The Cherry Orchard at the Olivier Theatre starring Zoe Wanamaker – Review

A review of The Cherry Orchard at the Olivier Theatre (National Theatre) starring Zoe Wanamaker and Conleth Hill

It was the great theatre critic, Kenneth Tynan, who when asked which of Anton Chekhov’s quartet of masterpieces he liked best, answered, ‘the last one I saw.’ I know exactly what he meant. The last one I saw, just days ago, was The Cherry Orchard which time cannot wither nor custom style its infinite variety – even in a new version by Australian Andrew Upton better suited to the Ozzie outback than the Russian countryside.

Though ‘nudged’ (according to a programme note) from the play’s 1904 setting to 1905, the year in which the Bloody Sunday massacre outside the Winter Palace would began to sow the seeds of the 1917 Revolution, Upton anachronistically coarsens his adaptation to nearer our own time with expressions such as ‘you whiffy crap artist’, ‘bloody hell’, ‘listen up’, ‘oh bollocks!’ and ‘I’ve told you a thousand frigging bloody, frigging times’ – uttered in exasperation by the peasant-turnedcapitalistic landowner Lopahin as he vents his frustration on the cherry orchard’s near bankrupt owner, Madame Ranevskaya, who stubbornly refuses to take his advice and sell the estate to pay off her gargantuan debts.

The result of this coarsening of the text while adding a discombobulating comic tone to the proceedings – which, it could be argued, is in keeping with Chekhov’s insistence that his play is a comedy – nevertheless undermines the heart-breaking, elegaic quality that is so essential to any great Chekhov production.

The scene towards the very end of the play, in which Ranevskaya’s adopted daughter Varya hopes Lopahan will propose to her, should break your heart, but it doesn’t; nor does the play’s final moments, when the old retainer Firs is inadvertently left to die alone in the abandoned house as Ranevskaya and her family finally leave the estate for the last time.

Yet, while director Howard Davies and Upton seem deliberately to have desentimentalised this great text, the production nevertheless thrives on a cluster of beautifully observed performances. Zoe Wanamaker is absolutely splendid as the feckless Ranevskaya, who, though the architect of her own financial downfall, and still harbouring guilt for her drowned, ten year-old son, is a loving mother to her daughters Anya and Varya, and a caring sister to her useless but endearing brother Gaev (James Laurenson excellent).

Conleth Hill is superb as the caring, but frustrated landowner whose love and concern for Ranevskaya and her doomed brood is wonderfully conveyed in his contradictory mood swings.

There’s fine work, too, from Charity Wakefied and Claudie Blakley as Anya and Varya, from Mark Bonnar as the eternal student Trofimov, and Kenneth Cranham as the ageing butler Firs. I couldn’t quite work out the architecture of Bunny Christie’s crumbling wooden set – whose windows remained frosted in the height of summer. Nor did I feel it imparted any sense of the beauty that made the cherry orchard so speacial to Ranevskaya and her family.

Still, it’s an imperishable play and a good start to the National’s £12 Travelex season.

CLIVE HIRSCHHORN. Courtesy of This Is London magazine.

LINKS

Book tickets to The Cherry Orchard at the National Theatre

The Cherry Orchard tickets at the National Theatre starring Zoe Wanamaker

Zoe Wanamaker and Kenneth Cranham star in Olivier Award winner Howard Davies’ new production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the National Theatre.

Sheridan Smith to leave Legally Blonde

West End star Sheridan Smith has announced the date of her departure from hit West End show Legally Blonde at the Savoy Theatre in London.

Confirming the date via her Twitter page, Smith will leave the show on 23 October 2010. Producers of the show are auditioning a number of actresses for the lead part of Elle Woods in the stage adaptation of the hit movie Legally Blonde.

Sheridan Smith is best known for her TV roles including Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps, Grown Ups, Love Soup, Benidorm, The Royle Family and Gavin and Stacey.

She has recently been filming a one-act Chekhov play for Sky Arts alongside Gavin and Stacey cast mate Matthew Horne. The play, The Proposal, is part of a short series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the playrwight, to be broadcast this November.

Sheridan also performed recently in a workshop version of a new musical based on Helen Fielding’s book Bridget Jones’s Diary, with music by Lily Allen. Stephen Daldry, director of the film and stage version of  Billy Elliot, will helm the project if it goes ahead. The show would also reunite Daldry with producers of the Bridget Jones and Billy Elliot films and stage shows Working Title Films, plus choreographer Peter Darling.

