|
I’ve always dreamt of being part of the Russian aristocracy, clothed in fetching stoles and winter coats, overthrown by a rabid bourgeoisie mob and rediscovered at seventy in a nursing home in Wisconsin. The usual silly girlhood fantasies, really. The Sydney Theatre Company brought back all these beautiful, shining desires with their recent production of The Cherry Orchard.
Ranyevskaya (Robyn Nevin) is the matriarch of a once great Russian family. However the inexorable march of progress has seen her family become awash in debts with the only possible solution to subdivide the treasured orchard into lots to be sold as holiday homes. If you love something is it better to save what you can even if it means its partial destruction, or is it better to take no hand in its ruin though it will result in its complete annihilation? Ranyevskaya’s surrounding family, friends and staff provide a microcosm of Russian society, but the play is also a meditation on change, a sort of 19th century Who Moved My Cheese? if you will.
The large ensemble are all wonderful, with Philip Quast’s Lopakhin exceptional. Lopakhin was born as the son of a serf, but now that social structures are altering he’s become part of the noveau riche. He’s filled with an unutterable anger that he can never be part of the aristocratic world, a world that is crumbling, yet still manages to deny him entry or even a grudging respect for his achievements. Quast brings a dignity to his Lopakhin, a tragic clown who fits nowhere.
Andrew Upton adapted the piece and said he considered The Cherry Orchard a piece of music in that the three acts are completely different in tone. While this decision means the production never becomes tiresome, the characters do occasionally lapse into moments that seem out of alignment with their general personality. Dan Spielman’s Trofimov morphs from a thirty year old liberal intellectual into a tantrum throwing fifteen year old girl when Ranyevskaya suggests he’s a virgin. Otherwise the adaptation is wonderful, with the material never showing its age. The lighting design by Damien Cooper does a masterful job of showing the encroaching outside world on the family’s private paradise.
The Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Cherry Orchard is a superb piece of theatre that transports you into another time and place, and it made this girl’s daydreams come to life (except for the Wisconsin part, which is no great loss.)
The Good: Despite being over three hours long with two twenty minute intervals the play is never less than a fascinating insight into Russian society.
The Bad: A few out of character missteps.
The Vibe: A fabulous production of a wonderful play.
