©Johan Persson
Usually, the person who knows a play best is its writer; however, sometimes it takes an insightful actor or director to point the play in a different direction from how the writer imagined it and bring the truth out of the text. That old cove Chekhov insisted that The Cherry Orchard was a comedy – indeed with farcical elements. Sixty odd years after he wrote it, Edward Bond also described his notorious play Saved, which included the torture and murder of a baby, as a comedy. Birds of a feather, I reckon.
©Johan Persson
Laura Wade’s new adaptation of The Cherry Orchard works hard to accentuate all the comic elements and the quirkier characterisations. Yepikhodov is a clumsy oaf who pratfalls his way through the play. Gaev is dressed like he’s wearing last year’s Christmas jumper. Pishchik gets drunk easily and wobbles his way around the stage. And Lopakhin speaks in a Northern Irish accent. Why? Good question. Probably for the same reason that Yasha sees fit to administer cunnilingus to Dunyasha beneath her dress (not sure the Wednesday matinee audience was ready for that) or that Yepikhodov decides to play Elvis Presley’s Wooden Heart on the guitar. Maybe it’s to create some kind of Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt? Whilst we’re on the subject of music, Royal Shakespeare Company productions normally nail the incidental musical accompaniments; but this production has, for some reason, a loud extended piano piece that completely drowns out important conversations in the third Act – again, why?
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Balancing all these tricksy, light-hearted elements the production faces an uphill battle to reveal the tragedies beneath the surface; and it very much relies on individual performances to do the best they can. Esther Smith is excellent as Mme Ranyevskaya’s adopted daughter Varya, busily fretting with household matters and enabling others to do what they want, to the extent that she allows herself to ignore her own position and future; and, in arguably the best scene of the play, her reaction to not receiving a proposal from Lopakhin, where she gives in and breaks down in floods of tears, gives us a genuine insight into what Varya’s future will look like.
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Michael Elwyn as the old manservant Firs also allows us to look behind the façade and see the past crumbling away as time marches inexorably forwards. Delightfully doddery and bewildered, his occasional flashes of true insight show us another character who has given up their life in the service of others; but he sees it as a life well-lived, a privilege to have been pivotal in such a prominent family.
©Johan Persson
For me, the best performance in the production comes from Alfred Enoch as Trofimov; he’s the only major character in the play who speaks with genuine conviction, and indeed, his is the one character who has faith that there will be a bright future ahead for the country. Robust, assertive and intelligent, he certainly gives the production a boost of energy every time he comes on stage.
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There are those, of course, who remain unaffected by the tragedies or the societal changes that Chekhov so successfully foresaw. Mme Ranyevskaya, and her brother Gaev, are vacuous aristocrats who spend money – that they don’t have – like water and fritter away their lives on bland pursuits. It’s definitely a challenge to make these two characters interesting; and I fear that neither Helen Hunt nor Bill Pullman succeeds in that quest. Ms Hunt underplays Ranyevskaya so much that you feel she never really features in the play at all. When she’s told endless times by Lopakhin that the cherry orchard will be put up for auction, it’s not that she buries her head in the sand, simply nothing registers, there’s no reaction at all. When she finally gets agitated that, as predicted, it’s been sold, her sudden reaction stretches the audience’s credulity. But – to be fair – why should Madame bother? Her solution is just to go back to Paris and continue to spend other people’s money.
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This is the second RSC production this year to star Kenneth Branagh. Fresh from a superb performance as Prospero in The Tempest, here he is Lopakhin, getting off to an amusingly entertaining start as he was onstage all the while the audience were entering the auditorium and we hadn’t a clue. Desperate for attention in the first scene, where he is the nouveau-riche upstart trying to impress the old money aristos, he hops about, trying to ingratiate himself, like a vulture awaiting an imminent feast. When it is revealed that he has bought the cherry orchard, he is so cock-a-hoop yet immensely surprised at his own success, that he can barely break it to Madame that her estate is now his – squirming his way through his speech in a mixture of delight and embarrassment. And his non-proposal to Varya is a moment of theatrical brilliance that produced exasperated gasps from the audience. It’s a confident and highly individual performance – definitely shifty, and in many ways eccentric, especially with that accent.
©Johan Persson
Despite Sir Kenneth’s shenanigans, overall, and some good supporting performances – Julian Moore-Cook’s Yasha is believably flaky and Amber Gadd’s Dunyasha is a natural for the comedy – the production feels disappointing. There’s an almost total lack of emotion, rendering this remarkable play cold and – dare I say it – largely dull. Laura Wade’s updatings feel at odds with the traditional costumes and Anna Fleischle’s set, which emphasise the faded glory of the old house and the encroaching, unmanaged orchard outside. Despite what Chekhov might have thought, this isn’t a funny enough play to concentrate on the comedy and let the tragedy look after itself. I came away from it agreeing with Lopakhin – chop down those trees, build some dachas and move on. It’s what the place needs.
Two Disappointing for More!
