La Cerisaie

How directors choose to represent the cherry orchard of Chekov’s last play can be a reliable measure of the production’s overall treatment of theme. Imagined as a comedy by the playwright, first directed as a tragedy by Stanislavski (a decision with a lasting influence on the play’s production history), “The Cherry Orchard” tends to stand or fall (no pun intended) on the strength of that wood’s perceived presence in the character’s memories and the urgency of its metaphorical reality for the audience. If directors need not show a mass of budding branches for the production to be a success, to the extent that Chekov was himself profoundly moved by the beauty of a tree in flower – and sufficiently so to write the story of an aristocratic family’s wrenching separation from the orchard that witnessed generations of joys and pains – that stand of trees must manage to cast its shadow across the production.

Director Julie Brochen has imagined a “Cherry Orchard” all in glass and metal, evoking a kind of enclosed terrace from which the family might look upon its beloved landscape. In this way however, the orchard, and all its affective implications, is consequently placed very much outside the scope of the show’s preoccupations. These appear to revolve around the character of Lyubov, played by Jeanne Balibar as a kind of neurasthenic: weak, articulating with difficulty, and slow to react, all of which help explain her obliviousness to the pressing sale of the family estate but fail to develop its significance for her. The production places its emphasis on structure and system rather than metaphor, in the weighty, mechanical set built upon rotating disks and the 1930s era costumes. A final touch of sensitivity comes with the parting lines of Firs, the Ranevskaya’s former serf accidentally locked into the empty house, but it arrives too late. Lopakhin can chop the whole orchard down; its absence is only symptomatic of a general lack of feeling and depth.

To October 24, Tues-Sat, 8 pm, Sun, 3 pm, Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Place de l’Odéon, 6e, Mº Odéon, 10-24 euros, tel: 01.44.85.40.40.

Photo credit: Franck Beloncle