| Poignnat Imagery |
At RWCMD |
| Welsh College of Music and Drama- The Cherry Orchard , Welsh College of Music and Drama , February 1, 2002 |
| “A tragedy, a farce. A simple story: an arrival, a walk on the wild side, a ball, a departure.” This is director Firenza Guidi’s encapsulation of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard in her introductory note to the play as produced by the Welsh College of Music and Drama. The Cherry Orchard cannot even be classified as a story. Things happen in a story, what happens in The Cherry Orchard? The orchard gets sold. Nothing else. Perhaps nothing is allowed to happen, or rather the persons concerned would prefer that nothing did, that their arrival did not carry with it the premonition of departure, that Time could be commanded to stand still, that they could continue to exist securely in their fantasy world cocooned protectively by a cherry orchard that shut out drunken passers-by who begged for kopeks, that shut out the world outside, that shut out Truth and preserved only memory, only illusion supported by blissful ignor-ance. A cherry orchard that could dull the voice of reason, make an imminent auction seem little more than a rumour, exaggerate faint glimmers of hope into certainties of success, reduce the enormity of the passing of an era into the mere whispering of the breeze through leaves. A cherry orchard that resisted change, and in its resistance, preserved; in its preservation, decayed; and in its decay, destroyed itself. A child’s cherry orchard, fragile and beautiful, created in a nursery where the play begins and betrayed in a nursery where the play ends. Perhaps the most significant feature of this particular production of The Cherry Orchard was the creation of this atmospheric setting that provides the backdrop for, in the director’s words, this “journey into memory which unravels before our eyes with all the contradictions of the present.” A rectangular studio space with walls and floors painted a startling white, effectively erasing shadows, crevices and undiscovered nooks that may conceal undesirable and distracting ideas. A familiar and comfortable haven of the past, which excludes the “contradictions of the present” in its smiling nakedness. An airy white reminiscent of a dream world, of the soft light that creeps through a thin mist creating a sense of other-worldliness, a realm of happiness, joy and laughter, a plentiful Utopia where few know (or care) where the plenty is to come from. A child’s innocent white with no secrets, no surprises, no darkness, no guilt: only dazzling and revealing white. A white that makes you feel as if you are within a cloud, isolated but safe, a mood accentuated by the feathery stuff that emerges and scatters when Yasha [Nazim Kourgli], in one of his more audacious moments, rolls back a portion of the floor. A white of possibilities—but safe ones. Where anything can happen so long as it is happy, and the natural way to dispel the gloom surrounding the estate’s sale is to have a ball—forcing music, forcing merriment, forcing frivolity. For in the frivolous there is an escape from seriousness, from responsibility, from reality, from truth. This frivolousness is embodied in Ranyevskaya and Gayev played remarkably by Eleanor Hovell and David Mears. The utter incongruity of two adults with souls of children sitting in undersized nursery chairs, fiddling with their desks and glancing at each other with ill-disguised giggles, smirking at the gravity of what Lopakhin [Rhys Morris] has to suggest like naughty schoolchildren delighted in meeting after a long vacation, wholly concerned with addressing their immediate needs and supremely confident that what they now shared would last forever … Gayev in his tight fitting coat, a portly, jolly, hearty and endearing schoolboy to the last, always joking, always ready for a laugh, giving in grudgingly to the ministrations of Firs … Ranyevskaya, the fond elder sister having left the cares of the world behind her in Paris, indulging and spoiling him thoroughly, displaying a nervous frivolity that walks the razor edge between hope and despair, unbearable joy and unbearable grief, sanity and insanity, life and death. A frivolousness that increases with her anxiety, an excitement that prevents her from sitting still, that compels her to exist on a level that deals with reality by negating it, that makes it possible for her to spend money she does not have and engage musicians she cannot pay. A volatility that allows her to share nothing less than a coquettish relationship with her rascal of a footman, Yasha, a relationship which is so deliciously and dangerously full of possibilities. Her giddiness reaches its fever pitch during the ball, a marvellously conceived scene that pulls together all the images, conversations and interactions inherent in Chekov’s text to create a flowing tapestry of vignettes that overlap, move, flow, rise and fall hurtling nevertheless towards a foregone conclusion that nobody wants and therefore nobody accepts. Throughout all the banter, dancing and Charlotta’s [Rhian Green] magic the music plays on and on as if frantically trying to postpone the inevitable even as Ranyevskaya intermittently wonders why her brother has not yet returned from the auction. Return he does with Lopakhin who, barely able to conceal his joy, announces that he has bought the cherry orchard. The blow falls, the music stops: there is no point in continuing with the pretence. We all plummet down to earth with Ranyevskaya. Frivolity terminates, reality hits. Suddenly the white doesn’t seem so cheerful anymore. It looks like a shroud. It’s unwelcoming, it’s faceless. It lacks identity, it lacks warmth. It’s raw, revealed, naked, stark. Harsh. Unyielding. Impersonal. Cold. What makes this production special is its fluidity that makes the nearly two-hour span seem a matter of minutes. The actors create an extraordinarily powerful ensemble piece, living each minute of the play. More than anything else, all the performers look their parts, are so comfortable in them that a female Firs—a completely unexpected casting coup played with beautiful sensitivity by Aishling Howard—does not confuse us or seem out of place and time. The three photographs/portraits in the programme showing the inspirations for the characters of Firs, Gayev and Ranyevskaya were contributed by the members of the cast and crew themselves from their personal family albums, and then it all suddenly makes sense. It is not as if the actors have undergone some intense personal quest to find and ‘get into’ character. They play parts of themselves which they may or may not have recognized or acknowledged before. This is the essence of the believability they offer us—they are not roles played by expert actors, they are reflections of themselves. It thus becomes possible to uncover layers for each character because they are not examining what the characters would do or say by trying to inhabit