THE CHERRY ORCHARD.

Tour

THE CHERRY ORCHARD
by Anton Chekhov new version by Samuel Adamson

Oxford Stage Company on tour to 5 July 2003
Runs: 2hr 45min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 July at Oxford Playhouse

A classic comes up like new.Dominic Dromgoole's production goes for comedy and youth. It's packed with comic moments squeaky shoe-d Yepikhodov, jokey Charlotta, Gaev whose behaviour's most ridiculous when he thinks he's most profound. Even Ranevskaya, whose cherries get the chop, behaves with a moody inconsistency more comic than tragic.

Geraldine James keeps the character's impact in an unusually ensemble-focused production. There's a comic tinge to her sudden bursts of tears, and sudden mood swings they go with the abstraction that prevents her or her brother concentrating on what matters. Emotional self-indulgence is the enemy to living a purposeful life. Such is the business of comedy.

James's Lyuba clearly still has plenty of life stretching ahead. And, for all his greying hair, Brian Protheroe's Gaev is a lithe, fidgety figure. Protheroe doesn't catch all the mental jumps behind Gaev's sudden switches into billiard-game mode - who does? but makes clear it's his default mode, a social cover-up as his sentences trail off.

Comic awkwardness runs throughout. Accident-prone Yepikhodov, obviously. Michael Matus gives a portrayal at once funny and humanly sympathetic, his bewildered acceptance of multiple clumsiness warming the comedy.

Embarrassment spreads far wider, incorporating serio-comic moments like Ranevskaya's profligacy with money, culminating in the serious moment when Lopakhin and Varya fail to express their mutual love, wasting their last chance of happiness. This is Chekhovian sadness working through a comic context, not in a sentimental pall.

The only escapees from embarrassment are the innocent Anya and, at the other end of life, the family servant Firs. Trevor Martin's firm stance, his contemptuous glance at the opportunistic young servant Yasha as he refuses to take his old bones to bed and leave the mistress to Yasha's care, show a security in his role, making sense of his nostalgia for serfdom.

Rachel Blues' design, with hanging strips of cherry blossom, probably worked better at Riverside Studios than on Oxford's proscenium stage though the single bookcase, bare-shelved in the final act, is telling. If the production overall lacks the larger resonance the very best achieve, this is the limitation of its success, its lightness, freshness and clarity.

Yermolai Lopakhin: Trevor Fox
Dunyasha: Lucy Gaskell
Yepikhodov: Michael Matus
Firs: Trevor Martin
Lyubov Ranevskaya: Geraldine James
Anya: Jemma Powell
Varya: Mairead McKinley
Leonid Gaev: Brian Protheros
Charlotta: Abigail McKern
Pishchik: John Dougall
Yasha: Francis Lee
Petya Trofimov: Mark Bonnar
Passer-by/Station Master: Paul Rainbow

Director: Dominic Dromgoole
Designer: Rachel Blues
Lighting: Natasha Chivers
Sound: Tim Mascall
Composer/Musical Director: Mick Sands
Choreographer: Charlotte Conquest
Magic adviser: Richard Leigh

2003-07-08 17:37:43