Cherry Orchard

Written byAnton Chekov (1904) adapted by Andrew Upton

Sydney Theatre, Wharf 1, Walsh Bay, Sydney , Previews 13 December, Opening Night: 17 December to 4 February 2006

Cherry Orchard Logo The Cherry Orchard is a play about the passing of an era. Some critics have said that it is a play about nothing more than a wealthy family that loses its beloved cherry orchard and estate to a man of the rising middle class. The action is quiet in this tragicomedy. Chekhov's family had lost its home to repossession in 1876, and ssome believe this may have been the inspiration for the play.

Cast:

As yet it has to be announced who actually is performing the following individual roles, but has been announced that Lucy Bell, Peter Carroll, Pip Miller, Gwyneth Price, Pamela Rabe, Andy Roboreda, Justin Smith, Dan Spieldman & Anna Torv are performing in the production.

Synopsis:

The Cherry Orchard portrays the social climate of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, when the aristocrats and landowning gentry were losing their wealth and revealed themselves to be incapable of coping with their change in status.

Though intended as a comedy, the tragedy of the situation in which Mrs. Ranevsky and her family find themselves is derived primarily from their inability to adapt to their new social and personal responsibilities.

After a long absence (during which she lived in Paris), the widow Madame Ranevsky returns home to her family estate to find that it has been heavily mortgaged to pay for her extravagances and that it is to be auctioned off. With her arrives her daughter, Anya, and Anya's German governess, Charlotte. They are greeted by Varya, Ranevsky's adopted daughter who manages the remnants of the once-grand estate; Gayev, Ranevsky's brother; Lopakhin, a former peasant who has become a wealthy merchant and neighbour; members of the staff; and other neighbours and friends.

Amidst her recollections of her girlhood nursery, Madame Ranevsky is reminded that the estate will be sold to clear debts in August, unless the family can raise sufficient funds. Generous and distracted, she seems incapable of recognizing and acting on her desperate situation. Lopakhin offers to lend Ranevsky 50,000 rubles to cover the debts and save the estate if she will permit the land to be divided into lots for summer tourist homes. This, however, involves cutting down the estate's famous cherry orchard, which Ranevsky loves dearly; and the plan is rejected as sacrilege.

Over the summer, courtship seems to preclude business. The new servant, Yasha, competes with the estate clerk Yepikhodov for the attentions of Dunyasha the maid; Varya tries to prevent a union between her sister, Anya, and the perpetual student Trofimov (former tutor to Ranevsky's infant son, who drowned at age six), and everybody assumes that Varya will marry Lopakhin, though there has been no proposal. In the midst of this, Lopakhin tries vainly to get the family to be more practical, but Ranevsky confesses that she squandered her fortune on her unfaithful lover in Paris and is probably not capable of practical dealing with the immediate problem.

August arrives, and the estate must be auctioned to meet the mortgage payments. Gayev attends the sale, hopeful that the great-aunt's money will be enough to satisfy the creditors. At the mansion a farewell party is underway even though there are no funds for the orchestra. The household members dance and quarrel until Lopakhin returns with Gayev from the auction to announce that he has bought the estate where his father and other family members once was serfs, and he intends to carry out his plan for cutting down the orchard.

In the fall with the estate and orchard now gone, Ranevsky readies for her departure to Paris. Once the family and their entourage depart, the axe strokes resound outside, as the woodsmen begin at last to cut down the beloved cherry orchard.

Reviews:

Flirtation with the funny side of Chekhov

John McCallum The Australian, December 19, 2005

THIS production is so concerned to find the lively, full-blooded side of Chekhov that it gets a little hysterical at times. It is directed by Howard Davies with a great feeling for the rhythms of the play. It has a stellar cast who give crisp, energetic performances. The adaptation by Andrew Upton is bright and contemporary, with his usual sprinkling of cheerful anachronisms. (Yepihodov's nickname here is Bozo.)

But I missed not the torpor and languor of traditional Chekhov, which Upton says in the program they have avoided, but the emotion.

Great productions of Chekhov depend on walking that notoriously fine line between comedy and tragedy. Here we have definitely fallen over on to the comic side. There is a great deal of funny business, in both senses of the phrase.

The male characters circle Robyn Nevin's Madame Ranyevskaya like moths around a street lamp and she flirts with them all, outrageously and pathetically. Nevin creates a brilliant, fragile, girlish Ranyevskaya who deserves all she gets an appallingly self-centred woman, but poignant in the moment of her defeat.

