The Cherry Orchard

Based on motifs from Anton Chekhov's play

The Cherry Orchard

20+

NB! Smoking on stage.

NB! The performance contains scenes of violence and sounds reminiscent of war.

After spending several years in France, Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya returns to Russia with her seventeen-year-old daughter Anya, to her estate... which may soon be sold because of debts, as Ranevskaya practically has no money left. The merchant Lopakhin offers his solution to the problem: cut down the cherry orchard, divide the land into plots, and rent them out. But to Ranevskaya, this orchard is the embodiment of her past life and filled with precious memories, and she is not ready to part with it...

Konstantin Stanislavski once recalled that Anton Chekhov had once announced that he had found a wonderful title for the play, “The Cherry Tree Orchard.” However, only a week later the playwright changed it to “The Cherry Orchard.” “At first I did not even understand what was being talked about,” Stanislavski wrote, “but Anton Pavlovich continued to savor the title of the play, emphasizing the gentle sound in the word ‘cherry,’ as if by means of it he were trying to stroke the former beautiful but now unnecessary life, which he destroyed with tears in his play. This time I understood the subtlety - ‘The Cherry Tree Orchard’ is a practical, commercial orchard that brings in income. Such an orchard is needed even now. But ‘The Cherry Orchard’ brings in no income at all; it preserves within itself and in its blooming whiteness the poetry of the former life of the gentry. Such an orchard grows and blooms for the capricious eyes of spoiled aesthetes. It is a pity to destroy it, but it is necessary..."

The performance by Viesturs Kairišs is about the part of modern society that has lingered too long in Chekhov's “cherry orchard,” and about the consequences of that. It is a performance about the role of Russian pop culture in the catastrophe of modern Russia and the responsibility of its representatives for everything that is happening. Viesturs Kairišs says: “Chekhov is a value of world culture, and in his play the tragedy of modern Russia and Europe can be seen in a visionary way. This once again confirms that art does not exist outside politics.”