Vodka and Gun Shots: Cate Blanchett in The Present

When you’re going to see Cate Blanchett play Chekhov, you probably don’t expect to see her pour a bottle of vodka over her head and gyrate strenuously to the 1990s dance hit “What Is Love.” But that is what happens during the fraught second act of The Present, a hard-edged, often crude adaptation of Chekhov’s early play Platonov by Blanchett’s husband Andrew Upton that first played down in Sydney and has now moved to Broadway.
Platonov was never performed duri