The Cherry Orchard

by Anton Chekhov, Benedict Andrews (Adapted by)

Overview

The orchard's white, all white. You haven't forgotten, have you, Lyuba? The avenue lined with trees, unfurling like a slender ribbon. And on moonlit nights, it shimmers. You remember, don't you? You haven't forgotten?

Can anyone persuade Ranevskaya and her aristocratic household that the world is changing, and they must too?

Following internationally acclaimed productions of The Seagull (Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney) and Three Sisters (Young Vic, London), director Benedict Andrews has a reputation as one of the world's leading interpreters of Chekhov.

For the Donmar Warehouse he stages the great writer's final play. It's a work that predicted and captured the end of an era, but is timeless in its humanity, prescience, humour and pathos. The Cherry Orchard is Chekhov's masterpiece.

This edition was published to coincide with its world premiere at London's Donmar Warehouse in April 2024.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350501720
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/07/2024
Series:	Modern Plays
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.18(d)

About the Author

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian physician, dramatist and author, is considered to be one of the greatest writers of short stories and modern drama. Born in Taganrog, a port town near the Black Sea, he attended medical school at Moscow University. He began writing to supplement his income, writing short humorous sketches of contemporary Russian life. A successful literary careered followed, before his premature death of TB at the age of 44. He is best-remembered for his four dramatic masterpieces: The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904).

Benedict Andrews is an Australian poet, playwright, film-maker, and director of theatre and opera, now based in Reykjavík. Andrews has directed for theatres in both Australia and Europe. He is known for his versions of works by Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Jean Genet, and Tennessee Williams, as well as his stagings of contemporary writers such as David Harrower, Martin Crimp, Marius von Mayenburg, Caryl Churchill, and Sarah Kane. Andrews has been a regular guest at London's Young Vic, Sydney Theatre Company (STC), and Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney, the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin, and the National Theatre of Iceland in Reykjavik. His feature film Seberg -starring Kristen Stewart as Jean Seberg - had its world premiere at the 76th Venice International Film Festival, in August 2019.

What People are Saying About This

James Parer

"Carnicke's Cherry Orchard is direct, easily accessible to young American students, and mercifully free of all that blather that mucks up so much of the other versions that I know." --(James Parker, Late Professor of Theatre, Virginia Commonwealth University)

Editorial Reviews

Jean-Claude van Itallie's adaptation is splendid, colloquial without being cute, simple, moving, funny.

Village Voice

I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like this production on a stage before—I left the Beaumont exhilarated.

NY Times

...a new, faithful, very playable and gorgeous translation by Jean-Claude van Itallie.

NY Post

"Senelick . . . has done his job as scholar and translator nearly to perfection."

Weekly Standard

Frayn's translation, which strikes me as splendidly lucid and alive…will be acted again and again” —New Statesman

From the Publisher

"Mr. Karam’s plays aren’t tearful, but they are often about loss—of love, of health, of innocence—and the messy, haphazard, necessary ways we get on with our lives afterward . . . He specializes in painful comedies that really shouldn’t be as funny as they are. Karam is a mature writer, very much in command of his gifts."

New York Times

"The more you see Anton Chekhov’s final play, the weirder it seems . . . The Cherry Orchard contains distinctly bizarre touches: unexplained offstage noises, ominous portents of revolution, and a morbid ending that's nearly Beckettian . . . Adapter Stephen Karam layers American accents (racial and immigration anxieties) into his lean, accessible script."

Time Out Magazine

"Stephen Karam is among the very best of his generation of playwrights."

New York Magazine