The Cherry Orchard Reviews: critics praise Kristin Scott Thomas, but split on Stephen Mangan

"As Ranevskaya, Scott Thomas crackles with unstable energy."

"Chekhov called The Cherry Orchard a comedy, and Ian Rickson’s production, in Conor McPherson’s adaptation, plays it as one"

"They can’t afford their mortgages or pay their bills, and they remain stubbornly beholden to their own truth. The result is a play of grotesques, each person caught in their own life and story and talking at one another rather than to one another. "

"Stephen Mangan’s puts on a great turn."

"Peter Wight’s Gaev has the confidence and timbre of a man used to being listened to."

"Vinette Robinson’s Varya is a bundle of twitches, anxious and nervy, played very well."

" Anastasia Martin’s Anya establishes herself with real stage presence, but she is so stern and odd that I wasn’t sure it quite worked."

"There an absolutely storming performance – dare I say career best – from the perennially underestimated Stephen Mangan as Yermolai Lopakhin."

"Reliable old master of naturalism Ian Rickson with a typically elegant take on the... play."

"Adapting playwright Conor McPherson cranks up both the bitter and the sweet as he massages the plot and dialogue for some big laughs"

"Karl Johnson’s delightfully OTT old codger servant Firs, who is mad as a hatter and swears like a trooper"

"Biggest name Scott Thomas is very good as the bright, brittle Ranevska, whose inability to adapt to the times often feels like a matter of stubborn choice rather than actual inability to change."

"Displaying her gift for clenched emotion (winningly evident as MI5 boss Diana Taverner in Apple TV’s Slow Horses), [Scott Thomas] stamps her mark on the superficially carefree, inwardly agonised heroine, Ranevskaya."

"The low-born local businessman Lopakhin, brilliantly played by Stephen Mangan with sheepish charm and evident inner conflict"

"McPherson honours Chekhov’s chamber music of addled minds, frayed nerves, rampant eccentricity and loneliness, as conversations dart and drift."

"More disconcerting is the understatement at the end. Ranevskaya’s expected anguished outburst (rendered in Michael Frayn’s venerated translation as “My life, my youth, my happiness – farewell!”) doesn’t materialise."

"Ian Rickson’s West End revival, in a new adaptation by Conor McPherson that doesn’t stint on the poetry or the crudity, goes for clarity and comedy but turns out to be more subversive than it initially appears."

"Kristin Scott Thomas surpasses her acclaimed Arkadina in The Seagull for the same director at the Royal Court then on Broadway in 2007/8, as a riveting Ranevskaya, albeit not necessarily the one we might’ve expected."

"Mangan is equally memorable as Lopakhin... he’s awkward, chummy but with a brutal edge, the humiliations of childhood poverty near the surface despite his adult wealth. He’s also uncommonly funny."

"There’s not a false note in any of the supporting performances."

"Rickson’s direction is masterful, alive to every nuance, confidently embracing the dualities in Chekhov’s text"

"McPherson’s script is salty and smart."

"An old house swallows up life after life with a pitiless burp in Ian Rickson’s wonderfully claustrophobic staging of Anton Chekhov’s 1904 classic The Cherry Orchard."

"Kristin Scott Thomas plays lady of the house Ranevskaya with a compelling kind of apathy... She knows it’s all going down the pan, and she also knows that someone else will deal with the excrement."

"Mangan feels palpably damaged, still the lost peasant boy who walked miles on bloodied feet, in awe of this grand house and too ready to mistake Ranevskaya’s absentminded kindness for something more healing."

"Vinette Robinson brings an engaging, trembling neuroticism to the role, recoiling from her controlling mother’s attempt at a hug like she’s been burnt."

"Conor McPherson’s translation is full of forthright, biting lines"

"Set designer Chloe Lamford creates a pale-walled, crumbling mansion, too bland to bear the weight of meaning that everyone insists on investing in it."

"This determinedly unshowy production is missing a little splendour"

"The drama never quite enters dark or tragic territory."

"Kristin Scott Thomas, who brings a hard-edged modernity that you believe in. She feels of our time, despite the references to dachas and peasants, and could be an upper-middle-class Chelsea mother or minister’s wife, stewing in regret and an unfulfilled life."

"Her [Scott Thomas] performance is full of subtle inflection, biting her nails with worry, switching on the smiles and warmth as required."

"He [Mangan]... always stays something of an overgrown and intimidated schoolboy in the face of this family. It’s an interestingly powerless interpretation, though only half convincing."

"The atmosphere of absurdity and pettiness works well"

As the wayward landowner Ranevskaya, Scott Thomas conveys a persuasive portrait of a woman who is driven by her own whims and conceits.

"This version of Chekhov’s drama, adapted by Conor McPherson, doesn’t quite land with full force at the Harold Pinter"

"Stephen Mangan, who smiles and smiles but seldom gives us much of a sense of the anguish stirring underneath."

"There are incidental pleasures, chief among them Karl Johnson’s decrepit servant Firs. He rattles around the family property, spitting venom in all directions"

"There is sometimes an emptiness to her [Scott Thomas'] eyes that is quite chilling, as if she is living her real life inside her head."