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The Cherry Orchard
English Touring Theatre / reviewed at the Greenwich Theatre Spring 2000

This crisp, clean production of the Chekhov classic is never very emotionally involving, but also avoids the turgidness and messy melodrama that the play sometimes falls into.

For those who have trouble telling their Chekhovs apart, this is the one about the fading aristocratic family who dither hopelessly while their estate is sold out from under them, and the former peasant, now a rich merchant, who buys it.

On one level, then, it is an allegory of what was going on in Russia a century ago, the displacement of one social class by another. And director Stephen Unwin has taken that subtext as the key to the characterizations and drama.

Prunella Scales plays Ranevskaya as one who has been an aristocrat all her life, even in poverty, and who cannot see life except from that perspective. Even when talking about her disastrous love affair or the pain of her child's death, she is ever correct and elegant. And when the former peasant announces his purchase of the estate it is that fact - that it is HE who has bought it, not just that it has been sold - that cracks her facade and leads to bitter tears.

Michael Feast's Lopakhin is very much the workaholic businessman, bemusedly delighted by the fact of his rapid economic rise, but mainly defined by a no-nonsense practicality and energy that make him unable to sit still when he senses work waiting to be done.

Only in the scene when he announces his purchase, when drunkenness frees his inhibitions, do we get a glimpse of the class anger that must have driven him and the gloating delight in his triumph.

The essentially one-note characterizations, as powerful as they are at their best moments, come at a price. Neither of the leads comes alive as a rounded human being except in momentary flashes, and most of the rest of the cast remain ciphers.

Curiously, the flattening helps the portrayal of some of the peripheral characters. Both Simon Scardifield, as the uppity valet, and Amelda Brown, as the governess, give their small roles more believable individuality than I've seen before.

The new translation by Stephen Mulrine is one of the stars of this production. By far the best I've encountered, it puts the play into smooth and natural colloquial English without lapsing into anachronisms or cultural clashes.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - The Cherry Orchard - Greenwich 2000