The Belvoir Street Theatre foyer before a show is a great place to be. There is such a buzz of expectancy, as the countdown is on till we are called upstairs.
Opening nights at Belvoir make it even more special.
There was, however, one opening night, years ago, which didn’t go so well.
Actress Rachel Ward, long before she became an acclaimed film director, spotted acerbic Sydney Morning Herald theatre critic Bob Evans amongst the crowd in the foyer.
Very casually Ward went over to Evans and poured her glass of wine over him, and then walked away. I suspect Rachel did what many hard working theatre practitioners had been wanting to do to Evans for a very long time.
The craft of reviewing theatre is a pretty tricky thing. I have been a fringe theatre reviewer on the Sydney theatre scene for thirty years now. I believe that I lean much more towards being kind than scathing in my reviews.
I would be highly surprised if someone would come up to me in a foyer and pour a glass of wine over me.
I am hoping that there is not going to be a glass of wine poured over me after this review.
I just have to say that I could not bear Eamon Flack’s current production of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s 1903 play ‘The Cherry Orchard’.
I first came across ‘The Cherry Orchard’ when I studied it under the tutelage of legendary theatre and academic designer John Senczuk, as part of a Bachelor Of Creative Arts degree at Wollongong University.
‘The Cherry Orchard’ was Chekhov’s last play and is considered a classic. It is also his most performed work.
Over the years I have seen a number of productions of the play, starting with Des Davis’ production for the now sadly defunct Theatre South.
I’m just looking at my much thumbed theatre reference book, ‘The Drama 100′, a ranking of the greatest plays of all time’, written by Daniel S. Burt,
Chekhov’s play ranks number 12, one short of Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece ‘A Doll’s House’.
It is interesting that these two plays sit so close together in ranking. Ibsen and Chekhov are considered the Fathers of Modern Drama.
Both these classic plays are about societies at the point of huge social change.
Ibsen’s play is about Nora, a woman who leaves her marriage, separating from her husband Torvald and their young children. ‘A Dolls House’ is set in the late 19th Century. At this time, for a woman to leave her husband and children, it was not just a radical thing to do, it was unthinkable.
At the climax of the play, Nora tells Torvald:
” I believe that, before all else, I’m a human being, no less than you- or anyway, I ought to try to become one. I know the majority think you’re right, Torvald, and plenty of books agree with you, too. But I can’t go on believing what the majority says, or what’s written in books. i have to think over things myself and try to understand them.”
A contemporary reviewer, after seeing the play, wrote, “When Nora slammed the door shut on her marriage, walls shook in a thousand houses.”
Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’ sees Russia on the cusp of revolution. The aristocrats have lived life on the hog for centuries but their time is coming fast to an end. There is a burgeoning middle class and they want plenty of what the aristocrats have been having.
Lubov Ranevskaya and her family have a big mortgage on their large country estate, the main feature of which is a resplendent cherry orchard. They can’t pay the mortgage payments, and the property is sold from under them.
Critic John Gassner observed, “Chekhov maintained a sensitive equilibrium between regret for the loss of old values and jubilation over the dawn of a new day. And it is the quality of detachment that enabled him to equalise pathos and humour, and to render a probing account of the contradictions of human character.”
Chekhov himself wrote, “A play should be written, “he argued, “in which people arrive, go away, have dinner, talk about the weather, and play cards. Life must be exactly as it is, and people as they are – not on stilts. Let everything on the stage be just as complicated, and at the same time just as simple, as it is in life.”
Burt writes, “Stripped of the usual dramatic action, Chekhov’s plays locate their interest in the gradual revelation of character and circumstance, “in all the greyness of their everyday life.”
‘The Cherry Orchard’ ends with the weary old servant Firs, wonderfully played by Peter Carroll, locked in the mansion, after everyone else has left. He is left to die a house filled with memories.
The final text to the play reads:
Firs : It’s locked. They’ve gone away. (sits on a sofa). They’ve forgotten about me…Never mind, I’ll sit here..And Leonid Andreyevitch will have gone in a light overcoat instead of his fur coat..(sighs anxiously) I didn’t see..Oh, these young people! (Mumbles something that cannot be understood) Life’s gone as i if I’d never lived. (Lying down) I’ll lie down…You’ve no strength left in you, nothing left at all..Oh you..bungler! (He lies immobile).
(The distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, of a breaking string, dying away sadly. Silence follows it, and only the sound is heard, some way away in the orchard, of the axe falling on the trees.)
Curtain.
The two Fathers of Modern Drama, Ibsen and Chekhov had very specific sonic conclusions written in to their plays. With ‘A Doll’s House’ it was the sound of Nora slamming the front door to the family home.
With ‘The Cherry Orchard’ it was the haunting sound of the start of the cherry orchard being chopped down.
Eamon Flack’s production leaves out this final, lyrical note. It is Chekhov’s very deliberate, final brushstroke to his masterpiece.
Of all theatre practitioners, directors should know how important a playwright’s ‘touches’ are.
Just unforgivable.
Imagine Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ without Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not To Be speech’, or ‘As You Like It’ without Jacques ‘Seven Ages Of Man speech’?!
The sound of the cherry orchards being chopped is that integral to ‘The Cherry Orchard’.
In 2014 Flack staged a memorable production of Tennessee Williams classic ‘The Glass Menagerie’, (ranked number 57 in Burt’s book) at Belvoir. There was no tweaking of the writing.
So, why now? Why with Anton Chekhov?
What’s next? Tweak the ending to Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting For Godot’.
God help us!
THE CHERRY ORCHARD is playing upstairs at Belvoir Street Theatre, 25 Belvoir Street, Surry Hills until 27 June, 2021.
Production photography Brett Boardman.