Nothing is more deadening to a great play than to approach it with reverence. It was therefore a great thrill to welcome Blackeyed Theatre to Rosehill with their adaptation of The Cherry Orchard that is like no other version of that play I have ever seen. It was also fascinating to hear the cast of four talking about the play in a pre-show discussion and putting forward the daring thesis that comedy can make a tragedy more tragic. Shakespeare and Chekhov himself had thought of that one before, and of the idea that the lower characters, or servants, may parody the actions of the great men and women. But the idea that burlesque, that ruled the boards of Russian theatre before Stanislavski ruled, might shake up our ideas about this play was really exciting. And if Chekhov met Brecht what storms might break!

The production did indeed shake up our ideas about The Cherry Orchard and we have no sympathy with anyone who left the theatre complaining about sacrilege. Travesty it certainly had to be with only one female actor, and that is in a very rich tradition of theatre. The constraint to cast Paul Taylor as Mme Ravenskaya and Matthew Rowland Roberts as Carlotta both led to inspirational performances which were also true to the spirit of Chekhov. Gabrielle Meadows opened our eyes to the man-eater latent in Dunyasha, and Tom Neill discovered for us a Chaplinesque clown in Epihodov, whose business with the cases was brilliant. Dunyasha, Yasha and Epihodov produced memorable burlesque scenes which were not written by Chekhov but nevertheless enhanced this adaptation of the play. There are certainly enough positives here to make us glad they came.

However, if the idea was to bring out the tragedy more poignantly through elements of farce the success was partial at best. The trouble was that Chekhov had thought of the idea first and he knew what he was doing. What can be more farcical or heartbreaking than to hear two characters who love one other passionately unable to talk about anything more romantic than thermometers when their last chance comes to declare their feelings.  Those lines were discarded by the adaptor of this production, presumably on the grounds that the farce was not obvious enough for the groundlings. The desolation at the end was entirely lost, chiefly because the interchange of baffled and inarticulate characters was replaced, inexplicably, by a longish speech by Ravenskaya imitating but not written by Chekhov. Firs is written as a sad faced clown forgotten and left to die alone but still worrying about his master going off without his fur coat.  What could be more farcical?  But this production dehumanised him in a ridiculous wig which hid his face and his death, like the felling of the cherry orchard, simply passed the audience by.
The necessity of cutting the cloth to a cast of four produced some inspired moments, as I have acknowledged earlier, but sadly it prevented Varya from appearing in the first act or ever meeting Anya on stage. The sense that Varya was in love with Anya was therefore entirely lost, and this lovely character was reduced, either by a lack of resources or a lack of vision, to a parody of a tight-arsed spinster. Was this sweeping something potentially shocking under the carpet or did it simply prove that The Cherry Orchard needs at least one more actor and a little more sensitivity to Chekhov's comic genius?
Oddsocks have given us 'King Lear the Panto' and our own amateur Rosehill Players have made us laugh till it hurt in three notable recent productions: 'Absurd Person Singular', 'Last Tango in  Whitby' and 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'.  Tragedy is all the more poignant for arousing laughter at human stupidity and cruelty.

links to  reviews mentioned here:
Absurd Person Singular
Last Tango in Whitby
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest