The Oscar-nominated actress stars with David Strathairn in ‘The Cherry Orchard.’

Stands With a Fist is now a Russian aristocrat. Mary McDonnell first rose to fame playing the Anglo-raised-by-Indians character inDances With Wolves, the 1990 film that earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. This month, McDonnell takes the stage at Malvern’s People’s Light & Theatre Company as another strong-willed woman with a unique name: Lubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya, the lead in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

The production runs Feb. 11 to March 8 and also features fellow Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominee David Strathairn, who starred in Good Night & Good Luck and co-starred in Lincoln, The Bourne Legacy and a host of other films and TV shows. This is the second time McDonnell and Strathairn have worked together. The first was in the 1992 film,Passion Fish, which netted McDonnell two more Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.

For the past seven years, McDonnell has played Los Angeles police Capt. Sharon Raydor—first on TV’s The Closer, then in her own show, Major Crimes. The latter is one of the most watched cable series of all time.

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The first image of Mary in costumed surfaced the web. She’s so beautiful! Enjoy it in our gallery.

Today I updated the gallery with 78 screencaptures image of Mary’s appereance for Killer Hair. The movie is nice to watch, but Mary’s part is too short for my tastes. I’m confident to the sequel. Her part is something around 40 seconds? 60, to be really nice, and the quality isn’t bluray but it’s the only one I found. Enjoy!

SO, A COUPLE of Academy Award nominees are teaming up to do Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” Big deal, right? You can’t swing a rolled-up Playbill in New York’s theater district without hitting some big-time movie or TV star taking a huge pay cut to hit the boards. (Paging Bradley “Elephant Man” Cooper!)

But when David Strathairn (nominated for “Good Night, and Good Luck”) and Mary McDonnell (“Dances With Wolves,” “Passion Fish”) hit the stage Feb. 11, they will be, according to Mapquest, exactly 114.72 miles southwest of Times Square, at People’s Light & Theatre Company, in Malvern.

That two such august performers agreed to spend most of the winter in Chester County is the result of stars (figuratively and literally) aligning, as well as patience, luck and timing.

There were “so many wonderful routes and pathways that kind of led to the alchemy of all this happening now,” offered Zak Berkman, PLTC’s producing director, who jokingly described himself as the project’s “midwife.”

Berkman and Abigail Adams, the company’s artistic director and CEO (she is also directing “The Cherry Orchard”), emphasized that their casting of the two top-shelf actors was not a publicity stunt.

“Getting well-known people would be irrelevant to us,” insisted Adams. “It’s these particular people that are really important. And that’s true of any guests we have here. We always hope it will be the beginning of a long-term relationship, and that their values are shared with our values.”

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I’ve added to the gallery one of the movie projects of Mary (my least favourite!): Scre4m. Now I’ve never been a fan to the saga and I would have preferred her not to get involved into this, but still she left her amazing performance and made it more pleasant for me to watch. I’m still a little bit pissed she had to die again in another movie but ended sooner my pain! Enjoy the HD screencaptures from bluray disc and I added to the archive also what happened to be a deleted scene of her (because 3 were too many for the movie, they had to cut one!) in the aftermath of Olivia’s death.

Finally the season finale stills came out, just a bit after it ended. LOL
I’ve updated the gallery with 2 behind the scenes HQ image from episode 3×19 and 9 HQ stills from both the two episodes of the season finale. Enjoy!

People’s Light continues its 40th Anniversary Season with The Cherry Orchard. Academy Award nominees Mary McDonnell and David Strathairn join People’s Light company artists in Emily Mann’s acclaimed adaptation of Chekhov’s masterwork directed by Abigail Adams. People’s Light is located at 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, PA 19355. For tickets, call 610.644.3500 or visit Peopleslight.org.

Playwright Anton Chekhov, one of Russia’s most important literary figures, is best known for his short stories and plays, including The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters. The Cherry Orchard is the most performed Russian play in the world and, written in 1904, it was Chekhov’s last play. It is the story of Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya (Mary McDonnell) and her brother Gayev (David Strathairn) who return home to their ancestral estate just as it’s about to be auctioned to pay a delinquent mortgage. Lopakhin (Pete Pryor), an emancipated serf-turned-merchant, tries to convince Ranevskaya to cut down her family’s beloved cherry orchard and build rental villas, but she will not surrender the symbols of her past, be they beautiful or haunting. Instead, she throws a party for her family and friends and awaits a miracle.

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