The Cherry Orchard Playtext

Liubov Ranevskya, a widowed landowner returns home more or less insolvent after five years abroad. Everything appears just as she remembers, but hers is a diminishing world. Her vast and beautiful cherry orchard is soon to be sold off against her mounting debts. The insistent warnings of Lopakhin, a peasant’s son turned wealthy businessman, go unheeded, and more than the family estate is sacrificed as Trofimov, the ‘eternal student’ who hopes to inherit the future, tells her, “The whole of Russia is our orchard”.

Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Chekhov’s last play is a poignant snapshot of the great, slow-rolling change that came to a head with the Russian revolution in 1917.

Tom Stoppard’s English version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard had its first New York performance at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn in January 2009, and its first London performance at the Old Vic Theatre in May 2009.