The Cherry Orchard

“In this life, you either bend or you break”, muses Nikos Karathanos as he reads Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. In the wake of his successful staging of Peresiadis’ Golpho and Boccaccio’s Decameron, the charismatic director and actor takes on one of the most emblematic works in the world theater repertoire.

Chekhov’s swan song, The Cherry Orchard (1904) is a work that bids farewell to an era that has reached its end, staging a wake to see the old world off. The wonderful cherry orchard is up for auction; in denial, its owners do nothing to save it; irresponsibility and self-deception are rampant and bankruptcy is nigh.

The work’s tragi-comic protagonists never give up their struggle for a little happiness. Trapped at the mercy of an age of transition, they play the lead roles in a devastating comedy about the secret of life which poses the question: “Why so much pain beneath so much beauty?”.

“A comedy, at times a farce”, is how Chekhov described the Cherry Orchard. Nikos Karathanos and his exceptional cast undermine the stereotypes which can weigh readings of Chekhov down and approach the work as a “heretical comedy within a marvelous drama” in a production which, exuding perspicacity and a limitless sensitivity, cannot but call to mind our current era of historic transition.