Book tickets to Legally Blonde at the Savoy Theatre in London

London Theatre – 2009 Preview

If theatre mirrors life then you would expect 2009 to be a bad year for the performing arts in London: economic downturns and credit crunches sound like gloomy news for our discretionary entertainment spending. But West End theatre box office figures have kept on going up in recent years, and the huge number of new productions sailing into town during 2009 could mean that Theatreland manages to buck the trend.

THE GREAT REVIVAL

The RSC, National Theatre, Donmar and Old Vic dominated straight drama in the West End in 2008, and they haven’t finished yet. Big hitters coming to town include Judi Dench and Rosamund Pike in the Donmar in the West End’s Madame de Sade at the Wyndhams; Jude Law offering us his, hopefully fighting fit, Hamlet; Gillian Anderson in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Rachel Weisz in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar Warehouse; Helen Mirren making her return to the London stage in Phaedra at the National Theatre; and a number of crowd-pleasing revivals at the Old Vic, no more so than Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s hugely successful play starring Andrea Corr, and Sam Mendes directing Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, both featuring Ethan Hawke, Simon Russell Beale and Sinead Cusack.

STAR POWER

Other stars shimmying into town include Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Haymarket, Ken Stott and Hayley Atwell in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge at the Duke of York’s, heavy-hitter Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear at the Young Vic, and Antony Sher giving us his Prospero in the RSC’s The Tempest. The Gavin and Stacey phenomenon continues to roll on, as we see Joe Orton’s delicious romp Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Trafalgar Studios starring Gavin himself, Matthew Horne, alongside Imelda Staunton; whilst Gavin’s onscreen Mum Alison Steadman plays a barking Leeds housewife in Alan Bennett’s Enjoy at the Gielgud Theatre.

NEW PLAYS

The sharp eyed amongst you will notice that all of these plays are revivals rather than new work, keeping audiences firmly in their comfort zones. That said, new plays may be thin on the ground but not absent all together, with the National offering up Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice, following two lovers across four centuries, and Samuel Adamson’s Mrs Affleck set in the 1950s. Jez Butterworth has two new plays in pre-production, with comedy Parlour Song at the Almeida and Jerusalem at the Royal Court. Also at the Royal Court, Mark Ravenhill will bring his new play Over There. Plus Hollywood man of the moment James McAvoy is to star in Richard Greenberg’s acclaimed play Three Days of Rain at the Apollo, and at The Old Vic Richard Dreyfuss headlines the world premiere of American playwright Joe Sutton’s new play Complicit, directed by Kevin Spacey.

“BASED ON A FILM”

In musical theatre, 2009 promises to be a year of great big fabulous and familiar shows, surely enough to see us through the dark times? And it’s no coincidence that many of them are based on hugely successful films.

Oliver! will be well and truly steaming ahead through 2009 at the Drury Lane Theatre Royal with Rowan Atkinson and Jodie Prenger; La Cage Aux Folles will continue camping it up at the Playhouse but with Graham Norton taking over from Douglas Hodge; and at the Adelphi Theatre Lee Mead will bow out of Joseph to be replaced by Gareth Gates.

Jason Donovan will be donning the wigs and lip gloss to take us on an Australian power-mince in Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Palace Theatre. And Sister Act at the London Palladium will be doing its best to recreate the fun of the film, helped along by Whoopi Goldberg as co-producer. And not quite a musical but as good as, Calendar Girls the stage play will up the naked flesh quotient in the West End, starring Patricia Hodge and Lynda Bellingham at the Noel Coward Theatre.

Also in musicals-land the power of reality TV continues to wield its power, with Gareth Gates going into Joseph at the Adelphi Theatre, the X-factor’s Niki Evans continuing in Blood Brothers at the Phoenix, Jodie Prenger in Oliver at the Drury Lane, and Ray Quinn and Danny Bayne in Grease – joined for a limited time by the legendary Jimmy Osmond.

KIDS RULE

Kids should also see a good year in 2009 with an enormous live theatrical production of Walking with Dinosaurs coming to a stadium near you, and War Horse transfers from its successful run at the National Theatre to the New London Theatre.

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