Eight twentieth-century Russian plays Book

"Life has gone by as if I never lived"
Anton Chekhov ~~ THE CHERRY ORCHARD



I've read THE CHERRY ORCHARD many times, but for the first time I had the realization that it was written by a man who knew he was dying. The dying Chekhov realized he was part of a dying breed in a dying country. And while he had no idea what lie ahead, he knew change was coming to Mother Russia.

What matters in Chekhov's last play, and in Trevor Griffiths translation, is way that chance affects our lives; the unpredictability of our lives. In The Cherry Orchard such seeming insignificances dramatically occur as: an inopportune remark about the weather; an errant stick with which Varya bashes Lopakhin on the head; many social blunders and the comedy/tragedy of humankind summons large on Chekhov's canvass. Additionally, we discover grief over the death of a child and deep concerns over the fate of a family estate with its famous, obsolete cherry orchard as well as varying objectives and ideologies over the need for money to exist. Chekhov called his play a 'theatre of mood with submerged life in the text'. The Cherry Orchard may have more meaning today than it has since it was first premiered.



The destruction of the cherry orchard has less to do with the unhappy removal of something once cherished, than the fact that it remaining is blocking progress on many levels. Even Madame Ranevskaya lives entirely in the past and holds onto nothing in the present. The play is also about the decline of one era and the unknown onset of another. Much like the world we live in today.