Blossom on the Wind

 “Tchekhov has contrived to shed over us a luminous vapour in which life appears as it is, without veils, transparent and visible to the depths. Long before the play was over we seemed to have sunk below the surface of things and to be feeling our way among submerged but recognisable emotions.”

-    Virginia Woolf, The New Statesman, 1920

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov completed The Cherry Orchard - his final play, considered to be one of his four greatest works, along with The Seagull, Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya - in 1904, a few months before his death.

At the beginning of the 20th century Russia was in a state of transition. Only a few decades prior to this the Emancipation Reform of 1861 had abolished serfdom within the Empire. Within living memory of those at the fin de siècle, slavery had ended and their world had been fundamentally changed.

Social progress was slow and fraught with continued incidents of inequality, but the overall momentum was unstoppable. Former serfs were now able to buy land, diminishing the grip of the aristocracy. Moves towards the end of worker exploitation would eventually lead to the revolutions of 1917, the dissolution of the monarchy and a radical transformation of Russian society.

The Cherry Orchard is a glimpse into this period of upheaval, in which the elite were losing ground to non-gentry entrepreneurs. This reversal of fortunes impacts the characters in different ways, the most striking of which is the complacent denialism of Madame Lubov and her contemporaries. Like watching the proverbial car crash in slow motion, the audience witnesses the defiantly cheerful relics of the old world as they fend off reality and party on.

Herein lies the comedic heart of the play, and it is a dark shade of humour. With relish we see the fall of the privileged class, a loss of not just wealth but also status and - to the great amusement of the commoner - dignity.

Although Chekhov conceived this as a comedy, it was - much to his annoyance - hailed as a brilliant tragedy, thanks in no small part to the direction of its debut by Konstantin Stanislavski. The tragic elements are inescapable, however. Lubov is an morally ambiguous figure, having recently fled her home after the deaths of her husband and son, abandoning her daughters to live with her Parisian paramour, only to be betrayed by him and find herself rebounding to her familiar sanctuary. In her we see our own grievous shortcomings, the fundamental imperfection of human nature in times of crisis. We feel for her precisely because her actions are so deeply relatable.

Heedless of the festivities, the Titanic finally sinks and all illusions are torn asunder. It is not only the aristocrats who are exposed by events; we also see the ignoble character of the up-and-coming “common’ man stripped of his nouveau riche pretentions. Drunken Lopakhin gloats loudly and the audience is forced to confront their own schadenfreude. As a comedy, this is a guilty pleasure.

But there is a certain liberation in this tearing away of all deceptions. With all laid bare, an honest engagement with life finally becomes a possibility, and with it a more authentic version of oneself.

Lost in nostalgia, Madame Lubov gazes out upon her orchard.

“Out there, at least, nothing has changed.”

The wind carries the sweet scent that brings her comforting memories of childhood, but there is also something new in the air. With indifferent inevitability, events will force her to wake up and smell the coffee.   

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

Here To There Productions

August 28th - September 14th 2024

Hereford, Worcester, Shrewsbury