The Cherry Orchard a fresh pick for Everyman
Everyman Theatre opened their run of Anton Chekov's final play, The Cherry Orchard, with a special pay-what-you-can performance on March 18.
A complex but humorous story about nostalgia and one family's fall from eminence, The Cherry Orchard is a bittersweet reflection that feels current in any era but seems especially appropriate in today's atmosphere of uncertainty and economic angst.
Chekov was criticized in his own time both for being too political and not radical enough, but now, over 100 years after the play's debut, it resounds with freshness and poignancy that doesn't require a political interpretation to resonate with relevance.
The Cherry Orchard is the story of Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya (Deborah Hazlett), a widow, and her family as they face the sale of their estate to pay the family's debts. They live in a condition of impoverished gentility. Lyubov often tragically forgets their financial situation in an attempt to cling to her old lifestyle, which includes ordering expensive food at restaurants and giving extravagant gifts of money to beggars.
She also supports a cast of the family's servants out of loyalty and affection, even though their wages and board are beyond her means. As the auction of the estate approaches, Lyubov reflects on the joy and peace that the old cherry orchard on their lands gives her - when the plot is sold, it will likely be split up into summer homes, and the orchard will be cut down.
Her memories are sweet and sad, often combining the pleasure of life, youth and springtime with the melancholy of death - her seven-year-old son drowned in the river that runs through the orchard, and when she gazes at it for the first time in five years, she believes she sees her mother's ghost among the blossoms.
Elements of humor relieve the atmosphere and give the play a more human gleam, as if to say that in the midst of loss there will be new life, and that nostalgia will be tempered with hope.
A complex but humorous story about nostalgia and one family's fall from eminence, The Cherry Orchard is a bittersweet reflection that feels current in any era but seems especially appropriate in today's atmosphere of uncertainty and economic angst.
Chekov was criticized in his own time both for being too political and not radical enough, but now, over 100 years after the play's debut, it resounds with freshness and poignancy that doesn't require a political interpretation to resonate with relevance.
The Cherry Orchard is the story of Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya (Deborah Hazlett), a widow, and her family as they face the sale of their estate to pay the family's debts. They live in a condition of impoverished gentility. Lyubov often tragically forgets their financial situation in an attempt to cling to her old lifestyle, which includes ordering expensive food at restaurants and giving extravagant gifts of money to beggars.
She also supports a cast of the family's servants out of loyalty and affection, even though their wages and board are beyond her means. As the auction of the estate approaches, Lyubov reflects on the joy and peace that the old cherry orchard on their lands gives her - when the plot is sold, it will likely be split up into summer homes, and the orchard will be cut down.
Her memories are sweet and sad, often combining the pleasure of life, youth and springtime with the melancholy of death - her seven-year-old son drowned in the river that runs through the orchard, and when she gazes at it for the first time in five years, she believes she sees her mother's ghost among the blossoms.
Elements of humor relieve the atmosphere and give the play a more human gleam, as if to say that in the midst of loss there will be new life, and that nostalgia will be tempered with hope.
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