A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival The Cherry Orchard The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages. Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director. Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival. For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org. Cover photo: Henson Keys as Firs in The Cherry Orchard, 2000. Contents Information on the Play Synopsis 4 TheCharacters Cherry Orchard5 About the Playwright 6 Scholarly Articles on the Play The Glory of the Past 7 The Language of Russia 9 Utah Shakespeare Festival 3 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Synopsis: The Cherry Orchard Early one May morning, after a long absence (during which she lived in Paris), the widow Madame Ranevsky returns home to her family estate to find that it has been heavily mortgaged to pay for her extravagances and that it is to be auctioned off. With her arrives her daughter, Anya, and Anya’s German governess, Charlotte. They are greeted by Varya, Ranevsky’s adopted daughter who manages the remnants of the once-grand estate; Gayev, Ranevsky’s brother; Lopakhin, a former peasant who has become a wealthy merchant and neighbor; members of the staff; and other neighbors and friends. Amidst her recollections of her girlhood nursery, Madame Ranevsky is reminded that the estate will be sold to clear debts in August, unless the family can raise sufficient funds. Generous and distracted, she seems incapable of recognizing and acting on her desperate situation. Lopakhin offers to lend Ranevsky 50,000 rubles to cover the debts and save the estate--if she will permit the land to be divided into lots for summer tourist homes. This, however, involves cutting down the estate’s famous cherry orchard, which Ranevsky loves dearly; and the plan is rejected as sacrilege. Several other ideas to save the estate also arise: Gayev will try to secure a loan, or perhaps Anya will visit her wealthy great-aunt, a countess in distant Yaroslavl, and be richly married. Nothing is resolved. Later in the summer, courtship seems to preclude business. The new servant, Yasha, competes with the estate clerk Yepikhodov for the attentions of Dunyasha the maid; Varya tries to prevent a union between her sister, Anya, and the perpetual student Trofimov (former tutor to Ranevsky’s infant son, who drowned at age six), and everybody assumes that Varya will marry Lopakhin, though there has been no proposal. In the midst of this, Lopakhin tries vainly to get the family to be more practical, but Ranevsky confesses that she squandered her fortune on her unfaithful lover in Paris and is probably not capable of practical dealing with the immediate problem. Firs, an aged servant, longs for “the good old days” before the serfs were emancipated, but Trofimov dreams of progress. He is glad the estate will be sold, for to him every leaf in the cherry orchard tells of a serf ’s complaints and sufferings. August arrives, and the estate must be auctioned to meet the mortgage payments. Gayev attends the sale, hopeful that the great-aunt’s money will be enough to satisfy the creditors. At the mansion a farewell party is underway even though there are no funds for the orchestra. The household members dance and quarrel until Lopakhin returns with Gayev from the auction to announce that he has bought the estate where his father and other family members once was serfs, and he intends to carry out his plan for cutting down the orchard. Seeing Ranevsky’s sorrow, Lopakhin remorsefully wishes that “this miserable disjointed life could somehow be changed.” Anya comforts her mother, promising that together they will build a new, happy life. In the fall with the estate and orchard now gone, Ranevsky readies for her departure to Paris, where she will live on the money from the great-aunt. Anya will accompany her and attend school. Gayev has a job as a bank clerk; Trofimov, as a translator. Lopakhin has failed to propose to Varya, so she will become a house- keeper for others. However, Lopakhin does hire Yepikhodov to work for him and promises to find a new position for Charlotte. Ranevsky is worried about the old and ailing Firs, but is told that he is in the hos- pital. Once the family and their entourage depart, however, Firs finds himself alone, locked in the deserted house. Axe strokes resound outside, as the woodsmen begin at last to cut down the beloved cherry orchard. 