Vow of poverty

Wednesday, 24th June 2009

The Cherry Orchard
Old Vic

A Skull in Connemara
Riverside

Here’s a peculiarity of Chekhov productions that tour the world. There’s never any furniture. OK, there’s some. A card table maybe, a few spindly chairs, a samovar, a hat-stand, the odd stool. Matchwood accessories. But the sturdy oaken mammoths of Victorian decor, the chests and dressers, the sideboards and book-cases, are never there. Putting the contents of a dacha into a jumbo jet and flying it around the globe makes no economic sense. So a bric-à-brac design is the preferred option, with the actors bravely attempting to suggest Russian solidity and substance while perched on milking stools and pouring wine into glasses tagged with ‘Oxfam 50p’ labels. Sam Mendes’s production has taken its vow of poverty in the ornamental splendours of the Old Vic — which heightens the contrast even further. As does the text.

The plot of The Cherry Orchard turns on the disintegration of a grand estate. Very weird. The characters on stage are jabbering non-stop about losing everything. But losing what? There’s nothing to lose. The foreground is busy with little period knick-knacks and the background is a wall of anonymous beige slats. It’s hard to put your disbelief under your seat when the show’s visual style keeps dragging it out and waving it in your face.

The players are only partially successful at making good the deficit. Simon Russell Beale has no difficulty suggesting Lopakhin’s charm and well-meaning impatience. If anything he’s too kindly, too pleasing and genial, and there’s a shard of pure steel in the character which he doesn’t quite bring out. Ranevskaya is perhaps the least great of Chekhov’s great heroines, a heap of morbid and blinkered grief which Sinead Cusack does her best to invest with sympathy. The outstanding performance comes from Ethan Hawke as the pasty-faced, cobweb-bearded Trofimov. Hawke is a touch too old to play a student and the role is much smaller than his talent merits. But what marvellous gifts he has. Grace and lyricism, a tender and intriguing virility, and the reposeful dynamism of the born star. He ought to do weightier, more challenging parts. Mark Antony, certainly. Macbeth, perhaps. This is a tame, dead-safe production which leaves a very light footprint on the mind as well as on the ozone layer.

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