There’s a moment in Sam Mendes’ new production of “The Cherry Orchard” in which the pompous young manservant Yasha (Josh Hamilton) and his adoring lover Dunyasha (Charlotte Parry) are alone in a field, kissing. Yasha says he doesn’t like girls who are too forward. “…[A] girl must know her place,” he says. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a girl who doesn’t know how to behave herself.” Dunyasha, seemingly oblivious to Yasha’s statement, begins to unbutton Yasha’s pants as he smokes his cigar. “I’m terribly in love with you,” she says. “You’re educated. You know what to think about everything.” “True, true,” replies Yasha, immodestly. Yasha’s pants are now around his hips and Dunyasha is on her knees, apparently on the verge of fellating him. Smoke rises from Yasha’s cigar. “There’s nothing like a cigar in the fresh air,” he says.

The combination of this blocking with the relish evident in Yasha’s delivery is funny, and it’s exemplary of Mendes’ ability to find and create humor in unexpected moments. The production is full of instances like this, in which Mendes accentuates Chekhov’s dialogue by either having actors engage in attention-grabbing behavior or by making emphatic use of the show’s beautiful high-tech set.

However, as clever and inventive as Mendes’ direction proves to be, the audience’s emotional connection to the show is sometimes diminished by the director’s too heavy hand.

In 1904, Chekhov famously admonished Stanislavsky for directing his final work as if it were a political drama, not, as the author specified in the play’s subtitle, “A Comedy in Four Acts.” Perhaps because of Chekhov’s criticisms, the great director reportedly lost some faith in his production of “The Cherry Orchard,” and resorted to fabricating fanfare by opening the play on Chekhov’s 44th birthday and using the event to celebrate the famed author’s career (Chekhov himself skipped opening night, until he was sent a note during intermission begging him to come.)

Unlike Stanislavsky, Mendes does not seem to have lost faith in his own production, but one wonders if he has enough faith in the power of Chekhov’s words. Something is lost in Mendes’ reliance on the bright white lights that surround the stage, used to represent the cherry blossoms of Liubov Ranevskaya’s (Sinead Cusack) childhood memories. Solemn music plays as Liubov delivers her nostalgic monologue, but watching her feels something like watching a mourner at a stranger’s funeral; it’s clear that she’s sad, and the reason for her tears is obvious enough, but one cannot share in her pain.

Similarly, in Act Three, the peasant-turned-businessman Lopakhin (the otherwise excellent Simon Russell Beale) flies into a rage after boasting that he’s the new owner of the cherry orchard. He runs around the ballroom and slams chairs to the ground, ostensibly expressing his mixed emotions over having to buy the cherry orchard out from under his beloved Liubov. But his tantrum seems unearned and in contrast to what is specified in the play’s text. The excessive action serves to obscure rather than elucidate the nuances of Lopakhin’s emotional state.There are, however, aspects of this show that Chekhov would have cheered. The cast is generally spectacular. The deafness and rigidity of ancient butler Firs (Richard Easton) is played with a wonderful buoyancy, the pompous ineffectuality of Gaev (Paul Jesson) is a source of great humor and Beale’s mensch-like Lopakhin carries the show. The play’s first act moves by swiftly and with great humor. But in the second half, the drama melts into melodrama, and no amount of stagecraft or striking images can make up for the absence of the subtle, repeated realization of how poignant these characters’ lives are.

Eric Rosenblum’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Guernica Magazine, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader. He currently teaches writing and English at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.