John Gaden's dreamy Gaev, pontificating and laughing like a fool in the face of disaster, and Peter Carroll's almost vaudevillean Firs, are mostly simple figures of fun, as are Pip Miller's Pischik, Justin Smith's Yepihodov and Dan Spielman's Trofimov. This whole side of the production is for the most part broadly comic, perhaps because they are all aristocrats or their sycophants. At the core of the production is class and its strong centre is Philip Quast's wonderful performance as the nouveau riche Lopakhin and Lucy Bell's as the adopted Varya, who, after the collapse of all her efficient managing of the estate, seethes as much with anger as with personal despair.

Quast presents Lopakhin as a man still haunted by feelings from his abject peasant childhood but then gloriously triumphant when he finally buys the estate. His great victory speech is the high point of the production. Quast and Bell provide the only truly moving moment in their playing of the famous proposal scene, Bell crouched on the floor at the end, defeated. By comparison the old serf Firs's death at the end is quite unmoving, a mere effect.

Pamela Rabe gives a nice cameo performance as Charlotta, a bizarre little character, turned by Rabe at the end into a dignified outsider claiming asylum.

It is never quite clear what Davies wants to say with this production, but the play still works, on political and individual levels, as one of the greatest in the repertoire.

Vibrant and engaging - if lopsided - productcion of Chekhov's last play.

The Cherry Orchard Review bBy Bryce Hallett, Sydney Morning Herald, December 20, 2005

Director Howard Davies clearly believes in the maxim that new plays should be treated like classics and classics like new plays.

He has given Chekhov's last play about memory, survival, identity and ownership a shaking to shed much of its languor and revel in its comedy and farce. What it needs, however, is greater delicacy and depth of emotion.

The Cherry Orchard entwines the past, present and future as it relates the withering fortunes of Madame Ranyevskaya (Robyn Nevin) and her family. Clinging to custom, the bankrupt, elegantly cocooned Ranyevskaya ludicrously ignores the upheaval that threatens to tear away the old Russia and, most pressingly, her beloved orchard and home. Ever in motion, she is doomed from the start.

Davies's engaging yet lopsided production brings into vibrant play Andrew Upton's direct, ironic and almost larrikin-style adaptation. In a program note he states that Davies insisted the torpor associated with Chekhov productions "be hounded out" and the characters appear full-blooded. They are a bundle of contradictions: clever and foolhardy, resilient and tired, soft and unyielding, stunted and free. Much is made of the play's absurdity and the foibles of characters seeking an anchor and balance.

The production, strikingly designed by Fiona Crombie, lit by Damien Cooper and scored by Paul Charlier, spills into every nook of Wharf 1. The fortress-like set is at once grand and ghostly, decadent and decaying - a place lit by gossip, ritual, memories, flirtation and fun until the inevitable, gloomy end.

Nevin (pictured left, with Anna Torv) builds a fine portrayal of Ranyevskaya, a mix of the steadfast and sentimental, and peculiarly tragic given her yearnings for, and delusions about, money and men. John Gaden and Peter Carroll are wonderful as Gaev and Firs, their mutual antagonisms suggesting wily codgers from Beckett, while the delightful Anna Torv (Anya) and Lucy Bell (Varya) add feeling and truth to a production that's keen to amuse.

Most commanding is Philip Quast as the ambivalent Lopakhin, the old servant friend and new moneyed foe who struggles to fit his new rising class. He is brilliant. Pip Miller is terrific as the incessant chatterer Semyonov-Pischik while Pamela Rabe relishes her small part. As the "eternal student" Trofimov, Dan Spielman stirs crushing memories and rails against vanity and inertia. Satire and sermon become one. It's all very forced but there's no denying the play's stature.

The Cherry Orchard began the last century with the kind of questioning and ferment that Tony Kushner's great fantasia Angels in America did towards its close. They serve as bookends on a vast, sprawling stage, each about society's ills and Utopia, and the terrifying leap from everyday comfort into the maelstrom of change.

