Top Chekhov adaptation brings out the best in Kristin Scott Thomas & Stephen Mangan

Harold Pinter Theatre

⭑⭑⭑⭑

Kristin Scott Thomas in The Cherry Orchard. Photo: Johan Persson

Every production of Chekhov‘s The Cherry Orchard is different: like life, it’s so open to interpretation. Even so, there’s always a sense of doom, and there’s always a comical bubble of illusions shielding those who are looking doom in the face. So what makes this production at the Harold Pinter Theatre special?

This is a particularly star studded production, not only Kristin Scott Thomas and Stephen Mangan starring, but top playwright Conor McPherson providing a re-imagining and Ian Rickson, a highly successful interpreter of Chekhov, directing. It’s also blessed with a cast of the highest quality.

The language provided by McPherson is blunt and speaks to a modern audience. Chloe Lamford’s decaying, damp looking set and Sussie Juhlin-Wallen’s costumes which mix period and modern elements give the production a sense of time passing. The mixed bunch of characters are either living in the past or seeking to preserve it.

The theme of resistance to change is timeless. The specific change in this case is the old Russian hierarchy crumbling in the face of the rising middle class.

Luba Ranevskaya, played magnificently by Kristin Scott Thomas, is the matriarch of a grand house and estate, the destitute successor to its previously rich and powerful owners.

The focus point of the land is a cherry orchard. It’s a cute touch for the characters to look out on the audience when referring to the orchard. We are, it seems, both the past condemned to perish and the future they will never see.

So many of the characters are lost in their illusions, unable to articulate their thoughts or even finish sentences in the face of the reality before them. Kristin Scott Thomas’ character is like a rudderless ship, fiddling with her hair, offering rictus smiles, distractedly hugging people in a half hearted cure their sadness, looking vacantly as if seeing the past or a different reality, sentences trailing off. Luba continues to behave like the lady of the manor, giving away money she doesn’t have while the debts pile up. Always looking to take flight to Paris to join her unfaithful lover, preferring to keep the memory of its past rather than grapple with modern day challenges of an estate facing bankruptcy.

An impressive cast

Stephen Mangan in The Cherry Orchard.Photo: Johan Persson

Through the next two and half hours, the people around her interact, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict, fast, slow, sniping, soothing, revealing more and more of their characters, their illusions and their painful vulnerabilities.

Luba’s brother Leo is so inflated in his self importance, but actually a total scrounger, and so unpleasant. He could be a template for a certain ex-royal. Always reassuring himself and those around him that something will turn up. Peter Wight gives him just the right mix of nasty and pathetic.
Jeff Rawle brings more pathos to Boris, an impoverished landowner, smiling but always trying to borrow money.

Jack Riddiford is the perpetual student Petyo, even at 30 years old, still talking of graduation. He speaks of revolution but needs the aristocracy to revolt against.

Some female characters look to feckless men for salvation – their love repeatedly unreciprocated. Anastasia Martin is Luba’s unstable daughter. Vinette Robinson gives a powerful performance as the tightlaced adopted daughter Varya, trying to manage the estate finances while wishing she could be a nun. Megan Cusack is the servant Dunyasha taking advantage of the breakdown of the class system to dress up and flirt with attractive men.

Saddest and funniest of all, Karl Johnson is Firs, the old retainer, literally living in the past thanks to dementia but coming up with golden lines like ‘you’re wearing the wrong trousers’. Karl Johnson is an actor I’ve seen many times on stage and he never disappoints.

Only Yermi Lopakhin, played by Stephen Mangan , looks positively to the future. He’s part of a new generation of a self made rich men. Being from peasant stock and well aware of his inferiority, ‘sorry’ is his most used word, a wide-eyed nervous laugh is never far away. He has been in love with Luba since childhood but he can see that the estate must be commercialised to survive, which means the cherry orchard must go. His illusion is that saving the estate will win over Luba. His belief in money as the way to his ideal is as deluded as the head in the sand attitude of those around him. And he is blind to the possibility of happiness with Varya. Stephen Mangan is wonderful in this role, giving a light comic vulnerability to a character that can seem unpleasantly crowing.

