The Cherry Orchard

 I love the Donmar as a theatre, even when, as on this occasion, I am in the back row of the circle in the horrid high seats.  And with this production, in the round, and with the lights kept up, implicating us all in the events on stage, there is even more opportunity for people watching than usual.  I was particularly taken with the woman who held the programme up to the side of her face for the whole of the first half, then kept a scarf wrapped over her nose and mouth for most of the second.  Was there a bad smell?  Did she have toothache? And of course there were always the few who looked like they were dropping off.

So what about the actual play?  Well this is a radical rethink, with a hippy feel and significant rework of the text, making it much swearier and up to date in general.  And it had lots of music added, particularly in the second half, plus a conscious effort to involve the audience in the action, to the extent of getting audience members up on stage.  The  individual performances are all good - I was particularly keen to see Adeel Akhtar who did a great job as Yermolai, the up and coming man who sees himself as the only realist in the group of dissolute, if sweetly clueless aristocrats down on their luck.  

So far so good, and with five star reviews I should be full of praise right?  Sadly all that promise didn’t quite work out that way for me.  This was a seriously different version, and a bit arty-farty too, all of which I would usually love.  And with modern parallels really clearly drawn, so much that there was a very worthy Radio 4 type round of applause after Pyotr’s (Daniel Monks)  barnstorming speech.  But… I found the pace not just languid but snail like, giving me far too many opportunities to drift into watching the audience instead and losing the thread of what was happening on stage.  And for whatever reason I found I really didn’t care much what happened to these people.  Philistine I accept I might be, but this wasn’t the production to turn my mild appreciation of Chekov into love.