{"id":1013,"date":"2014-11-14T17:02:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T17:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2014-11-17T12:07:28","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T12:07:28","slug":"on-the-brink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/11\/on-the-brink.html","title":{"rendered":"On the brink"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"YOUNG<\/a><\/p>\n

Katie Mitchell directs The Cherry Orchard<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not dark yet, but it\u2019s getting there. I haven\u2019t seen Katie Mitchell\u2019s polarising 2071<\/em><\/a> at London\u2019s Royal Court \u2013 an animated TED warning about falling off the climate change cliff \u2013 but the honed steel of the director\u2019s Cherry Orchard<\/em> <\/a>at the Young Vic makes a similar argument with baleful panache.<\/p>\n

Snowclouds of cherry blossom, a backdrop shimmer of silver birch \u2013 these are the clich\u00e9s of Chekhovian scenographry. At the Young Vic, Vicki Mortimer\u2019s meticulously lived-in interior offers paintwork so exquisitely distressed it\u2019s on medication, clacking floorboards, dim-lit wood. We remain inside for Chekhov\u2019s garden-set second act, and actors face the audience to gaze at the orchard \u2013 we are their picture window \u2013 so that nature figures as something that people see through sentiment, retreating into nostalgia. Remember when there were fields, and woods, and things grew and smelled of soil and blossom? All gone.<\/p>\n

Buy local, squander global<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most engaged with the Ranyevsky family\u2019s orchard is the entrepreneur Lophakin (Dominic Rowan), who wants to level it, develop the land, monetise those bastard trees that remind him of everything he was excluded from as a serf child: and then lease the plots to timeshare townies craving a slice of sylvan illusion on their holidays. These are the people who Alec Wilkinson skewers in\u00a0a New Yorker<\/em> <\/a>feature on Modern Farmer<\/em><\/a> magazine: food cultists, aspirational farmers, \u2018people who stay at hotels on farms where they eat things grown by the owners.\u2019 I\u2019m those people too \u2013 this week I bought a bag of \u2018blemished windfalls\u2019 at Waitrose, positively radiant with wholesome ethics. My own salve for exquisite distress.<\/p>\n

So, yeah: buy local, squander global. Consign the natural world to memory, mourn rather than act, let developers torch it while we savour our crocodile tears.<\/p>\n

In a dark place<\/strong><\/p>\n

The production left me in a dark place, like the doddering valet Firs. Played with a right-angled spine by Gawn Grainger, Firs isn\u2019t merely forgotten in this version, he\u2019s all but murdered \u2013 Yasha, the thuggishly aspirant help, has decided to forget to have Firs sent to hospital and tears up a letter for the medical staff. It\u2019s a callous touch characteristic of this show, and Simon Stephens\u2019 <\/a>urgent text, which won\u2019t let negligence seem dizzy or adorable. Rowan\u2019s destructive triumph when Lophakin buys the estate is as hurtful as possible for all around \u2013 the family can\u2019t look at him in the final act \u2013 even though it may be a hollow man\u2019s self-destructive manoeuvre. Charlotta the card-playing companion, armoured within eccentricity, performs a skit about a baby which she drops into an imaginary lake \u2013 \u2018splash\u2019 \u2013 just as her employer\u2019s son drowned many years ago. Chekhov\u2019s characters are always self-involved \u2013 he writes ensemble plays in which everyone thinks they\u2019re playing the lead \u2013 but Mitchell tweaks this into deliberate cruelty.<\/p>\n

A Twitter chum, reading my bereft response to the show, urged me to embrace change \u2013 he\u2019d clearly experienced it as far more hopeful a piece. Charlotte (Sarah Malin) was his guiding light, but I can\u2019t share his optimism, about her or the world she inhabits. An outsider among the misfits, she\u2019s about the only character to crack a joke \u2013 but her self-awareness is lonely. An abandoned child who grew up to forage a career as she may, she has the nous to grab at fun, sex or a job \u2013 but the best you can say is that she\u2019s surviving.<\/p>\n

\"Kate<\/a>

Kate Duchene and Dominic Rowan Photo (also top): Stephen Cummiskey<\/p><\/div>\n

That\u2019s all you can say of anyone here \u2013 Mitchell\u2019s cast, including several exceptional regular collaborators, delineate the awkward edges of Chekhov\u2019s characters. The family and its hangers on feel even less resilient than usual. How will Angus Wright\u2019s shambling Gaev cope in a bank? (Imagine entrusting your account to him). Will Varya ever find emotional fulfilment as a professional bossyboots? Paul Hilton\u2019s eternal stinky grad student (pictured <\/em>top<\/em>), ducking romantic overtures: hopeless. At least Lyubov \u2013 Kate Duchene in what is usually the\u00a0star role presents her shorn of gush and glamour, trotting lumpily about her old nursery \u2013 knows exactly what will happen as she crosses Europe to be mistreated again by the cad she left in Paris, knowing that she will never return, knowing that home is a lost idea.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen compassionate Cherry Orchard<\/em>s, grieving ones, bittersweet and bright ones. It\u2019s a capacious play. But this is, I think, the darkest: on the brink. It will only take a nudge, and we\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katie Mitchell directs The Cherry Orchard It\u2019s not dark yet, but it\u2019s getting there. I haven\u2019t seen Katie Mitchell\u2019s polarising 2071 at London\u2019s Royal Court \u2013 an animated TED warning about falling off the climate change cliff \u2013 but the honed steel of the director\u2019s Cherry Orchard at the Young Vic makes a similar argument […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[127,126,34,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-1013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-chekhov","8":"tag-katie-mitchell","9":"tag-theatre","10":"tag-young-vic","11":"entry","12":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}