We watched a DVD of the play in English directed by Mihalis Kakogiannis in the 1980s. This is available on YouTube for anyone who wants to watch an excellent version.
A penniless aristocrat returns to her estate [the Cherry Orchard] after spending several years in Paris with her lover. Lopakhin, a former serf but now a rich businessman, suggests a scheme to her that will save her from selling the estate. She and her lazy brother reject this idea as unthinkable and hope that something will happen to save them. It doesn’t and Lopakhin buys the estate at auction intending to subdivide it for small holiday houses. A former tutor, now a revolutionary; an old valet who refused to accept his freedom when serfs were emancipated in the 1860s; a drunken doctor and a daughter who is longing to leave and experience life elsewhere, are all part of the rich company of characters in the play that inhabit this changing society in the early 1900s.
April 5: The Mother, Maxim Gorky (1906)
Meg Dillon
A penniless aristocrat returns to her estate [the Cherry Orchard] after spending several years in Paris with her lover. Lopakhin, a former serf but now a rich businessman, suggests a scheme to her that will save her from selling the estate. She and her lazy brother reject this idea as unthinkable and hope that something will happen to save them. It doesn’t and Lopakhin buys the estate at auction intending to subdivide it for small holiday houses. A former tutor, now a revolutionary; an old valet who refused to accept his freedom when serfs were emancipated in the 1860s; a drunken doctor and a daughter who is longing to leave and experience life elsewhere, are all part of the rich company of characters in the play that inhabit this changing society in the early 1900s.
April 5: The Mother, Maxim Gorky (1906)
Meg Dillon