to do it again. But what I saw as I started adapting the play was an opportunity to allow Asian actors to really own these roles. Asian actors just don’t get many opportunities to perform in these roles.”

 

Yew changed the setting of the play from Russia to the heartland of China during the last days of the Nationalist Government, as Madame Xia returns from San Francisco in the spring of 1935 to her family’s estate. What emerges is a haunting portrayal of a family in transition.

 

“A theme you see over and over in Chekhov’s work is the theme of transition, of change, so setting the play in 1935 of the eve of change before communist takeover seemed natural,” Yew said. “Anyone who is familiar with “The Cherry Orchard” will recognize the play. I was very faithful to the play, and viewed it simply from a Chinese point of view.”

 

“Preparing for the play was difficult,” said Kuroda. “Chekhov is all subtext, and very naturalistic. It’s a character I don’t think I have ever done before. It has been a real process of discovery.”

 

Kuroda, along with many of the other actors in the play, have worked with Yew on a number of productions going back more than a decade, so a familial environment pervaded rehearsals.

 

“I really like working with a group of actors that I’ve worked with before. Especially with this play based on Chekhov, there’s not really a plot in the beginning, so what you need to see if for the relationships to be real, to believe that these are neighbors and family members and that they love and hate each other. This is more difficult to achieve with new actors. I not only know what the limits of my actors are, I know how much I can push them,” Yew said.

 

 

ACCESSIBLY LIVE OFF-LINE
(Vol. 9-No. 33-Week of August 16th, 2004)  

 

The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena presents the American premier of Chay Yew's A WINTER PEOPLE, a unique adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard about a one-time prestigious clan and their selling of the family estate and orchard, along with their state of being though the liquidation.

This time, the story moves from 19th century Russia to the province of Shaanxi in China c.1935. Emily Kuroda plays Xia, the owner of the estate. Within his family is his three daughters; Wu (Elizabeth Pan) the eldest, Ming (Lydia Look) the one in the middle, and the youngest Liang (Melody Butui). The sale of the estate would bring the family to be torn apart. Within the Republic of China, the political scene is changing from a National Government to the sense and ideology of Communism that will eventually take over the nation. All elements take forth as the family copes within their own state of being, and the new look with this country.

This adaptation of Chekhov's classic play works quite well in moving the storyline from Russia to China. Both nations were undergoing similar changes within their landscape during their time periods. The story of a family undergoing transition works works well within the same guidelines and offers the same emotional level as well. Yevgenia Nayberg's set design suggests that the estate is large, but is never seen. Only the trunks of cherry trees are placed around the stage area. Little usage of props or scenes brings the notion of a simple yet effective setting.

In addition to the above noted cast is Ken Narasaki as Han, brother of Xia, Dennis Dun as Zhou, Wu's husband, Greg Watanabe as Liao, Ryun Yu as Wei, Jeanne Sakata, and Teddy Chen Culver.

Directed by the playwright, A WINTER PEOPLE is a fine production that take a familiar work and places it into a new setting that makes a classic artistic work as fresh and moving as indented. This production at the Boston Court is definitely worth a look!

A WINTER PEOPLE performs at the Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 North Mentor Avenue (at Boston Court), Pasadena, until September 19th. Showtimes are Thursday, Friday, and Saturdays @ 8:00 PM, and Sunday afternoons @ 3:00 PM. Reservations and information, call (626) 683-6883. Visit the web site at http://www.bostoncourt.com

 

 

CENTER STAGE

Review on “A Winter People”

 

Western and Eastern ideologies and playwriting converge in a “A Winter’s People.” Director and writer, Chay Yew, presents this brilliant adaptation of Anton Chekov’s the “Cherry Orchard,” which is about the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the peasant class in Russia just before the USSR takeover in 1917. Many of the lines are almost verbatim to Chekov’s version, but Chay’s version seems even more thought provoking with its modern themes, and it differs just enough to make it original and a must see.

 

Set in nineteen thirties China in a not-so-well know province named Shannxi, a family is transformed by the poor decisions and ambivalence of a brother and sister team. These two are in a constant state of denial about their declining status, and they refuse to acknowledge that it is the bad decisions and frivolous spending that put them there in the first place. Madam Xia, the anti-heroine of the play, returns from San Francisco only to find that her family’s estate will soon be lost. There are several lines throughout the play which indirectly poke fun at American misconceptions about Chinese culture—such as the fortune cookie came from China—, which makes the play quite ironic at times considering that many of the characters are dying to go to the States. Although the acting can be over dramatic at times, it poignantly conveys a range of emotions with display how the characters deal with their drastically changing futures. Relationships are also examined when Madam Xia marries an American musician, one of her daughters commits adultery with a servant, and another daughter is encouraged to marry an ex-peasant who is now a member of the nouve riche.

 

The lighting, which is often used on a backdrop, is something worth mentioning. It beautifully conveys the passing time and a variety of moods in this changing world that’s gone awry. The stage is covered with Ying Faw trees—a Japanese cherry tree—that move around the stage, and at times with the characters symbolically hugging them. There is some singing and Chinese music, but not enough to disrupt the overall critical and social tone of the play.

 

A Winter People is playing at the Boston Court Theater in Pasadena thru September 19^th.

 

For Center Stage, this is Jenell Rae

 

 

 

 

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY

reviewed by

Travis Michael Holder

 

There are many clever revisions of Anton Chekhov timeless plays arriving all the time, from the oddly forgotten Notebook of Trigorin, Tennessee Williams’ “free adaptation” of The Seagull, to David Mamet’s quirky reworking of The Three Sisters, which debuted a decade ago here in an impressive production which inaugurated Natalija Nogulich’s Grace Players. Now, from the fertile brain of L.A.’s own director/playwright Chay Yew comes the American premiere of his remarkable A Winter People at Theatre @ Boston Court, a lovely, beautifully realized updating of Chekhov’s greatest masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard.

 

Now set in the mountainous province of Shaanxi in the Republic of China in 1935 just as the Communist Revolution looms, Yew has gloriously brought a great classic into another era entirely—and rewritten it to parallel many of the changes our world is going through today. The final effort is too long, so just be prepared to squirm a bit, because I couldn’t imagine losing one single word, one urgently meaningful pregnant pause. Art can sometimes be a lot of work to appreciate and this experience is well worth the sit. Simply, it is Chay Yew at his most brilliant in all aspects.

 

Under Yew’s visionary direction, A Winter People is sumptuously produced, breathtakingly rendered on Yevgenia Nayberg’s starkly simple set, perfectly complimented by Nathan Wang’s original music, Dori Quan’s monochromatic period costuming and Jose Lopez’ creamy lighting, which often finds people bathed in concentrated squares reminiscent of the finest and most austere Asian art. The performance of Emily Kuroda as Madame Xia, the former Chinese stage chanteuse who can’t see the affordable housing for the trees, is a treasure. Kuroda finds so many layers to her character’s strengths and dysfunctions that her final moments, leaving the estate she cherishes more than everything else in her life she has already withstood losing, is heartbreaking. The ensemble cast marches behind their creator/director with trust and his obvious permission to take risks, beautifully energizing his conception. Lydia Look, Elizabeth Pan and Melody Butiu are particularly memorable as Xia’s three daughters (yes, Three, as in Sisters, and Yew pays crafty homage to Seagull and Uncle Vanya as well) and there is a stunningly bittersweet turn from Jeanne Sakata as Qing, the dottery, lovable old servant left behind when the family leaves for a new life.

 

The Cherry Orchard chronicled a people lost in the natural changeover from one way of life into another, a transition they consciously chose to ignore or blot from their lives because they couldn’t clearly envision a way to stop it. We as Americans seem to have become slaves to the thought that politics in our own time exists in such a quagmire of corruption that a man who stole the presidency right before our unbelieving eyes—and led our country into an immoral and unnecessary war—could even be considered to continue leading our country. So do the characters of A Winter People think that the world outside the bubble of their own daily lives is not a part of their existence and view it as out of their control. “Human rights,” a character observes, “lives only in talk.”

 

True art makes you think, which is why The Cherry Orchard is still so revered and why, in a perfect world, Chay Yew’s A Winter People will be equally enduring. It is a work which should provoke anyone with a conscience to leave the theater lost in thought. If only people would take a stand and not stick their heads in the sand, the world might be in our hands once again and change could be something we regulate ourselves and celebrate wholeheartedly, not just something from which to hide. For tickets, call (626) 683-6883.

 

"A Winter People " presented by and at Theatre@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. Aug. 14-Sept. 19. $25-30. (626) 683-6883.

 

 

 

A Winter People

Reviewed By Jennie Webb

 

Adapting the classics can be a tricky journey. In the case of A Winter People, playwright Chay Yew is clear about his impetus to travel down the road paved by Anton Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov's 1904 tale of misguided aristocracy and political idealists facing the end of an era is now transplanted to 1935 China. It's just before the fall of the Nationalist government and the rise of the Communist Party. What fabulous parallels, and room for Yew's distinctive signature! Here, the landowner returning home to the bankrupt estate is fading singer Madam Xia (Emily Kuroda), who has been living in San Francisco with her American lover. The changing times are embodied by the pragmatic Liao (Greg Wantanabe), a peasantturned–successful businessman, but more important by the young Wei (Ryun Yu), who espouses the ways of Chairman Mao, warning to the once-privileged family that "your way of life will be over."

 

Yew's choices--he also directs--beautifully underscore the political, focusing on the rumblings of social upheaval underneath the rich soil. Thanks in part to Yu's captivating performance--Melody Butiu is charming as Liang, Xi's youngest daughter, who falls for Wei's utopian speeches; it's here that A Winter People moves forward with force and precision. Add to that a sort of "Chekhov's greatest hits," by which Yew combines and even pulls in characters from other plays. We get some fitting reminders of class and cultural barriers, and pleas for the end of old ways: Elizabeth Pan plays Xi's unhappily married daughter Wu, who has bound feet, the "remnant of a dead country."

 

… the enormously gifted Kuroda is appealing… (and) …Jeanne Sakata's brilliant performance as the aging servant Qing. But with some nice lingering images on Yevgenia Nayberg's oddly barren set, isolated moments in which Yew's language floats above the action, and also in the touching relationship of Liao and Ming, Xi's caretaker middle daughter (a powerful and tender Lydia Look), Yew and Chekhov seem to be in step, with emotionally satisfying results.

 

 

Chekhov plays lend themselves to modernization — proof of their timeless appeal. … "A Winter People," writer-director Chay Yew's exotic updating of "The Cherry Orchard" at the Theatre @ Boston Court…(is) potentially inspired…

 

The play is set in 1935 China, when the Communists, led by Mao Tse-tung, are gaining in influence. The timing aptly parallels Chekhov's pre-revolutionary tale of languid aristocrats about to be buried by the tectonic forces of the Russian Revolution.

 

In this case, the owner of the imperiled orchard is Madame Xia (Emily Kuroda), a former singing star, now reduced to performing in San Francisco burlesque houses. Returning from a sojourn abroad, Xia faces the final dissolution of her estate, shortly to be sold at auction. Childlike profligates, Xia and her dilettante brother Han (Ken Narasaki) refuse to listen to the warnings of Liao (Greg Watanabe), a peasant turned millionaire who fruitlessly exhorts his aristocratic friends to take action…

 

-- F. Kathleen Foley

 

"A Winter People," Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 19. $30. (626) 683-6883. Running time: 3 hours.

 

 

 

 

AUG. 25 - SEPT. 2, 2004

 

Cold War

Chay Yew’s A Winter People face December

by Steven Mikulan

 

The cherry orchard is right over there. (Photo by Ed Kreiger)

 

One danger with setting a play in the past is that its author knows exactly where that past’s footsteps will lead. Armed with perfect hindsight, the story can be a history lesson or period piece, but never a prophecy. Adapting a classic is even riskier business since winking allusions to a known future can, depending on the acuity of their conversations, have the characters sounding either laughably naive or suspiciously prescient — and make the adapter look like a literary vandal. All of which renders Chay Yew’s new work, A Winter People, a bold gamble. Not only does he transplant Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard to China, he moves it forward in time from the Romanov calm-before-the-apocalypse to a period of war and revolution. What floated as metaphor in the stagnant air of Chekhovian chatter is sharpened to literal debate in Yew’s handsome, self-directed production at the Theater@Boston Court.

