General Introduction
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"The Cherry Orchard" portrays the declining fortunes of the Ranevskys, a landowning family, who are about to lose their estate and their beloved cherry orchard. Poor management, neglect, and impracticality have brought the family to the point of bankruptcy, but no one is able to act to head off the disaster. The suggestion of the practical businessman Lopakhin that the family chop down the orchard and build houses on the land is met with horror. For the Ranevskys, the orchard represents the pleasant past, before the mysterious forces of the changing times threatened their idyllic existence. The estate is finally sold from under the hapless family. Lopakhin buys the land and proceeds to carry out his plan to destroy the orchard and erect houses. As the family sadly prepares to depart, the sound of an axe chopping down a tree is heard from offstage.
The play, regarded as one of Chekhov's finest dramatic works, is both a penetrating study of the changing of life in Russia at the end of the 19th century. The stage portraits the Ranevskys, with their inability to do anything to save themselves, and of Lopakhin the representative of a new rising class in society, are masterpieces of dramatic creation.
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Performance Informations & Influences
"The Cherry Orchard" was written in 1903. The Cherry Orchard opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on Chekhov's birthday, January 17,1904. It was forbidden by the censor in 1906. After 1917, however, it became, alone with Gorki's The Lower Depths, the most popular play in Soviet Russia. A gala performance was given by the Moscow Art Theatre on January 17, 1944(on Chekhov's birthday), at which time Eva Le Gallienne and Joseph Schildkraut were performing the play in New York. The Moscow Art Company performed it in the United States in 1923-1924, to a total of 244 performances, the Chekov record in the United States.
Ward Morehouse called "The Cherry Orchard" (January 26, 1944) "a play of inaction ... crowded with pauses, sighs, chuckles, and irrelevancies. There is incessant prattling by minor characters." Robert Garland felt the deeper impact of the play: "It is, fundamentally, one of the most skillfully contrived and most heart-breaking comedies in the modern theatre." In fact, there are many digressions in the play, that is, many of the characters in it would say something that could not respond to the former dialogue. Although it seemed that everyone did not notice others with their response, they could talk very smoothly. The play draws an interesting sociological picture of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The old aristocracy and landowning gentry were becoming impoverished and many proved unable to cope with the changes taking place.
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Reference
International Dictionary of Theatre-1 Plays (p.123-25)
International Dictionary of Theatre-2 Playwrights (p.184-7)
Guide of Great Plays (p.142, p.147-8)
(External Links) Chekhov, 19th century Russian dramatist and short story writer, Introduction to Literature (Spring, 2000)