TheatreguideLondon
www.theatreguidelondon.co.uk
The TheatreguideLondon Review
The Cherry Orchard
Olivier Theatre Summer 2011
Howard Davies' Cherry Orchard, in a new adaptation from Chekhov by Andrew Upton, is one of these.
This is the one about the aristocratic family who just can't get their heads around the fact that they are deeply in debt and about to lose their estate, and the former peasant and fledgling capitalist who surprises himself as much as everyone else by buying it.
There is, of course, an unstrained allegory here, of the monumental changes taking place in Russia a little over a century ago, as a feudal society belatedly gave way to what would be a brief flourish of capitalism.
It is that theme that adaptor Andrew Upton has chosen to stress, without warping the play, but just by expanding on some of Chekhov's more political and philosophical speeches, notably the eternal student Trofimov's utopian hopes.
Director Davies and designer Bunny Christie pick up on this by reminding us through the unobtrusive presence of a telephone and electricity that this is a twentieth-century play looking forward to change and not a comfortable nineteenth-century period piece.
It may be this same shift in perspective that led the always admirable Conleth Hill toward playing the new capitalist Lopakhin as somewhat richer and more established in his bourgeois status than those who have seen the play before might expect. Though this Lopakhin keeps reminding us of his humble roots, he wears his three-piece suit with ease, letting us understand that the changes have happened and he is the man of the future.
But this innovative characterisation comes at a cost. One of the play's key moments - when Lopakhin returns from the bankruptcy auction to announce with astonishment that he bought the estate on which his father had been a serf - doesn't quite work, because for this man it would be simply another business transaction, not a moment loaded with symbolic weight.
Zoë Wanamaker also makes a brave interpretive choice as Ranyevskaya, the lady of the house. The play is built on her refusal or inability to do anything about the impending loss of everything, and it is up to the actress to explain the character's blindness or foolishness or pigheadedness or whatever.
Wanamaker makes her more intelligent and self-aware than I've ever seen, as if to say that even those qualities cannot save her from the stasis and impotence of her class.
It's a brave choice, sacrificing easy sympathy or comedy, and, like Conleth Hill's characterisation, it nicely serves the play's historical-philosophical vision. But like Hill's, it also takes away some of the humanity of the character - never going so far as to reduce either of them to mere symbols, but giving us just a little bit less to relate to or feel for.
The other members of the cast are all adequate without leaving any particular impression, another indication that the director is more attuned to the play's ideas than its people. And that, ultimately, is what makes this a solid, unobjectionable, frequently quite intelligent but never particularly involving production.
Gerald Berkowitz
Return to TheatreguideLondon home page.
Review - Cherry Orchard - National Theatre 2011
