The Cherry Orchard

Simon Stone’s contemporized production of The Cherry Orchard is bright, lively and delightfully accessible.  For those who have studied it, and seen it a number of times, or for those who have no idea what it is about, this is the production to catch.  It is funny and rewarding, and may even win over the purists, in its capacity to elucidate the complex emotional quandaries it explores and character flaws it reveals.

The story of the play pivots around Ranevskaya (Pamela Rabe), a wealthy landowner.  She has carelessly and thoughtlessly mismanaged her family estate, to the point where the unthinkable and almost unbearable is about to happen – the Cherry Orchard is to be sold.  It is this grand property that meshes together the mostly disparate self-absorbed characters and endows their lives with structure, certainty and meaning.

In Stone’s production the exemplary timing endorses the humour, and there are many added or highly updated terms of expression that make exquisite sense. 

The set (Alice Babidge) is white, quite stark initially, then scattered with objects that could hold meaning to a family downsizing from the ‘ancestral’ home.  Much of the imagery is painted through the actors giving voice to the characters’ cherished experience.

In updating the story there is a subtly acknowledged, yet successful, shift from Russia to Australia that eliminates referencing the serfs and their contribution to aristocratic opulence, paralleling this to theft of land from the traditional owners. 

The acting is universally satisfying, with illuminating characterizations beautifully endorsed by Alice Babidge’s costumes.

Pamela Rabe displays her considerable presence on stage and makes the fascinating character choice, as Ranevskaya, of talking disparaging about the newly affluent and their flashy housing estates then screeching across an imagined garden space in the tones of a ‘fish wife’.  In the second half Rabe makes wonderful sense of the yielding sensitivity that, in all probability, has significantly fueled Ranevskaya’s descent into bankruptcy.

Nikki Shiels breathes energetic life into the easily manipulated, lusty dreamer Dunyasha who responds heartily at first to a forthright philandering Yasha, portrayed boldly by David Paterson.

Eloise Mignon brings a lovely clarity and naïve optimism to the role of Anya, while Robert Menzies really makes whole the introspective yet often child-like and dependent Gayev.

Rich, vibrant and full of humanity – truly a chance to see Chekhov through new and fresh eyes.

Suzanne Sandow

Cast: Yepikhodov – Gareth Davies, Firs – Ronald Falk, Gayev – Robert Menzies, Anya – Eloise Mignon, Lopakhin – Steve Mouzakis, Varya – Zahra Newman, Simeonov-Pischik – Roger Oakley, Yasha – David Paterson, Ranevskaya –Pamela Rabe, Dunuyasha – Nikki Shiels, Charoltta – Katherine Tonkin, Trofimov – Toby Truslove.

Image: Pamela Rabe (Ranevskaya), Zahra Newman (Varya), Toby Truslove (Trofimov), Eloise Mignon (Anya). Photo © Jeff Busby.

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