DTF review | The Cherry Orchard: Stimulating the senses keeps the Chekhovian canon alive

The Cherry Orchard

O’Reilly Theatre

***

Antwerp company tg STAN has forged a reputation for taking an innovative approach to classic drama, and placing immediacy of performance over sanctity of text. This is just as well, for the prospect of Flemish actors performing an English translation of a Russian play is unlikely to win over linguistic or literary purists.

But from the moment the players politely inquire from the stage whether everyone in the audience has yet taken their seats, it’s clear that the Belgian troupe’s version of Chekhov’s ambivalently pitched ensemble piece also aims to avoid the earnestly reverent approach that can often stifle the playwright’s work, resulting in mannered period pieces.

As devised by the cast, the central story remains the same, as do the contours of Chekhov’s artfully meandering dialogue. Charismatic but impractical matriarch Lyubov (Jolente De Keersmaeker) returns from Paris to her debt-ridden estate, only to be told by low-born merchant Lopakhin (Frank Vercruyssen) that the solution to her financial woes is to auction the family property, including the eponymous orchard. Rather than act on this advice, she whiles away the summer observing the romantic entanglements of her daughters and their suitors, postponing the inevitable end of an era.

Despite performing in a foreign language, the cast set the mood nicely, their characters blithely ignoring or fearfully avoiding the coming changes to their aristocratic life. A playful approach also permeates the production, most obviously in the way cast members such as Stijn Van Opstal casually quip about switching characters, or in the succession of eye-catching magic tricks performed by Sharlotta (Minke Kruyver).

This aversion to self-importance is most obvious in the third act, where the ancestral home becomes the scene of a rave. It’s a move that initially veers perilously close to the undergraduate rebelliousness of a student production. But the scene ends up evoking the giddy uncertainty of the family’s predicament, imaginatively combining sound, choreography and props to quietly absorbing effect. As well as being the play’s pivotal scene, it also encapsulates the formidable virtues of the company’s experiential approach, where stimulation of the senses is the key to keeping the canon alive.

  Ends October 10