 

The story, set in 1935, begins with a matriarch’s homecoming: After a five-year absence from her ancestral estate, Madame Xia (Emily Kuroda) has returned to China. Despite the outward joviality that greets the proud Xia, it’s apparent that time has not been kind to her family’s fortunes. Xia had left China following the twin sorrows of her first husband’s death and the drowning of her only son. Although the cover story from abroad had been that Xia was performing concert recitals in San Francisco, the truth translated into demeaning gigs as an exotic warbler on burlesque stages — even as her new American husband ran off with another woman.

 

Because of Xia’s dreamy, free-spending generosity, the provincial estate and its once-famous groves of ying fa cherry trees now face public auction. A local businessman named Liao (Greg Watanabe) offers a solution: sell off tracts of the property to bidders willing to build “affordable-housing” subdivisions on the leveled orchards and the family’s 300-year-old home. Chekhov students who remember how poorly this idea resonated with Xia’s Russian counterpart, Madame Ranevskaya, may rest assured it fares no better with Xia.

 

Those Japanese cherry trees, which have blossomed in time for Xia’s April arrival, seem more important to her than the happiness of her three daughters, and it is their neglected misery that drives this narrative toward its December ending. Wu (Elizabeth Pan), the eldest, is the filial trio’s most oppressed; even though she was born after the forward-thinking Nationalist revolution that overthrew the Manchus, Xia had her grow up with bound feet as a sacrificial gesture to tradition — and to get Xia off the hook with her parents for marrying beneath her social status. Wu, who moves about in special shoes, is locked into a spiteful marriage with the older Zhou (Dennis Dun), a clownish figure much more attuned to the call of alcohol than work.

 

Ming (Lydia Look), the middle daughter, is still yearning for a husband who, by all reckoning, should be the cherry-orchard-busting Liao, except that he can never quite bring himself around to pop the question. The most optimistic daughter, Liang, is a teenager with a crush on Wei (Ryun Yu), a perpetual student who has cast a spell on her with his talk of revolution. As the auction draws nearer, the family malaise thickens and imprisons those around Xia, including her swishy brother, Han (Ken Narasaki), who proclaims himself “a closet communist,” and the insolent valet Shang (Teddy Chen Culver), who is carrying on a backdoor romance with Wu.

 

As in all Chekhovian villages, people here talk a lot but only become more of what they already are, while lamenting the people they might have been. Han lectures local waiters on French impressionism; Zhou ingratiates himself with anyone who has money; Liao pleads for Xia to sell her land to builders while he keeps Ming at arm’s length; Wei talks up Mao’s Long March and persuades Liang to join him on it, and the obsequious, aged servant, Qing (Jeanne Sakata), like Chekhov’s servant Firs, sleepwalks in and out of memories.

 

Chekhov’s plays prove the adage that misery loves company — and the more, the merrier. Yew certainly understands this and creates an environment that is expansive with nostalgia and longing, but also claustrophobic with diminishing possibilities. His production’s look, designed by Yevgenia Nayberg and lit by José López, might be called grandly austere: a few stylized ying fa poles that are moved to suit scene changes, a cyclorama given to displaying silhouettes against sweeping palettes of yellow or red, and some perfunctory furnishings placed on a hardwood floor. Dori Quan’s robes and gowns similarly convey a terse elegance. More important, Yew overlays the action (or lack of it) with the painful waiting games and casual verbal cruelties that Chekhov characters must endure and inflict. Several actors rise to the occasion. Kuroda’s Xia, part Imelda Marcos, part Norma Desmond, is dottily vexing and strangely sympathetic — “Why do we eat so much, drink so much, talk so much?” she asks, and we don’t know whether to slap her or pat her on the head. Sakata’s old Qing, with her snowy mane and unnerving voice, is a melancholy apparition who seems to have limped out of a Lu Hsun short story. Elizabeth Pan, however, leaves the biggest impression as the frustrated Wu. I cannot remember anything in the theater as heartbreaking as her defeated gaze when she learns at play’s end that not only is she to be abandoned once more by her mother, but also by her servant-lover. In those fading moments Pan’s eyes are pieces of glistening obsidian and her wounded silence becomes unbearable.

 

…A WINTER PEOPLE | Adapted from Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard by CHAY YEW | At the THEATER@BOSTON COURT, 70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena | (626) 683-6883 | Runs through September 19

 

 

 

 

by Frances Baum Nicholson

My mother and I have an ongoing argument about Anton Chekhov. I love his grimly sardonic views of the increasingly pointless Russian aristocracy of his era. My mother finds his plays pointlessly depressing. Still, for anyone trying to understand the reasons for the Russian Revolution, or the general disenfranchisement of European aristocracy, the stupidly idle lives of Chekhov's characters can be a window on truth.

Which makes the new production at Pasadena's The Theatre at Boston Court particularly fascinating. "A Winter People" by Chay Yew, who also directs, is an indirect adaptation of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," reset in 1930s China. China at that time was wallowing in a corrupt republic, fighting off the Japanese, and in the midst of the Long March which would provide foundation for the Communist revolution. In all that upheaval, it is easy to see how traditional nobility would feel all at sea, even as they were made as irrelevant as their old Russian counterparts.

The best of this adaptation is the clarity with which this similarity is explored. The down side of not making it quite so literal an adaptation is all of the extra goodies which begin to belabor the point. Yew, unwilling to directly translate, has added elements from other Chekhov plays: three sisters instead of two, for example, and other extra characters. Since we have to know all their stories and reactions, it gets very, very long. Put that together with an ending involving enough meaningful glances to be reminiscent of the last "Lord of the Rings" movie, and the audience is more likely to remember the length than the superb performances or the fascinating interplay of the major characters.

And it is fascinating stuff, supremely well acted. Madame Xia, daughter of an ancient and aristocratic family and once a celebrated singing star, has come home from a disastrous attempt to shift her fame to the United States. She wants to spend her declining years on her family estate -- one known for its evident but nonproductive beauty. The problem is she has spent the place's assets, and despite her dutiful daughter's best efforts the place is about to be sold at auction. Still, she spends, and refuses practical solutions which will fool with the beauty of the place but keep her solvent. In the end, she loses everything to a wealthy peasant.

In the process of this, one is presented with the sheer pointlessness of an aristocracy who revel in their own impracticality: Xia's brother who still needs a servant to help him dress, Xia's eldest daughter whose bitterness over her traditional marriage and traditional bound feet is balanced by impractical dreams of becoming as famous as her mother, the perpetual student and tutor who fills Xia's youngest daughter with dreams of revolution then hasn't the guts to do anything about his convictions.

All these and more are given remarkably clear, deeply ethnic but totally unstereotypic portrayals by a fine cast.

Emily Kuroda gives Xia herself the combination of charm and oversimplicity which seals her doom. Jeanne Sakata, as the ancient servant who is caught in the middle by the changes of her world, moves the plot and the characters forward by sheer energy. Ken Narasaki makes Xia's brother the man-boy he truly is.

Elizabeth Pan, Lydia Look and Melody Butiu, as Xia's three daughters, create memorable characters: one, Wu, a dreamer crippled by tradition, one, Ming, practical, overlooked and terribly needy, one, Liang, filled with youthful exuberance and the whiff of revolution. Dennis Dun is perfect as Wu's completely ineffectual but earnest husband.

Greg Watanabe, as the peasant become millionaire, captures both the generosity and the bitterness of such a rise. Ryun Yu gives the student/tutor a self-consciously wild look, and a pat way of delivery which telegraphs his weakness. Teddy Chen Culver rounds out the cast, playing Xia's Americanized valet who cannot wait to get out of what he sees as an impossible backwater.

Despite his overlarge script, Yew's direction is like a carefully drawn screen, on Yevgenia Nayberg's wonderfully simple set made up mostly of cherry tree trunks which can be manipulated around the spare stage. It is lovely to look at, and leaves one free to concentrate on the word images each character paints.

Essentially, "A Winter People" is a slow, beautiful piece of art. In its message about the need for change and the pointlessness of living in an impossible past, the story is timeless. Yes, this adaptation has problems, but it still becomes thrilling to see someone take Chekhovian ideas and prove once again how universal they really are. Between that and the sheer pleasure of a collection of fine performances this good, I'd call it one to watch, if you have about three hours to set aside.

What: "A Winter People"  When: Through September 19, 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays  Where: The Theatre at Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor Ave (at Boston Court) in Pasadena  How Much: $30 general, senior, student and group discounts available  Info: (626) 683-6883