Chekhov’s comic drama The Cherry Orchard, first staged in Moscow in 1904, is a perennial on English stages, with a revival at the RSC currently running alongside this one in the West End. In a hugely anticipated adaptation written by Conor McPherson and directed by Ian Rickson, this play of humanity, aristocracy, and money opened this week at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
The plot is a simple one. Madame Ranevskaya (Kristin Scott Thomas) is returning to her family home after an absence in Paris with her daughter Anya (Anastasia Martin) and valet Yasha (Noof Ousellam). She is without funds and in danger of seeing the estate, with its cherry orchard, sold out from under her, but seems stuck in the belief that something will happen to change things.
Varya (Vinette Robinson), Ranevskaya’s adopted daughter, has struggled to keep things going, aided by a couple of servants, a book-keeper, and the friendship of a local entrepreneur who cannot articulate his romantic feelings. This man, Lopakhin (Stephen Mangan) has been connected to the family through a generation of ancestors kept as estate serfs, and is now the epitome of the ‘nouveau riche’.
The servants – the ancient Firs (Karl Johnson) and the young Dunyasha (Megan Cusack) – are representative of the old and the new in their fields. Firs is nostalgic for the past, disinterested in his freedom, and devoted to the family. Dunyasha seeks to better her station and aims to marry well, but her flighty nature keeps her grounded.
Then there is Simeonov-Pishchik (Jeff Rawle), a landowner forever drowning in debt; Leo (Peter Wight), the older son of the family and more interested in billiards and declaiming speeches than facing reality; Sharlotta (Ruby Bentall), a governess with a past in the circus; Yepikovov (Shubham Saraf), the clumsy book-keeper; and Petya (Jack Riddiford), a student who was involved in a catastrophe at the house some years earlier.
The estate and cherry orchard represent tradition, stability and status. The large draughty room (set by Chloe Lamford), blighted with mould in which most of the action takes place, recognises this is changing, and those who come from money inherited by the exploitation of others are being supplanted by those who understand money to be something to invest and increase without sentiment.
McPherson’s adaptation is expletive-laden and very frank, highlighting the hypocrisy of a family who cannot articulate their feelings or act in a way that serves their interest. For them, it is enough to have their standing in the community, and if they party and bury their heads in the sand, all will be well.
Wight, Johnson and Rawle do their best to enhance the comedy in their roles. Bentall also has a lovely routine around magic tricks as well as highlighting her own situation as an orphan immigrant. Scott Thomas offers a fine portrayal of a self-absorbed woman who can’t move on, as well as a mother who knows her failings, but she is perhaps a little too cold. Mangan dials down comic expectations to provide a potent portrait of someone committed to progress.
Where the production slips a little is in making us care. There’s a lot of emotion that could be exploited: the death of a child, sweetly hinted by the height markers by the door; Varya’s loneliness (expressed well by Robinson, but thinly drawn in the plot); and the contrasts between Petya and Yepikovov. Perhaps the most tragic character is Firs, who has known nothing else but to serve, and in his decrepitude fails to seek a moment of rest. Johnson knows this and captures it beautifully.
Rickson’s direction is busy with lots of entrances and exits, a travelling band of musicians who just appear from nowhere and are never mentioned again, and an orchard which is not even hinted at other than through the sound design (by Tom Gibbons) near the end of the play. To see it, even to experience the blossom or the touch of trees against the window, might have been more effective.
I’m giving this one 3.5 stars.
The Cherry Orchard continues at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 9 Jan 2027.
Photo credit: Johan Persson