Cherry Orchard

This Anton Chekhov’s absolute masterpiece will be performed to wide-ranging audiences for decades and centuries to come. If this planet survives through our political ventures and the thawing of ices in the Antarctic, the inhabitants of the lands that have escaped destruction will keep being amused by the stories about the advantages of dried cherries and many other absurdities abundantly present in this ‘tragic comedy” that has become an encyclopedia of the Russian soul. “The Cherry Orchard” contains everything we know, everything we want to know and bear in mind, everything we ought to do…’ If only we could see through it … If only we could know…

As was to be expected, Mark Zakharov staged Chekhov in the unmistakably Lenkom style. And yet he managed to surprise us. Not only by the Spartan steadfastness (“The Cherry Orchard” was premiered in St. Petersburg immediately after the demise of Oleg Yankovsky), but also by the clarity of the aesthetic intentions and the precision with which they were carried into effect. While some of Zakharov’s age- and stage-mates are squaring accounts with the fate and the country, visibly not knowing where to stop and all to often losing the sense of reality, the master of the Lenkom Theatre turns out to be reminiscing and is doing it without any spite or aggression, showing wisdom and characteristic selfirony, the latter known to be the best remedy against senility. Here you are. Each character in Zakharov’s staging of The Cherry Orchard has a pedigree, clean-cut and scrupulously and smartly related. It calls up the director’s best works beginning from the 1970-s. And the air is filled with “Amarcordian” overtones that add flavor to the pranks that are sometimes risqué like in a fairground and imbue elevated lyricism to the happenings on stage. But there is another major component of the production that seems to be more impressive than the others. It is the sprinter pace of the action that conforms to the hustle and bustle of the present-day life. The four acts of Chekhov’s “tragic comedy” (to use Zakharov’s definition) are compressed into a two-hour performance. Meanwhile none of the storylines or nuances detailed by the playwright is lost. The director seems to be sort of dancing with the playwright to the tune of the old Jewish band and when the worst comes to the worst they start dancing on the table. And this dance miraculously echoes the prayer for the dead ideals of the first and second youth and, more importantly, the hosanna to the ideals that have survive.

There is not even a suggestion of blossoming trees on stage – just the paling of naked twigs. And the huge wall of the manor house with the enticingly opened window is moving effortlessly in space, trying to protect its good-for-nothing proprietors and in the final scene collapses with a thunderous thump all but crashing Firs and as though saluting the new reality that will come up anyway, whether we want it or not. Having stressed that the production was “inspired” by the comedy, the director noticeably cut it, which is though not such a big deal nowadays. Some of the lines changed places, someone wrote something in addition, but all this with the only purpose of keeping the headlong pace of the action and minimizing the time required for characterization so that the audience didn’t have one second to relax. <...>Zakharov doesn’t seem to be particularly sorry for the orchard. It has been long cut out down to the last tree before his eyes. But ‘we must live’as the heroine of Chekhov’s another play says. And the only things Zakharov can put up to stop the landslide off devastation and losses are the energy of his theatre and his own craftsmanship, both being present in abundance in this very personal version of The Cherry Orchar.