Carol Royle in costume as Madame Ranevskaya. Picture: Catherine Ashmore _320
TO THIS day, argument rages that Anton Chekhov’s play about the interaction between the landed gentry in Russia and the peasant masses, who were then – in the late 1800s – still the majority in that vast, sweeping land, is a tragedy and yet he insisted it was a farce.
Chekhov would be delighted, therefore, that in the firm grasp of Terry Hands the humour is well designated but there is little doubt that the elements of sadness and tragedy are peppered throughout as the play charts the beginnings of the demise of the aristocratic classes. Some might think the work anachronistic, but Chekhov would surely chuckle at the rise of the new aristocracy and orthodoxy in Russia, driven like their predecessors by a feverish greed for land and wealth.
Paradoxically he finished the play in the resort town of Yalta where rich folk dillied and dallied, which is certainly not the way Hands deals with this production. It is energetic and well paced.
It’s his first Chekhov, and follows the critical success that he enjoyed earlier this year with Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, and with his hugely acclaimed direction of Jonathan Lichtenstein’s Memory, as part of the popular Brits Off Broadway event.
Distinguished designer Johan Engels – who last worked with Hands at the RSC in 1990 – injects a rather ritzy focus with Hands himself looking after the lighting while the cast clearly relish their roles, infusing them with zest and a pithy wit where required.
Carol Royle makes a welcome return to Mold to play Madame Ranevskaya, the core character around which the plot and "tragedy" unfolds as she considers the loss of her beloved cherry orchard – and to one of the "lower orders".
Its an absorbing production where Hands allows the dialogue to roll along as his performers metaphorically – and occasionally literally – bounce off each other in a bountiful exhibition of wordplay as the "aristos" gradually come to realise that they are losing control of the farm, so to speak.
