THE CHERRY ORCHARD ★★★
Donmar Warehouse until June 22 Tickets: 020 3282 3808
Chekhov’s 1904 masterpiece gets a modern makeover in Benedict Andrews’ relentlessly animated production. The diverse cast shout, wriggle and dance in a flurry of motion on a literally wall-to-wall set of russet carpeting like unruly children let loose in a playroom.
It’s lively, crude and sometimes very funny but it unbalances the play. Chekhov’s characters are invariably in pursuit of the unattainable; they are not tragic so much as hopelessly deluded.
In portraying the conflict between blinkered tradition and unforgiving progress, Andrews wields a spray can where
Chekhov used a paintbrush.
The distinguished German actress Nina Hoss is superb as the profligate aristocratic mother, Ranevskaya, returning to her family home after selfimposed exile in Paris. The only solution to imminent penury is to sell the house and the ancient cherry orchard that has irreplaceable childhood memories.
Surrounded by a motley crew of family and neighbours – unworldly, eccentric brother
Leonid (Michael Gould), sensible daughter Anya (Sadie Soverall), perky housemaid Dunyasha (Posy Sterling) and mature student Trofimov (Daniel Monks), among others – Raneskaya vacillates between necessity and nostalgia when offered a financial deal by the peasant-made-good Lopakhin (Adeel Akhtar, wide-boying all over the place).
With few exceptions the characters are played for laughs as vulgar farce supplants Chekhov’s melancholic humour. The restless pace allows for little silence, space or subtlety apart from a couple of scenes when Chekhov breaks through, as when Ranevskaya imagines the ghost of her mother wafting through the orchard and aged retainer Firs’ (June Watson) final heartbreaking speech.
In some ways the sound effects are better than the visual antics. Never mind the axes, here are the chainsaws.