The Cherry Orchard Comes to The Stables
ELIZABETH ALLEN
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard may be one of theatre’s better known dramas, but there has always been dispute over what kind of play it is and how it should be directed. Before its first performance in 1904, dramatist and director were at odds. “A comedy,” said Chekhov. “A serious drama of Russian life,” said Stanislavsky. “In places almost a farce,” insisted Chekhov.
So what will the audience at the Stables be seeing when The Cherry Orchard runs from 12 to 20 April?
Director Frances Viner wants to emphasise: “This is a wonderful company, a terrific ensemble.” An ensemble production means an openness, a willingness to take risks. It means participation, working collaboratively, with the director there to give it shape.
Traditional productions of Chekhov have often been set in rooms heavy with furniture where a table with a steaming samovar has a starring role. In this production, while actors are in period costumes, sofas and samovar play no part. As in Frances Viner’s recent Stables production of Macbeth, the actors are constantly on stage, and chairs and seating rearrangements play a lively role in the overall effect.
Although the production gives space to the playfulness which Chekhov considered an essential element, there is full recognition of the subtle construction of the characters and the compassion that, despite their delusions and dottiness, they generate. Rachel McCarron, playing Madam Ranevskaya, is delighted with the complexity of her character: “A strong woman coping in her own way with the trauma of the loss of her child and the challenges of a changing world.”
While it is not unusual in producing plays from the classical repertoire to amend the text in order to point to contemporary relevance, with The Cherry Orchard no such changes are needed. As the debt-ridden estate must be sold, Lopakhin, the peasant boy grown into a successful entrepreneur, advises that it be divided into plots and leased to the new social phenomenon of ‘summer residents’ and we hear the resonance of AirBnB. Madam Ranevskaya and the others mourn the loss of the blossoming white orchard, and we hear not only their nostalgia for a lost, privileged way of life, but also grief for the death of natural beauty confronted with the demands of ‘development’ and profit. The play is firmly of its time, but also firmly resonates with ours.
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