Stage Writes
The Official Stage Rights Blog
Chatting Chekhov with The Cherry Orchard Cast on Opening Night
Diane Lane has returned to the Orchard, and she explains why it feels like home.
Diane Lane (Joseph Marzullo/WENN)
The Cherry Orchard is in bloom again—for the 16th time on Broadway—again briefly brightening the growing gloom of a doomed Russian aristocracy. After five years of the Parisian high-life, Mme. Ranevskaya has returned to the folding family fold, hoping to save her heavily mortgaged estate from the greedy clutches of the rising middle class and rescue the orchard—her pride and joy—from the chopping block.
No such luck, of course. In his last play, written in 1904, Anton Chekhov depicted a civilization going, going, gone with the wind, and he called this chaotic upheaval a comedy about change, which is why, in this election year, Roundabout Theatre Company saw fit to trot out a revival of it October 16 at its American Airlines Theatre.
Click here for the full original article posted on Playbill.com by Michael Gioia on October 17, 2016.