Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard

A study of the performance history of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.

James N. Loehlin (Author)

9780521825931, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 September 2006

262 pages, 13 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 1.6 cm, 0.45 kg

"Loehlin provides a detailed and through analysis of the text."
-Nicholas G. Zekulin, Canadian Slavonic Papers

Chekhov's masterpiece, about a Russian family losing its ancestral home, combines a lament for a vanishing past with a hopeful dream of the future. In the century since its first performance, The Cherry Orchard has undergone a wide range of conflicting interpretations: tragic and comic, naturalistic and symbolic, reactionary and radical. Beginning with the 1904 premiere at Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, this study traces the performance history of one of the landmark plays of the modern theatre. Considering the work of such directors as Anatoly Efros, Giorgio Strehler, Peter Brook, and Peter Stein, Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard explores the way different artists, periods and cultures have reinvented Chekhov's poignant comedy of failure and hope.

Introduction
1. The Cherry Orchard: text and performance
2. The Moscow Art Theatre production, 1904
3. Russian and Soviet performances, 1904–53
4. The Cherry Orchard in English: early productions
5. The Cherry Orchard at mid-century: Barrault, Saint-Denis, Strehler
6. Radical revisions, 1975–7
7. Brook and Stein, 1981–97
8. The Cherry Orchard after one hundred years
Works cited.

Subject Areas: Theatre studies [AN]