Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard

by James N. Loehlin

• ISBN13: 9780521825931
• ISBN10: 0521825938
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Chekhov’s masterpiece, about a Russian family losing its ancestral home, combines a lament for a vanishing past with a hopeful dream of the future. In the century since its first performance, The Cherry Orchard has undergone a wide range of conflicting interpretations: tragic and comic, naturalistic and symbolic, reactionary and radical. Beginning with the 1904 premiere at Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art Theatre, this study traces the performance history of one of the landmark plays of the modern theatre. Considering the work of such directors as Anatoly Efros, Giorgio Strehler, Peter Brook, and Peter Stein, Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard explores the way different artists, periods and cultures have reinvented Chekhov’s poignant comedy of failure and hope.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	viii
Acknowledgments	x
Introduction	1	(8)
The Cherry Orchard: text and performance	9	(31)
The Moscow Art Theatre production, 1904	40	(32)
Russian and Soviet performances, 1904--1953	72	(17)
The Cherry Orchard in English: early productions	89	(32)
The Cherry Orchard at mid-century: Barrault, Saint-Denis, Strehler	121	(26)
Radical revisions, 1975--1977	147	(24)
Brook and Stein, 1981--1997	171	(19)
The Cherry Orchard after one hundred years	190	(25)
Notes	215	(24)
Works cited	239	(6)
Index	245