The Cherry Orchard – Young Vic – 25th November 2014
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Hello and welcome to these introductory notes to The Cherry Orchard, by Anton
Chekhov, in a new translation by Simon Stephens. It is directed by Katie Mitchell.
We’re looking forward to welcoming you to the Young Vic on Tuesday 25 th
November. The show begins at 7.30pm. If you’d like to explore the set and
costumes, come along to the touch tour about an hour before the performance.
Please contact the box office to confirm the starting time and to book your place on
020 7922 2922. The performance lasts for around two hours, with no interval.
We’ll repeat this introduction live in the theatre 15 minutes before the show, so we
can let you know of any last minute changes and you can check that your headset is
working. The show will be audio-described by Eleanor Margolies and Ruth James.
The Cherry Orchard was Chekhov’s last play. It was first performed at the Moscow
Arts Theatre in 1904, in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. Chekhov
described the play as a comedy. Stanislavski wrote to him, ‘This is not a comedy, not
a farce, as you wrote; it is a tragedy, whatever outlet for a better life you may have
offered in the last act… I hear you saying: ‘Wait a minute, but this is a farce…’ No,
for an ordinary person this is a tragedy.’
There are twelve main characters, plus three who make very brief appearances. In
this production, they wear clothes which might have been purchased from the high
street today, but the styles are restrained and the colours sombre. The effect is to
suggest a continuity with the past, rather than jarring modernity.
The play takes place on the estate of Lyubov Ranevskaya Gaev, an aristocratic
landowner. She’s a handsome woman of 51, with an oval face and dark brown hair
put up in a bun. She has a tall, statuesque figure but moves with girlish
impetuousness. When she first arrives from Paris, Lyubov wears a loose black and
white print dress, with a black shawl on top and a broad silver bangle on her left
wrist.
Lyubov’s brother is Leonid Gaev, tall, lean and stooping. His thick hair is grey and
the lower half of his once handsome face is lost in a cloud of grey beard and
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moustache. He wears a brown jacket with mismatched black trousers, and fingerless
gloves. Leonid often stands with his hands pushed into his jacket pockets, hunched
over or leaning on a wall as he talks in an endless stream.
Early in the play Leonid says that Lyubov’s daughter Anya is ‘just like her mother’.
Like Lyubov, Anya has shiny dark brown hair and an oval face, but Anya’s shorter
and slightly built. When she first appears, her hair is loose to her shoulders and she
is wearing a black and white dress that falls in soft handkerchief pleats to her calves.
She clutches her black overcoat around her; on the lapel is a large silver brooch.
Lyubov also has an adopted daughter, Varya, who has been acting as housekeeper.
Varya is small and thin and has a sharp, almost pinched face, her dark brown hair
parted in the centre and pulled back into a tight knob at the base of her head. She
wears a dark blue print knee-length dress with a black cardigan and often hugs
herself as if cold.
Travelling with the family from Paris is the German governess Charlotta Ivanovna.
She’s slim, with a wavy light brown bob, and self-possessed, seemingly unaffected
by the actions and emotions of the others. Charlotta’s clothes are stylish, sometimes
rather masculine: at first, a long, loose white jacket, and later, trousers and a green
fitted waistcoat over a white shirt, with a rifle slung over her shoulder. Dressed for
travel, she wears a round black hat and grey overcoat with a huge grey striped scarf
wrapped over her shoulders, and a leather handbag slung crosswise across her
body.
A number of visitors and family friends wait to greet the returning family.
The first visitor we meet is Alexander Lopakhin, a businessman in his forties, son of
a serf. He’s tall and strongly built, with a fleshy face that tends to look petulant. His
glossy black hair is neatly trimmed, and he wears an expensive black pinstriped suit
and black bow tie. Alexander often stands in the background, waiting impatiently to
make his point.
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Peter Trofimov, former tutor to Lyubov’s son Grisha, has glasses and a wispy
beard. He’s in his thirties with thinning hair worn long, flopping to one side. His
clothes suggest the eternal student: a brown corduroy jacket over a grey t-shirt and
loose trousers, and later a long knitted scarf. Peter is restless, his wrists resting on
his knees and his legs jiggling whenever he sits down.
Simeon Yepikhodov, a clerk for the estate, is a tall, gangling young man, with a
handsome face but the clumsiness of a teenager who hasn’t stopped growing.
Simeon wears a dark suit and tie and polished boots of chestnut brown leather that
have a pronounced squeak.
Another visitor to the house is a fellow landowner, Boris Simeonov-Pishchik. He’s
corpulent, with a bald head and shining face, and wears a black suit. Boris falls
asleep given the slightest chance.
