Review by Grace Swadling
Secret House’s production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ tackles issues of class, social mobility and grief in a poignant and radical reworking of Chekhov's original production. This Welsh reimagining by playwright Gary Owen places the action in early 1980s Wales, set against the backdrop of Maggie Thatcher’s regime and recontextualising the socioeconomic change in Russia 1901 in a way that still feels increasingly relevant to a modern audience.
Matriarch of the family Rainey (Debrah Galanos) has been unwillingly dragged back to Wales by her daughters, Valerie (Jane Angharad) and Anya (Amelia Parsonson), because the bank is about to auction their old manor house Bloumfield. As in Chekhov’s original, there is a solution to the family’s financial strife; Lewis (Dorje Swallow), the grandson of a man evicted from the land on which the orchard was planted - and Valerie’s lover - has plans to build new houses on the orchard site, if Rainey would just sign the contract. But will Rainey sign in time?
This is a mammoth of a show that, although running at almost 3 hours, remains completely engaging up until the very last moment. Anthony Skuse has directed this production beautifully and the entire ensemble was incredibly strong. The family dynamics felt grounded and authentic and the cast worked well together to create genuine, if not utterly dysfunctional, family relationships. James Smithers set design served to enhance this, with a fully realized world of Bloumfield that cleverly utilized the space of the Old Fitz. The well-loved furniture combined with Topaz Marlay-Cole’s lightning design worked to create the feeling of a lived-in family home, where warm, soft lamps gave way to shadowy blues as the darker aspects of the family’s past caught up to them.
Deborah Galanos thrilled as the barbed tongue, wine-swilling matriarch Rainey, whose grief and pain manifests in a petulant refusal to accept the truth of her past and future, and the love of her daughters. At times veering towards the melodramatic, Galanos never let Rainey become a caricature and instead carried the loss and grief of her character in a deeply moving way.
Amelia Parsonson brought a lovely authenticity to Anya, the liberal arts student dabbling in bisexuality and espousing left-wing rhetoric without really having experienced any hardships. Parsonon’s strong stage presence and grounded portrayal meant that you never felt like Anya’s self-entitlement was in any way malicious and James Smithers’ Ceri was a delightfully charming yet snarky foil to this self-entitlement. Their relationship directly embodies the chasm of ideology between those born into money and those who were not, and the chemistry between the two was a wonderful addition to the production. Accents were also used to further underscore the dichotomy of the wealthy versus the working class and accent coach Linda Nicholls-Gidley enabled this stark clash between the sounds of the Welsh dialect and received pronunciation of the English upper-middle class.
Charles Mayer’s Uncle Gabriel, the lovable yet useless human incarnation of privilege was a standout performance, as was Talia Benatar’s cheeky but overworked Welsh housekeeper Dottie, who had been with the family for years and is eventually left behind. Throughout the play there are a lot of comedic moments undercut by a growing sense of unease and Dorje Swallow did a great job of playing into this as Lewis, building up a vaguely menacing air until the climatic reveal towards the end of the second act. Rounding out the cast was Angharad’s Valerie, the eldest sister struggling to keep the estate afloat, who was portrayed with the perfect amount of frustration and weariness.
At the heart of Chekhov’s work, as the director notes, is “the flow of ordinary human lives which are driven by a yearning for an unreachable past and a barely imagined future.” Owen’s reimagining not only brings this into play, but allows us to see these characters in all their gritty complexity. You find yourself oscillating between almost feeling sorry for them as victims of change but also becoming frustrated by them as victims of their own privilege and ignorance.
Rainey’s failure to address the problems facing her estate and family means that they eventually lose everything, which can be seen as a criticism of the upper class bourgeoisie who were unwilling to adapt to the new socio-political emergence of the middle class. She is a woman who lives in the depths of the past, often reliving memories about her son's death - which is hauntingly portrayed through the almost supernatural, repeated motif of her lost child’s toy car. Johnny Yang’s sound design underscored these unsettling moments as well as the more poignant moments of memory as characters allowed nostalgia to overtake them. Nostalgia plays a huge part in this production and it evokes questions such as; are rich people less entitled to sentimentality and emotional attachments just because they can afford to be? As Benatar’s Dottie points out, the rich can allow their grief to swallow them; the poor just have to get on with life. It is an incredibly relevant debate, especially considering the economic and political state of our current world. It’s also a testament to the writing, direction and the acting of this production that the gravitas of such a concept can be both refreshing and engaging.
‘The Cherry Orchard’ has an incredibly short run at the Old Fitz but I would definitely say it is not one to be missed!
Image Credit: Braiden Toko
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