When Anton Chekhov wrote “The Cherry Orchard,” his 1904 play about a financially beleaguered aristocratic household in turn-of-the-century Russia, he thought of it as a comedy. Generations of theater directors — starting with Konstantin Stanislavsky in its original Moscow run — had other ideas, preferring to render it as a somber tragedy. In London, a new production sets out to do justice to the playwright’s vision by leaning in to the play’s comedic elements.
Directed by Benedict Andrews, an Australian based in Iceland who had London hits with “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” the show runs at the Donmar Warehouse through June 22. It is a funny and, at times, raucous take which, despite some flaws, breathes new life into this old classic.
The German actress Nina Hoss gives a controlled performance as Ranevskaya, who returns to her family estate after a grief-stricken exile to find its residents depressed and broke. She is a poignant picture of frayed dignity, her aristocratic self-possession increasingly brittle as the story progresses toward it sad denouement. But the real star of the show is Adeel Akhtar (“Murder Mystery”) as Lopakhin, the rapacious self-made magnate who persuades Ranevskaya to put the estate’s prize jewel, her beloved cherry orchard, up for auction.
Akhtar renders Lopakhin as a cockney wheeler-dealer, by turns chummy and aggressive, whose brazen acquisitiveness is tempered by a raffish charm — he is fond of corny catchphrases like “see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya” — and moments of humanity. A peasant’s son, he has transcended his origins but remains acutely conscious of them. (He tells us he is ashamed of his handwriting because it gives him away.) Despite Lopakhin’s almost cartoonish cynicism, we can’t help but like him, even when he buys up the orchard himself, intending to tear it down and turn it into a lucrative tourist resort.
Michael Gould (“A View from the Bridge”) is outstanding as Ranevskaya’s brother, Gaev, the epitome of aristocratic dissipation as he pads about the stage in baggy sweatpants, sucking on a lollipop while delivering eccentric disquisitions. There are some eye-catching performances among the minor characters, too. June Watson is delightful as the octogenarian servant Firs, who is forever mumbling away to herself, semi-audibly, in irritable tones. And Eanna Hardwicke makes a brilliantly funny stage debut as the bookkeeper Epikhodov, whose clownishly squeaky shoes undermine the authority of his every utterance (most notably when he declares “I’m, quote-unquote, intellectually insatiable”).
In Magda Willi’s sparse set, thick oriental rugs in oxide red hues cover the floor and walls. The whole cast is visible at all times, occupying seats on the front row of the auditorium and stepping up onto the stage when they come into play. The almost total absence of stage props is played for laughs during a scene in which Gaev delivers an impassioned monologue in praise of an old bookcase in the family home: Gould coaxes an audience member onto the stage and addresses him as though he were the furniture piece in question. Toward the end of the play, the carpets are crudely stripped away to symbolize the destruction of the cherry orchard.
Throughout, the humor is perfectly pitched: The characters are ridiculous but, for the most part, not unsympathetic. The only dislikable figure is the “eternal student” Trofimov (Daniel Monks), an idealist intellectual given to polemicizing. Though his rants contain many home truths — about the centuries of brutal exploitation that funded the family’s privilege, and the inevitability of a big societal reckoning to come — he is dismissed by everyone else as a tiresome bore. The household’s hapless befuddlement is presented in morally neutral terms — a mere byproduct of historical forces, stemming from the emancipation of the serfs decades earlier. The old world is giving way to the new, as represented by Lopakhin’s arriviste vulgarity. Whether the future will be better, or worse, is an open question.
At two hours and thirty minutes, the show could have been tauter. A handful of musical interludes, in the form of doleful ballads, are impressively performed but don’t add much; the tonal shift in the closing scenes — from farce to fin-de-siècle melancholy — is a little awkward. Once the fate of the cherry orchard is sealed, there is little in the way of comic potential, and the remaining scenes drag as the characters wallow in chagrin. The costumes, a deliberate mishmash of modern casual with some nods to period attire, via the patterned peasant dresses of several female characters, make for a chaotic visual palate, which slightly undermines the sense of reality.
These misgivings aside, there is plenty to admire in this refreshingly playful retelling. There is an unfair idea of Chekhov in the popular psyche, and even among seasoned theatergoers, as being dour and ponderous — a fun-free zone. Andrews’s treatment is a welcome corrective.
The Cherry Orchard
Through June 22 at the Donmar Warehouse in London; donmarwarehouse.com.
