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Title: The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, Emily Mann ISBN: 0-8222-1779-1 Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service Pub. Date: December, 2000 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $6.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Better on stage than the page.
Comment: Too often, 'The Cherry Orchard' moves dangerously close to that dread thing, the Shavian 'comedy' of ideas. full of facile symbolism, a schematic narrative arc and obvious allegorical characterisation, the play seems to groan under the weight of characters pontificating on grave matters such as social and historical change, the 'idea' of Russia and the rhetoric of freedom and progress.
What saves 'Orchard' is the merciful fact that it was written by Chekhov and not Shaw. Whatever his overall conception of the play's weighty themes - the decline of the aristocracy; the new economic power of former serfs etc. - Chekhov is simply incapable of writing mere mouthpieces, and every character, no matter how monstrous, limited, avaricious, delusive or paralysed (in action or mind), is suffused with the kind of life (flawed, egocentric, perhaps, but human) for which he had a unique, sympathetic, though always honestly satirical eye. it is a tough task to make an audience empathise with a group of silly former slave-owners, but death, loss, change, poverty, personal failure and disappointment are things we have all felt, and we would probably be lying if we couldn't find something of ourselves in most of the characters (I, worryingly, found myself most drawn to the snobbish, immature, enndearingly gauche Gaev).
There are too many emotionally loaded, privileged and enigmatic moments for characters to be simply straw targets, and the play is shot through with poignant autobiographical resonances (it was Chekhov's last, written when he was terminally ill). In fact, the one character I found thoroughly dislikable is the one who seems to make the most humanitarian sense, the revolutionary student Trophimof; but his tedious, inhuman sermons about work and the future sound too much like the Bolsheviks whose barbaric utopia would be established less than two decades later.
Unlike Wilde, say, or Shakespeare, Chekhov rarely reads very well on the page. His deliberately plain speech can seem flat, and the importance of silence, waiting, time passing with an almost painful tangibility is impossible to convey, never mind the rhythms that become so evident in performance, or the use of sound effects and music (American translations seem to me the best, fluid and not fusty; I read Carol Rocamora's this time). This is why actors treasure him - his plays are almost like sketches, giving them unprecedented freedom to create characters from hints and ambiguities.
Another difference between Shaw and Chekhov is that the former's plays are theses or theorems, designed to prove points the author is unswervingly convinced of before he's even written a word. Chekhov is rarely sure about anything, and his plays are liberatingly, if perilously, open-ended. Despite the rigid structures he fences them in, his characters always feel as if they have lived before the play and will continue to, no matter how badly, long after it.
It should also be remembered that Chekhov called 'Orchard' a comedy: it is full of characters and scenes tottering from tragedy to farce. Charlotta, the tragicomic governess, full of amazing magic tricks and ventriloquism, yet fundamentally isolated and facing a desperately uncertain future, is perhaps emblematic.
Rating: 4
Summary: A heartbreak and a smile
Comment: As I read this play, my family is in the process of moving a thousand miles away from the farm where I grew up. Though I am so far away from the Russian culture and time of this play, the themes of place, tradition, and inevitable change resonated inside of me, and I am grateful to Chekhov for the way he has handled them.
The Cherry Orchard is a play about change, and the symbolism is pretty easy to recognize. What makes it stand apart, I think, from a thousand other plays on the same theme is its wonderful sense of comedy, of smiling sadness. Chekhov all his life insisted it was a comedy. As the Cherry Orchard slips away from the Ranevskys, they seem to smile at its going. As they are unable to change their habits -- still lending money they don't have, still spending extravagantly -- they quietly laugh at their own foolishness. The change comes, and they leave, heartbroken -- but embracing the change at the same time, only feebling struggling against it. One feels saddest, in the end, for Lopakhin, the new owner of the Cherry Orchard. He seems to believe he has bought happiness and friends, but is quickly discovering the emptiness of money and possessions, as no one wants to borrow from him, and no one seems to pay him much heed at all.
Chekhov paints with a fine brush, and I appreciate that. There is no thunderstorming, no ranting and raving in this work. There is a fine and subtle, sad and comedic portrayal of a family and a place encountering change. It is a heartbreak with a smile.
The translation, though the only one I've read, seems good. It is easy to follow and rich in simple feeling.
if you'd like to discuss this play with me, or recommend something i might enjoy, or just chat, e-mail me at [email protected].
Rating: 1
Summary: A dreadful play.
Comment: "The Cherry Orchard" is an atrocious play. If we hold this play in high regard, then we dramatist's need to reevaluate our standards. Chekhov wrote a play that will make you not care an inch about the character's or their situation(s). For him to think that this is a comedy makes you wonder if he understood the point he himself was trying to make. The characters are pathetic and they'll make you pity them - not because of their predicaments, but because of whom they are. I do not recommend.
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