The Cherry Orchard


Picture of PhilipThe Wharf Theatre, Sydney, review by Sue Beach

As you enter the auditorium, Lopakin (Philip) is already on stage, he has fallen asleep on a bed, while reading a book. His right arm has gone down with his hand resting on the floor with the book. He doesn't look very comfortable, as the bed is too small for him (he is there for at least 15-20 minutes!!) Dunyasha, the maid (Gwyneth Price) comes in and as she runs around in a state of nervous excitement , Lopakhin wakes up. He scolds her for not waking him up sooner, as he had wanted to go to the station to meet the family, who were returning to the Cherry Orchard after an absence of ten years. Lopakhin explains that he is the son of a serf, he obviously feels his peasant background will always be with him, even though he now has money and therefore moved on. Yepihodov (Justin Smith) comes in, shoes squeaking as he walks, he is carrying a bunch of flowers, which on seeing Lopakhin makes out that they are for the house from the gardener, they are really for Dunyasha, with whom he is in love.

The family arrive, and everyone is in a state of excitement at returning to their home, but once they have settled down and have had some refreshments, Lopakhin begins to tell them about his ideas for the Cherry orchard, which he reminds them is going up for auction in a few weeks, to pay off their debts. He wants to sub divide the land, chop down the Cherry Orchard and build a Holiday Village, the family are horrified at this and dismiss his ideas as totally unsuitable, the truth is that they still see him as a peasant and somehow resent the fact that he now has money, therefore their equal! Class is very much a part of this play, how they treat each other and how they see each other.

In Act 2, the set is outside the house, Yepihodov, Dunyasha, Charlotta and Yasha are having a picnic, Yepihodov is strumming a guitar, although he calls it a mandolin! He is serenading Dunyasha but she is more interested in Yasha, the family's manservant. who is obviously toying with her emotions. Charlotta (Pamela Rabe) is lying on the rug on the floor, she is the governess, but explains that she doesn't know who she is, has no passport or any identification, can't remember her parents, doesn't know if the woman who brought her up was related or not. She appears to be quite a mixed up person, as she is doing this she takes a what I think was a Zucchini from her pocket and starts to bite into it, quite symbolic I think!! She dresses in a masculine fashion and also throughout the play ,does magic tricks. Pamela plays her in such a maudlin way, the magic tricks perhaps hiding a deeper emotion.

Act 3 the set is now back inside the house, lit with candles and awaiting the result of the auction. Varya (Lucy Bell) has thrown Yepihodov out , as they have had a party and things had got out of hand. As the door is opened again she runs back to it and hits out, striking Lopakhin on the head, he staggers in ,concussed by the blow. He is dressed in a casual jacket and trousers with a hat .As Ranyevskaya (Robyn Nevin) asks about the auction and the whereabouts of her brother (John Gaden), Lopakhin reveals that it is he who has bought the Cherry orchard for 95,0000. He had obviously been celebrating, so the bang on the head has made him worse, staggering about and dancing around the stage. Lopakhin even snuffs out one of the candles with his hand, (Philip showed me his hand, it had blisters around the centre of his palm…ouch!!)

As he realises the family are distraught at the fact that he is now the new owner, Varya throws done the keys, which she wears on a chain around her waist, and storms off. The family prepare to depart, Lopakhin is now dressed in his suit and is busy organising their departure, while trying to share a bottle of champagne with them to celebrate his purchase and the future holiday village. As the family get ready , Ranyevskaya has hinted that Lopakhin should ask Varya to marry him, as she is in love with him and she feels that he likes her, but as they are left alone and she waits for him to propose, he seems too shy to ask and runs off instead, leaving her crest fallen. You are left wondering if they will maybe get together at some other time!!

Finally the cases are packed and the house is ready to be shut up until the spring. As the doors are finally shut, the sound of the Cherry Orchard being chopped down can be heard and the old butler, Firs appears, he has been left behind as they all thought that he had been taken to hospital, he finally collapses on to the floor.

Philip as always commanded the stage as Lopakhin, another 'angst' male that he does so well. His comic touches were brilliant. I count myself very lucky - not only was I able to see Democracy but also the Cherry Orchard….wow!!

Pictures of Philip take at the Wharf Theatre

Picture of PhilipPicture of PhilipPicture of Philip


[UPDATES] [BIOGRAPHY] [ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS ] [ STAGE ]

[ FILM & TV ][AUDIO/VIDEO ] [ LINKS] [SCRAPBOOK] [ HOME ]


© Kate McCullugh & Angela Pollard 2005. No portion of this page may be copied without permission of the author.