4 Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 Characters: The Cherry Orchard LYUBA RANEVSKY: A wealthy landowner, Ranevskaya is returning to her beloved estate and cher- ry orchard after an extended stay abroad. (Pronounced LYOO-bah Rah-NYEFF-sky.) ANYA: Ranevskaya’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Anya is returning with her mother to her home. (Pronounced AH-nyah.) VARYA: Ranevskaya’s adopted daughter, Varya is twenty-four years old and has remained at home taking care of the estate. (Pronounced VAH-ryah.) LEONID GAYEV: Ranevskaya’s brother. (Pronounced Lay-oh-NEED GAH-yeff.) YERMOLAY LOPAKIN: A recently wealthy merchant, whose father was once a serf on the Ranevskaya estate. (Pronounced Yehr-moh-LIE Loh-PAH-kheen.) PETER TROFIMOV: A student, Trofimov is in love with Anya and was once the tutor of Ranevskaya’s son who died when he was young. (Pronounced Troh-FEE-moff.) BORIS SIMEONOV-PISHCHIK: A landowner. (Pronounced Sim-YAW-noff Pee-shchik.) CHARLOTTE: A governess. (Pronounced Ee-VAH-noff-nah.) SIMON YEPIKHODOV: A clerk, Yepikhodov is in love with Dunyasha. (Pronounced Yeh-pee- KHAW-doff.) DUNYASHA: A maid. (Pronounced Doon-YAH-shah.) FIRS: An old servant, aged 87. (Pronounced FEERS.) YASHA: A young servant, also in love with Dunyasha. (Pronounced YAH-shah.) A PASSER-BY A STATIONMASTER A POST OFFICE CLERK Utah Shakespeare Festival 5 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880 About the Playwright: Anton Chekhov By Heidi N. Madsen From Insights, 2000 Anton Chekhov was neither a liberal nor a conservative, feminist nor monk--nor was he entirely indifferent. He dealt with cold realism, in the irony of unfulfillment, and, like Hemingway, he disapproved of adjectives. He detested arbitrariness, though he believed without bias that it equitably and universally existed. In the merchant’s house, at the police station, in lit- erature, in science and among the young it existed. Chekhov did not look the part of an author or a playwright; his physical appearance most stereotypically resembled his alternate profession as a doctor. Medicine was his “lawful wife,” and writing was his “mistress,” and for this reason, to read Chekhov’s writing we must don the white clinician’s jacket and the gloves and look at the human plight more scientifically. We must not allow ourselves to view the autopsic style of Anton Chekhov with too much morbidity. His heroes, perhaps as did his patients, speak, love, marry, give birth, and die. Physicians, as Chekhov was, must seek to be non-judgmental, even detached, and observe only with clinical precision. The surgeon’s table is sterile, his tools cold and hopefully lacking in pretentiousness; and, omit- ting political, religious, and philosophical views, Chekhov wrote with the same medical ministra- tions. His wife, actress Olga Knipper, wrote to him in 1901: “My heart aches when I think of the quiet sadness that seems to be so deeply entrenched in your heart.” To which Chekhov replied: “But darling, that is utter nonsense!” (Rene and Nonna D. Wellek, editors, Chekhov: New Perspectives. [New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1984], 33). Anton Chekhov was born in the Azov seaport of Taganrog. In 1884 he published twenty, of an eventual two hundred, pieces in his first book, Tales of Melpomene; published his only novel, A Shooting Party, and graduated medical school. The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy was Chekhov’s favorite book, but he was only partly influenced by his Russian contemporaries and did not mimic their styles. Some disapproved, including Tolstoy, but Chekhov was a transitional writer--the bridge between classical and contemporary literature. He also must be given credit for his particular revolution of theatre itself. Instead of the actor being given full reign on stage, his plays were designed to subjugate the actor directly to the text. Words, the words on the script, were responsible for mood and for staging, and it was not how or what the characters said that was most important, but more why they said it. No longer was the dramatist entirely at liberty to interpret. Donna Rayfield suggested that one of his motives in doing this was to antagonize actors as well as audience members (The Cherry Orchard: Catastrophe and Comedy [New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1994], 7). However, as stated earlier, Chekhov was not a radical; he did not try to force opinions upon others. In fact, his resolve to leave his stories and plays in a way unresolved, reveals him as unas- suming, noncommittal, and almost undecided in most kinds of politics.