REVIEW: The Cherry Orchard

August 13, 2024

 

The Cherry Orchard
Presented by Secret House and The Old Fitz Theatre
Reviewed by Danny Yazdani

In what is arguably the strangest place for a theatre – the basement of a 150-year-old pub - the strangest reworking of an old classic takes centre stage. Russian dramatist Anton Chekov’s final play, The Cherry Orchard, is completely retold by theatre company Secret House, placed in the context of 1980s Wales as Margaret Thatcher comes to rule. With a heavy slashing of the original play’s characters and yet another Eurocentric story, there is a degree of scepticism hovering about when walking into the theatre. But upon exiting The Old Fitz Theatre, audiences are reminded of how classics are made and why they persist in the contemporary.

 

 

In this retelling, Rainey (Deborah Galanos) returns to her family estate, Bloumfield, where her children, Valerie (Jane Angharad) and Anya (Amelia Parsonson), and their companions await her arrival. But this is no backdrop for a happy family reunion. Rather, Bloumfield is falling to pieces, both literally and financially, and the family need to act fast in order to save it. With generational history and family trauma looming over the ordeal, Bloumfield forces its inhabitants to reckon with the past in hopes of saving their future.

Gary Owen's work is to be commended and, if the rest of the season runs as smoothly, celebrated on much larger and well exposed stages. This is the sort of reworking theatre companies in Sydney should be aspiring to. There is not a moment in which one feels bored or irritable because of some outdated reference or archetype. Despite being historically grounded, Owen’s script treats itself as its own, not the younger sibling of an overachieving all-rounder.

 

 

There are tender moments in which Valerie, Rainey’s adopted daughter and the only member of the ‘inner family’ with a Welsh accent, speaks to Bloumfield and lets the audience run wild with her inner monologue. Ceri’s (James Smithers) anarcho-socialist rants and Gabriel’s (Charles Mayer) random bursts of declaration supplant humour at the core of most scenes, indirectly questioning the tragedies of our own lives too. These are distinct characters with only small traces of Chekov’s spirit captured in them, all the better for creating an engaging but new story that avoids catching nepo-baby syndrome. Owens’ The Cherry Orchard stands on its own two feet. That is it’s most accomplished feature.

A review of this production without the explicit praising of Galonos’ performance would be outlandish. Her visceral embodiment of Chekhov’s Ranyevskya and her existential prowess merges faultlessly with Owen’s Rainey and her disillusionment. There is electricity in Galonos’ performance; from physicality to diction, everything is addictive. Her entrances on the stage brought with them waves of satisfaction from the audience being glad to see her in luxurious outfits and her Queen’s English accent once again.

 

 

As the cost-of-living crisis runs rampant in Australia and the international news becomes more and more saturated with injustice, the production proves itself to be extremely relevant. There is a clever integration of the macro into the micro; that is, real world politics brought into domestic life. The severe consequences of power-hungry people causing the break down of the everyday person unravels in front of us. Protecting a legacy in this sort of environment comes with moral challenges, as characters like Anya eventually come to understand. However, I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar that the challenge of living, let alone affording a ticket to the theatre, is what The Cherry Orchard is trying to encourage us to amend.

In many ways, Owen’s The Cherry Orchard takes Chekov’s original and transforms it into a historically informed tragicomedy. The beauty of this, however, does not lie alone in any particular production element or casting choice. Rather, it is the cohesive approach to staging an adaptation and deeming it its own work that sets this The Cherry Orchard apart from any other re-contextualisation of a classic. Bravo.

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The Cherry Orchard is playing at The Old Fitz Theatre between 8th – 24th August 2024. Tickets can be purchased here.

Production images by Braiden Toko.