The three servants left to the family are Dunyasha, Yasha and Firs. The first we
meet is Dunyasha, the housemaid. She’s in her late teens, her long blonde hair
swept into a bun on top of her head. She wears a black knee-length skirt and jacket
with a white shirt and surprisingly high-heeled shoes with dark tights
Dunyasha is very taken with Yasha, a young manservant also in his early twenties
who arrives from Paris. He’s dressed in short black jacket , white shirt and narrow
black trousers, and his dark hair is closely shaved at the sides. His intense dark eyes
peer out from his bullet-shaped head, always looking out for the main chance.
The last servant is Firs, a loyal, very old man, who has served the family for his
entire life and is devoted to them. Grey-haired, his back is now bent over parallel
with the floor, and he shuffles along, using a stick; nearly deaf but refusing to rest.
Firs wears an ancient black suit with white gloves and a scarf.
We also meet the station master, Lev and Ivan, the post office clerk, who are
guests at a party, and a man described only as a ‘wanderer’. He’s bearded and
wears a knitted cap with a thick brown jacket and heavy boots.
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Set
The seating for this production is a traditional bank of steeply raked benches facing
the stage, which is framed by a proscenium arch. Before the play begins, the stage
is hidden by a black screen, lowered and raised at each change of scene, each
change accompanied by the sound of a train passing. The sound of the trains is not
the only effect – there is a soundscape throughout the production, that ebbs and
flows, sometimes very prominent and discordant or menacing, but sometimes just in
the background.
Once the screen rises, a large, once-elegant, high-ceilinged room is revealed, taking
up the whole of the stage. This is the nursery. The cream paint of the panelled walls
is peeling, with stained patches in various places. In the middle of the panels are
small double wall-lights, with some of their fringed shades missing. The sparse
furniture is dilapidated and mismatched. The floor is polished parquet, bare of rugs
or carpet. Against the walls are cast-iron radiators and a few tables. High above
hang three lights with plain round yellow lampshades, that shed a shadowy, warm
light.
There are three wooden doors into the nursery. The entrance from the outside world
is at the front, on the right. Beyond it, there is an unseen hall and ballroom.
Immediately opposite this door, on the far left, is the door to the rest of the house –
the kitchen, the billiard room and various bedrooms. This straight line between the
two doors allows characters to rush straight through the nursery. At the back, on the
right, is the door to Anya’s bedroom
The room has a narrow waist in the centre, with the walls jutting in to create a slight
division between the front and back. An upright piano stands against the inset wall
on the left, facing a tall glass-fronted bookcase on the opposite side.
At the back of the room, in the centre of the back wall, there is a child-sized metalframed bed with a white mattress and a bedside table with a lamp and a vase of
flowers on it. A few faded paintings and drawings hang on the wall above, and a
large butterfly net and a sledge lean against the wall. There are other wooden toys
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scattered about the room, as if discarded in mid-play: a tambourine, skittles and
wooden blocks.
At the front, to the left, there is a small sitting area with a couple of low tapestrycovered armchairs and a footstool, as well as several hard-backed chairs, placed
around a small round table.
On the opposite side, by the door out to the hall, there are two wooden chairs, a
scooter and a wooden toychest.
Two large windows are unseen, perceived only by their effect on the room. At the
back, on the left wall, there are large French windows leading out into the garden. At
the beginning of the play these windows are covered by curtains. Between the stage
and the audience, another set of windows is imagined, looking out onto the cherry
orchard – as if we in the audience are sitting in the orchard. External shutters have
been drawn down over both the windows. Hand-operated winders, fixed to the walls,
are turned to open the shutters with a loud clanking noise. Light then streams into
the room, relieving the gloom with the outlines of the windows clearly delineated on
the floor.
Cast
Lyubov is played by Kate Duchêne
Leonid Gaev - Angus Wright
Anya - Catrin Stewart
Varya - Natalie Klamar
Charlotta Ivanovna - Sarah Malin
The visitors are
Alexander Lopakhin - Dominic Rowan
Peter Trofimov - Paul Hilton
Simeon Yepikhodov - Hugh Skinner
Boris Simeonov-Pishchik - Stephen Kennedy
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The servants are
Yasha - Tom Mothersdale
Dunyasha - Sarah Ridgeway
Firs - Gawn Grainger
The other visitors are
The Station Master - Peter Hobday
The Post office clerk - Cavan Clarke
The Wanderer - Andy Cresswell
Creative team
The Music was written by Paul Clark,
Sound is by Gareth Fry,
The Lighting is by James Farncombe,
Costumes are by Sussie Juhlin-Wallén,
The Design is by Vicki Mortimer
And the Director is Katie Mitchell.
That’s the end of the introductory notes. If you have any queries or would like to
book for the touch tour, please contact the Box Office on 020 7922 2922.