Book description
Hear what I have to say about the cherry orchard, because it is
mine. I say bring it down, tear it down. Smash it down and tear it
down. Watch, watch. Just you watch. I will build holiday villas, as
far as the eye can see. I will build a place for everyone to come and
enjoy. For the future. And this will be the future. A new life. A new
way of life. Here! Come now and play. Play. Play! Get the band to
play. Ranyevskaya returns more or less bankrupt after ten years
abroad. Luxuriating in her fading moneyed world and regardless of the
increasingly hostile forces outside, she and her brother snub the
lucrative scheme of Lopakhin, a peasant turned entrepreneur, to save
the family estate. In so doing, they put up their lives to auction and
seal the fate of the beloved orchard. Set at the very start of the
twentieth century, The Cherry Orchard captures a poignant moment in
Russia's history as the country rolls inexorably towards 1917. The
Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov in a version by Andrew Upton,
premiered at the National Theatre, London, in May 2011.
Andrew Upton is Artistic Director of the Sydney Theatre Company,
where his first play, Hanging Man, was staged in 2002, followed by
Riflemind in 2007. He has adapted a number of classics for the company,
and in 2007 his version of Gorky's Philistines was seen at the National
Theatre in London, followed by Bulgakov's The White Guard. He wrote the
films Bangers (1999), which he also directed, and Gone (2006), and the
libretto for Alan John's opera Through the Looking Glass (2008).
