Theatre review: The Cherry Orchard(Harold Pinter Theatre)

I think after a few fairly trad productions of Chekhov I'm ready for creatives to go back to being a bit more avant garde with him; the team of adaptor Conor McPherson and director Ian Rickson, reuniting at the Pinter after their Uncle Vanya, won't be the ones to do it though. The Cherry Orchard is part of an estate that once came with its own serfs; they have all been freed from their ancestral ties to the land, but the story takes place when their emancipation was still in living memory. The ancient Firs (Karl Johnson) even remembers the time before as the best of his life, and his liberation as a catastrophe, while the hereditary owners of the land have never quite got their heads round the way things have changed for them: Lady of the house Ranevskaya (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just returned from five years in Paris where she's managed to spend the last of their money.

Now the whole estate is up for auction, but the family have still convinced themselves some last-minute miracle will let them continue their old lives. Lopakhin (Transphobia Ltd Employee Stephen Mangan) has an idea that could prove to be exactly that.

But levelling the orchard to build holiday dachas doesn't fit with the family's romantic view of their own connection to the land and the past, so the idea is dismissed in horror every time he brings it up. McPherson's writing of Lopakhin and Mangan's performance of him are quite unexpected: Implied to be because of an old crush on Ranevskaya, he's genuinely deferential to her at the start, and still acting in what he thinks is the family's best interests when he buys their land, far from the pragmatic capitalist he's usually portrayed as.

Chekhov plays are large ensemble pieces which means some characters will inevitably make more of an impression than others. Where usually the family tend to be the focus, they all feel a bit vaguely drawn here, while scenes focusing on the staff bring a fresher energy: Shubham Saraf's Yepikhodov trying to keep the attention of Megan Cusack's Dunyasha while she moons over the transparently self-serving Yasha (Noof Ousellam) has the mix of comedy and pathos missing elsewhere.

Meanwhile Jack Riddiford's Trofimov, the former tutor who can never quite leave this family because they're so superficially welcoming to him, wanders around muttering about how the 20th century might be the time for Russia to experiment with a new system of living, something I dunno, more communal? And Ruby Bentall actually manages to make Anya's (Anastasia Martin) German companion Sharlotta the comic eccentric she's always meant to be.

But the focus on this long-standing crush on Ranevskaya means the relationship between Lopakhin and Vinette Robinson's Varya is a damp squib, and the climactic aborted proposal isn't left with much emotional impact. It's got its moments but for the most part I found it hard to get particularly invested in McPherson and Rickson's rather dry take on The Cherry Orchard.

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov in a brain by Conor McPherson is booking until the 9th of January at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.