their personas, but what they would do or say themselves. This journey displays itself through moments of interaction and solitude that the text does not proffer, in some cases does not even insinuate. The potential relationship between Ranyevskaya and Yasha becomes possible because it looks so with the performers who play the characters. In Chekov’s text the only time a character is alone on stage is at the end of the play—Firs. Not so in this production. We encounter Varya [Sorcha Shanahan] alone looking for Anya [Catrin Aaron] and Trofimov [Mark Moore]. We see her stern, business-like and efficient facade slip off as she crumples under the pressure and heartache, the extent of which only she can truly appreciate. Suddenly we feel her isolation, her despair, her loneliness as she cries silently to herself until Lopakhin arrives, more in both their dreams than in reality, and leads her gently into the waltz, into the ball, back into a public sphere where she must once more bear her responsible and busy demeanour, her shield against the world. While the text offers only the simpering Dunyasha [Aimee Belle] being readily taken advantage of by the roguish Yasha, we can believe in the fact that the maid, so convinced of her delicate and ladylike status, can almost unconsciously attract the caresses of Lopakhin. We can even begin to see the dim possibility of her coming to terms with Yepikhodov’s [Tomm Coles] proposal as she gently helps him gather together whatever it is that he has clumsily dropped yet again during the removal in the last Act. We can quite believe the eccentricities of Charlotta which extend to her toting a rifle and taking pot shots at anyone she fancies, laughing at herself, at her history, at her lack of personal identity, and her peanut-eating dog (an un-credited, but extremely successful, member of the cast). At the end of Act III, after Lopakhin announces that he has bought the orchard, Ranyevskaya is left alone in the midst of the remains of her old life. A moment of stillness that says it all, a cessation of time, space and emotion until she breaks into laughter and then descends into tears as the nursery is cleaned out around her. There are no breaks between acts, the simple set modifications take place before our eyes while the action continues, nothing seems out of place, nothing seems strange and unbelievable as the space morphs from one setting to another carrying the performance along as much as the actors themselves. Pictures unfold one after another, a subtle infusion of imagery into the world of ‘naturalistic’ theatre. Amidst this palpable scenario it is the riveting moments of stillness, when the audience is brought up short by the photographic quality of the production, that are the most magical, most raw, most evocative. One such is the arrival. The stage so long inhabited by only Dunyasha and Lopakhin, becomes overrun with characters walking across from all sides: there is Firs murmuring to herself, Varya as efficient as ever giving instructions, the sleepless Anya, the excited Ranyevskaya, the blustering Gayev, the clumsy Yepikhodov forever tripping over his own feet and dropping suitcases, the eccentric Charlotta, the gouty Simeonov-Pischik [Marcus Pollet] always borrowing money … a sudden flurry of movement and voices, all the trappings of a homecoming. Then—suddenly—we see a photograph. We encounter them as they are, as they present themselves to us. All conversation ceases, movement freezes: a tableau of silent silhouettes against the white walls looking at us looking at them. In that moment of giving one recognizes them, from that moment one feels for them, believes them, believes in them. In that moment of stillness they capture our attention, they become watchable, they come alive. They begin to matter to us. The image breaks, but the spell doesn’t. We have a stake in their story now. So through all the farce and comedy runs an ever-present sense of poignancy, which comes to the fore in the last Act through the simplest of images, the simplest of words. Simeonov-Pischik returns in triumph to pay back some of what he owes, his financial status at last secure, and, being dumbfounded by their preparations for departure, all he can comment on is the lack of furniture in the room before he launhes into his melodramatic but heartfelt farewell. Ranyevskaya contrives to leave Varya and Lopakhin together with the idea that the latter will propose. Inevitably, after long, uncomfortably expectant pauses and pointless conversation, this does not happen. Varya is isolated again. But the most poignant of all is the series of images with which the play closes. Ranyevskaya stands in the centre of the empty nursery hand in hand with her brother, quite still and silent after the hustle of the removal, we feel a sense of immeasurable loss with her. She stands there gazing out at us, gazing out at what she has loved, at what she has known as happiness as it irrevocably slips away from her. Gayev gazes at her and we feel his whimpering fear and uncertainty as he murmurs again and again ‘My sister, my sister’. We stand with him and see Ranyevskaya receding, passing out of his reach even as the bond between them grows ever stronger. We see a brother and a sister suddenly orphaned, abandoned, with their lives in shambles all around them. She turns and leads him out, the doors bolt decisively behind them. We see an end. An end too complete and final to feel sadness or even agony. An end that only permits hollowness, emptiness, loss. Desolation. Into that white wilderness that had once supported and nurtured so much life, walks Firs. Old, bewildered, alone. She smiles wearily, picks up a robot toy abandoned in the bereft nursery and lies down to rest. Her hand slips and falls, the robot clatters to life, its eyes gleaming, going through its staccato motions like the automaton it is. It sounds like a death rattle. The feathery stuffing from the floor drifts about like fragments of a life, like dieing whispers before settling on the floor never to rise again. Like old Firs, like the robot—remembered yet forgotten, loved yet relinquished, cared for yet abandoned. An unlabelled museum piece that people walk past unseeingly. A remnant of a past that Ranyevskaya and Gayev now desperately ignore, a past that only Anya can quieten, that only she can put to rest having done the same for herself. As the characters walk past the inert form of Firs in their journey away from memory, Anya turns to take a last look at her past, turns it off, and takes her place in the procession into the future. With this final image we encounter an end, we encounter a beginning, we encounter hope, we encounter despair, we encounter rejection, we encounter acceptance, we encounter our own memories, our own histories, our own uncertainties. We encounter the pulse of change—slow, painful, remorseless, necessary. |
Reviewed by: VIKRAM IYENGAR |
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