Description

This is the script used by Peter Brook in his acclaimed production of this play, one of Chekhov’s finest works. The Ranyevskayas, a landowning family, are at the point of bankruptcy and are about to lose their estate. Lopakhin, a businessman, suggests they chop down the orchard and build houses. The family is horrified; the orchard represents the pleasant past, before the mysterious forces of the changing times threatened their idyllic existence. Lopakhin buys the land and proceeds to carry out his plan to destroy the orchard. Though Chekhov was dying when he wrote this play, he didn’t lose his perspective on existence and the people who endure it. Terrible, inexplicable things happen to the characters in The Cherry Orchard, but they do not give up. They simply trudge on with a dogged faith in the prospects for happiness. Area staging.