As audience members shuffle into their seats, I gaze at the grand, charcoal-grey room constructed on the stage, standing as proudly as the living room of any great country house. A gorgeous red velvet curtain hangs centre-stage in the Black Box Theatre, Galway, while a lone figure is seen sitting back on a rocking chair.
As the lights dim, the audience is sucked into the world of Lyubov Ranevskaya – wonderfully performed by Derbhle Crotty – which is rapidly crumbling around her. Ranevskaya has just returned from Paris to her native Russia, only to find that her family’s financial problems, which she’d hoped to escape from, have amplified tenfold. As her family drowns in debt, everything familiar is being swept from beneath her feet.
Druid director Garry Hynes ensures this production is an ode to Tom Murphy, who wrote this adaptation of The Cherry Orchard. This is the first major production of his work since Murphy’s death in 2018. In collaboration with Serpent Productions, NEP Broadcasting Group and Element Pictures, Druid is also the first Irish theatre company to oversee the recording and live-streaming of a production from the Black Box Theatre in Galway into cinemas across Ireland, the UK and, later, worldwide.
Although set in a time long gone, its themes are chillingly contemporary, as it discusses the rise of gentrification, and how it has the capacity to make certain people and break others. Neither urban nor rural Ireland has escaped unscathed from rising housing costs and property being sold and subsequently re-sold for even higher prices. This is ominously reflected in The Cherry Orchard, albeit in a different setting. Despite the ultimately moving story, the play is kept relatively upbeat through Chekov’s juxtaposition of scenes of comedy and witty dialogue with an increasingly dire situation.
The acting is seamless, alternating between making the audience laugh or having everyone’s hearts twinge with sorrow – or both, on many occasions. However, accents are inconsistent at times and this does take me out of the otherwise vivid world created onstage. It is difficult to keep an audience constantly engaged with the straightforward plot of the Chekhov play and despite an admirable effort, some scenes drag slightly.
The choreography of scene changes by the performers however, is smooth and engaging. Helen Norton provides sublime comic relief as Charlotta, alongside the complicated but highly amusing love triangle between the maid Dunyasha, the clerk Yepikhodov and the servant Yasha, played by Megan Cusak, Peter Daly and Ian-Lloyd Anderson respectively. While the idea of love is explored in various ways, it does not seem to conquer all in this play, like money, and the over-sophisticated primal instinct to survive as decadently as possible seem to. The beautiful costumes curated by Francis O’Connor and Doreen McKenna help transport the audience into this by-gone era from the first half of the twentieth century.
If you’re curious to see an adaptation of a Chekov play with themes that still resonate with a modern audience – and have approximately two-and-a-half hours to spare including an interval – then The Cherry Orchard is certainly worth seeing.
Although the Galway run of the production has finished at the Black Box Theatre, Druid shall be plotting new land for The Cherry Orchard at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre from April 8th–11th. Performances begin at 7.30pm, with a matinée running at 2.30pm on April 11th. Tickets start from €18.50 with concession prices available on Wednesday and Thursday from €15.
