July
2003
The Cherry Orchard - Oxford Playhouse |
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The
production of Anton Chekhov's play had good and bad aspects according
to reviewer Abigail Uden. |
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The wheel
of fortune has turned. The Cherry Orchard and house where four generations
of the same russian aristocratic family have lived, built on the labour
of serfs, has become burdened with debt.
And so Anton Chekhov opens his play with various family members, servants
and hangers on returning to the estate, - to contemplate its final
sale.
Dominic Dromgroole's production for the Oxford Stage Company -at the
Playhouse, opens with a gorgeous and clever set- with the stage draped
with lines of white paper cherry blossom, hooked up and rearranged
throughout the four acts of the production to suggest variously the
corridors of the great house, the garden or the ballroom.
It also opens with a plethora of characters bustling onto the stage,
demanding their place in the audience's attention, but all sporting
a bewildering array of accents.
There is Yermolai Lapakhin, played by Trevor Fox, who choses to use
a geordie accent to convey a man who risen above his peasant heritage
to become a businessman of some wealth, Varya (Mairead Kelly) the
hardworking daughter who speaks with an Irish lilt, student Petya's
scottish burr, Charlotta's german accent (at least demanded by the
play) and the upper class english tones of brother and sister Lyuba
and Leonid Ranevskaya who are central to the action.
Given that the play's themes seem to be about class and the death
of a certain russian way of life, this is, in part a bold and clever
move.
The contrast in accent between Yermolai and Lyuba for example, easily
explains to an english audience why the geordie bloke might be in
awe of the cut glass english sounding mistress of the house, but too
many different voices are also confusing especially in the first two
acts of the play.
Every character seems to come on with a different vocal or comedy
tick...Yepikhodov's squeaky shoes are surely as written in the text,
but is Pishchiks broad Fast Show characterisation as well heeled drunken
sot ?
I appreciate that Chekhov might not be the dour russian harbinger
of gloom he's commonly presented as - but this clumsy "Cheery Orchard"
rendering can't be helping his cause much either.
And while i'm on the subject of the text - I'm not sure that this
new translation has been able to deliver the full power of the play.
I'll admit that I'm not very familiar with Chekhov's work - and certainly
not with other versions of the play - but did the great writer really
write so much bad exposition, to be delivered at such great speed
, at such great length - to fill the audience in with the backstory
?.
Lines such as "Six years, six years I tell you since he died in our
river" (or words to that effect) - I was under the impression that
a production which gives character's lines such as "why do I wake
up to find a spider five times larger than Russia spinning a web in
my chest hair" had rather more ambition about it than such poor linking
passages would seem to suggest.
You see there are some things that are great in this production, elbowing
much that is awful out of the way.
All the main characters are well acted, with moments of real power
- Geraldine James facing down student Petya in the ballroom when he
delares himself to be above love, for example - the stuff at the fringes
is much more suspect...am I really supposed to find it so hard to
warm to Yasha that I cannot work out why he is even allowed in the
house ?
Should I have to sit through a first act scene change that is so long
a large part of the audience thought it was the interval, and which
spoilt the flow of the play ?
Or wait so long for the theatrical moments of magic to appear in the
first two acts that it felt very much later than it really was by
the time the interval did actually arrive ?
But at least there is plenty to that's thought provoking about this
Cherry Orchard - but not necessarily for the right reasons.
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