The Cherry Orchard

by Anton Chekhov

You don't go to see a Chekhov play in decades, then you go to two in a few months! But with a cast like this, how could you not see how Chekhov is faring in the heart of ultra-middle class Sussex?  The answer, to give it away, is pretty good. But with Diana Rigg playing, Ranyevskaya, Jemma Redgrave her adopted daughter Varya, Maureen Lipman the governess Charlotta and Frank Finlay the valet Firs it would be hard to get it wrong. It was always going to hinge on Diana Rigg, and she is at her effortless best.  I have never seen an actor who appears to do less on stage.  She just, inhabits the character as naturally as her clothes.  Ranyevskaya is so lovably untogther, so irredeemably hopeless with money, so profligate in love, so utterly, frustratingly, desperately hopeless... Jemma Redgrave's Varya seemed rather unsubtle in her reactions to her frustrating mother, being either furious or incoherently furious.  She screeched a lot and became rather a pain.  Assuming this was a direction, it was a mistaken.one. Maureen Lipman's comic governess, however, was faultless, and so fitting that Firs, the valet who remembered (with affection) the days of the serfs was magnificently laid to rest along with the orchard at the end of the play. There were also hugely strong performances from William Gaunt as Ranyevskaya's brother, hopelessly optimistic and sure things would turn out for the best and Michael Siberry's Lopakhin, the Abramovich of the piece, the peasant who made good.  And this is the message.  The landed, but impoverished classes have had there day and need to change or it is all going to go horribly wrong.  This, Chekhov's last play, written just before his death in 1904 is suitably prophetic of subsequent Russian history.  The aristocracy walked steadily, unblinkingly, unhearingly into the fire...

Add to this some superb staging and wondrous costumes and you may think me mean to cavil just a touch. This was a very good production full of excellent acting.  But somehow, given the fabulous actors involved, I felt it should have been better. I didn't get a big emotional punch from it, and I admired it rather than loved it. I never felt it really built in tempo or emotion, and its end was sad rather than tragic. Given the talent and the play, I felt it ought to have been as good as Richard III a fortnight earlier, but it never really reached such heights. Perhaps in the end I would have to say, great performances but not a great production.  The new creative team at Chichester have yet, for me at least, to hit the standards of previous years.

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