This production of The Cherry Orchard is a masterful re-imagining from Conor McPherson that is brought to life by a perfect cast and Ian Rickson’s inspired direction.

The Cherry Orchard can be seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 9 January 2026. Buy tickets from the theatre haroldpintertheatre.co.uk

Paul was given a review ticket by the producer

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Barney Norris brings home the power of love

★★★

Production photo of Emmet Byrne and Lily Nichol in Lorca's Blood Wedding retold by Barney Norris at Salisbury Playhouse

Emmet Byrne and Lily Nichol in Lorca’s Blood Wedding. Photo: Helen Murray

Wiltshire becomes a metaphor for today’s Britain in Barney Norris‘ retelling of Lorca’s Blood Wedding at Salisbury Playhouse. The blood feud of the original is replaced by laddish drunkenness and Mediterranean passion by English reticence in which ‘Sorry’ is the most used word.

That may sound like Lorca-lite but this is a good play in its own right. The characters are well drawn and the dialogue feels real. That’s partly because it is so strongly rooted in Wiltshire. There is longing, fate and disconnection in this story of an ill matched bride and groom whose tragic fate is sealed when another man stirs the bride’s heart.

What works particularly well in Alice Hamilton’s production is the feeling that these characters are trapped. They are limited by poverty. None has moved far over the years, yet they are all slightly displaced from their origins. This combination of roots and disconnection is a powerful parable for our times: England has one foot in the past while being uncertain how to step into the future; we still have bigotry but as it says in the play ‘bigot’ is now a pejorative term.

They are even trapped in an unchanging set- a beautifully constructed exterior of a once proud community hall now dilapidated. Sitting in Salisbury, watching a play so rooted in Wiltshire, adds to that feeling of being trapped.

The atmosphere of the Moonraker county is strong but the story of Lorca’s Blood Wedding is universal.

As in the original, we have a Bride and Groom. Georgie is about to marry Rob, for whom the title ‘lad’ might have been invented. He’s a four years younger than her but seems like a different generation, such is his childishness. He’s infatuated with her; she just wants to get married.

Georgie and Rob are played by very promising young actors. Reece Evans’ goofy expressions, loud jokes and wide-eyed innocence are just the right side of caricature. Lily Nichol conveys Georgie’s discomfort with the situation as if it were a physical burden.

When she meets her old flame Lee, whom she previously rejected because he’s an Irish traveller, her feeling that real love is missing from her current relationship is crystallised. Both feel, as he says, there must be more to life. After the interval, it’s time for the wedding reception and an inevitable catastrophe.

Lee too has a loveless marriage with Georgie’s old school friend Danni, now the mother of Lee’s child and pregnant again. There is a deeply moving moment when Danni, continually asking him whether he loves her, says with sadness, ‘If you did, I wouldn’t be talking now.’

An impressive look at the complex lives of ordinary people

Tensions mount until the situation explodes but, in keeping with the original, the ‘blood’ of the blood wedding is shed offstage. Although, at this point in the production, the use of a kind of one man Greek chorus high up is undoubtedly dramatic, I found it too histrionic for this tale of ordinary people. I would have preferred the description of what has happened and the explanation of its significance to have been contained within the natural conversations. In other words, show rather than tell.

The set, designed by James Perkins, is crowned by a huge moon, another Lorca reference, that underlines the feeling that there are greater forces that control the fate of mere humans.

The rest of the cast shine. Jeff Rawle plays the hall’s caretaker Brian with a white beard and a benign smile that give him a Father Christmas look as he dispenses sage advice. A perfect choice for the part. Teresa Banham is totally believable as Rob’s edgy, sensitive mother. Emmet Byrne convinces as the spirited but nervous traveller desperate to be free who sparks passion in Georgie. The confusion and desperation Eleanor Henderson beings to the role of Lee’s wife Danni is touching.

It may lack Lorca’s passion but Barney Norris‘ version of Blood Wedding is an impressive look at the complex lives of ordinary people in Britain today.