The Cherry Orchard

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The Cherry Orchard

Anton Chekhov

Drama

Jul 31, 2018

Chekhov wrote more than a dozen plays, but the last four are his most accomplished and most performed, and the quartet—because of their original realization by Konstantin Stanislavski under the auspices of the Moscow Art Theater—are seminal works in theatrical history. Deeply humanistic, Chekhov’s four dramatic masterpieces are emblematic of our modern domestic lives in the same way Greek tragedies are emblematic of a more cosmic and radical vision of human agency. Distanced from the gods and their interventions, Chekhov’s characters move through their modest calamities, losing the homes, habits, vocations, and loves that might provide fragile protection against the long loneliness that terrifies us all. The Cherry Orchard (1904), perhaps Chekhov’s most telling achievement, uses the auction of a family estate to contrast the fortunes of the fallen aristocracy with those of the rising bourgeoisie; yet the atmosphere the play creates transcends social and political circumstances to engage both the inexorability of time and the unappeasable misgivings of human nature.

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DeAnn Rossetti

Oct 28, 2018

I read all of Chekhov when I was in college and I adored his twisty plays and bizarre characters.

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Alice Hutchinson

Jan 10, 2019

Performed it.

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Chuck Munro

Mar 18, 2019

Chekhov's crowning achievement - living, breathing, lovable people muddling their way through as their lives and beliefs are being plowed through by forces larger than all of us.

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