The Cherry Orchard, RSC, 1st August 2026
Reading Chekhov’s plays in my youth, I was always struck with the thought that it was no wonder they had a revolution in Russia. Re reading The Cherry Orchard recently, I was again struck with the same thought (and clearly the play is about a coming change, as much as it is about anything else): these people, so passive, so feckless, so self – indulgent. They kinda had it coming.
I was also struck on the re reading how hard Chekhov must be to direct and act. On the surface, there’s so little there and there’s so little direction in the script, but that leaves so much room for interpretation. Each speech, sentence, phrase open to so much unravelling.
The plays of Chekhov’s contemporary Ibsen have plots flowing like rivers, propelling them on; by contrast, Chekhov’s plots are more like ponds. Pretty still and placid, but you have to go beneath the surface.
Dramatically this poses problems, problems which this RSC production, directed by Tamara Harvey, fails to resolve, in my opinion. The play kind of happens before you, a series of episodes in an ensemble piece, but it lakes drive and bite.
That said, the ensemble performs well, Esther Smith’s Varya standing out for me. The set design captures the faded grandeur of a Russin country home well. I found the music to be intrusive at the start of the second half (can someone switch that thing off???), but overall it contributed to the experience.
But of course we weren’t there to see The Cherry Orchard, we were there to see Kenneth Branagh, Bill Pullman and Helen Hunt.
Branagh plays Lopakhin with a Norn’ Irish accent and it works to distinguish him as a self-made man in a world of landed gentry. I think he gets the role just right, likeable enough that we stick with him, but not so heroic that we feel too much for the Andryeevs. He brings to life a real human being whom we can recognise. There are times when I thought he must have wished his American co stars could “get” the play as well as him and the ensemble.
Bill Pullman as Gaev gets a pass on this performance. Whether he had a cold or throat infection, or rather it was a case of a voice run ragged by a run on stage, he was clearly having difficulty to project. He played with charm, but clearly struggled given his illness.
As other reviewers have noted, Helen Hunt’s Mme Ranyevskaya (Liuba) disappoints. It’s hard to know if it’s the player or the Director, but I’d contend that the role cries out for airiness, a little flakiness, but Hunt’s rendition is flinty and cool. The character is a Bohemian, she’s been in Paris where she has a lover, she’s emotional. The challenge for an actor is that she should, I think, play this flightiness and kookiness but still remain likeable and mature; portray someone soaked in nostalgia but avoid being mawkish. That’s a hard balance, and I think Hunt falls short.
Laura Wade’s translation is more lyrical than my old Penguin edition translated by Elisaveta Fen, but Liuba has a line towards the end of the play where she looks at the walls of the house and, in my translation, says “I look at them with such longing and affection”. I think Wade phrases it better, something along the lines of “I could breathe them in”. Hunt reads the line as if reading the ingredients on a packet of sausages.
The argument can be made that you have enough of this ethereal romanticism with her brother Gaev and that having them both played thus would be to much, but ultimately I think these two are enablers. They never argue, there is no contention, the one enables the other to marinade in feckless inaction. It is in their natures and as such, I conclude that The Cherry Orchard is a comedic tragedy of a family sliding towards dispossession and irrelevance.
But is it any good?
Branagh is a worthy draw, the production values are high and the ensemble is solid, but ultimately this Cherry Orchard fails to bloom.
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