Back in 1976 as part of his longer work Dogg’s Hamlet, Tom Stoppard wrote the “15-MInute Hamlet”, which includes the best known scenes of Hamlet performed at a quick clip. The cast then does it all over again, this time at the breakneck speed of two minutes. The most famous of tragedies is reduced to ridiculous farce. That is rather like the experience of Laura Wickens’s adaptation and consolidation of Anton Chekhov’s Platonov (an early and unfinished work that apparently clocks in at 5 hours) currently being presented by Blessed Unrest at the New Ohio Theatre.

I do not know the original work, but it seems to intersect with many of the plot points, characters, and themes from Chekhov’s better-known Cherry Orchard and shares some of the fervor of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night. Director Jessica Burr has updated the design elements. If there is modern dress Shakespeare, why not modern dress Chekhov?

As a performance, there is much skill in evidence. A cast of six must serve as the population of an entire Russia villa. Since the roles they play often require them jump between genders, ages, and classes, they must demonstrate an adroit dexterity because there are times when one of their characters must then introduce the other one of the characters. The cast is energetic and game. Taylor Valentine, who plays the melancholic doctor and an aging housekeeper, appears to have a skeleton made more out of rubber than of bone as he bounces between roles, costumes, moods, and the occasional interspersion of modern dance.

This energy is quite entertaining in moments, but it does not add up too much. What we are given is the CliffNotes version of the play, moving with all haste from Chekhovian trope to Chekhovian trope. But none of it lands emotionally as we have no time to linger. Platonov (Darrell Stokes playing the role as reptilian yuppie) is the object of infatuation by several of the female characters, but we are never given a sense of the why because we are rushing far too fast from point a to point b to point c… and so on. And as the play moves to its darker conclusion fueled by the realization that Platonov is morally despicable, well, that too does not register. The audience never had the chance to experience Platonov’s allure so it cannot feel disappointment when he finally falls. Similarly, it is hard to feel for Anna (Irina Abraham) when her estate is auctioned to the outlaw Osip (Becca Schneider); it would have been wonderful to have gotten to know Osip more because he is quite the unique character in the Chekhov canon. In Stoppard this was fine because his exercise was tied to a larger work and because it intentionally satirizes a play that is achingly familiar. Platonov is not widely known, so what we are left with is Chekhov the Ride.

There is something in Platonov that speaks to the current moment of the #metoo movement – his manipulation and disposal of both his student Mariya (a sympathetic Javon Q. Minter) and his wife (Ashley N. Hildreth, long-suffering) – and could have been the focus of the adaption. I wish the adaptation had not been so literal – i.e. trying to cram everything into 90 minutes – but rather if it had pushed for a more nuanced innovation of its own, one that perhaps just carved out the relationship between Platonov, his student, and his wife. In that way, it could have been more true to Chekhov’s spirit (deeper exploration of the conflicts within characters) and spoken with greater authority to the world of its audience. As it is, though, it is just a bunch of stuff happening.