13 of Chekhov, A. P., Complete Works and Letters (Moscow: Academy of Sciences, 1978), 321–334.
In the following note Richard Nelson explains that decision from the point of view of a playwright and director.
—Richard Pevear
* Konstantin Stanislavsky, My Life in Art (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 1987), 422.
† Anton Chekhov, Selected Letters, ed. by Lillian Hellman (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984), 285.
‡ Rosamund Bartlett, Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 510.
§ Laurence Senelick, Stanislavsky: A Life in Letters (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 167.
¶ Stanislavsky, 418–19.
** James N. Loehlin, Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard (Plays in Production) (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 40.
†† Interview with Cathleen McGuigan, Newsweek, February 7, 2009.
‡‡ Vladimir Kataev, If Only We Could Know!, translated by Harvey Pitcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003), 282.
§§ Stanislavsky, 362.
¶¶ Bartlett, 519.
Since its premiere in 1904, every director of every production of The Cherry Orchard has been faced with certain questions in the text that need somehow to be addressed. How these questions are addressed has often defined a production’s interpretation of this great play.
Here are some of the questions a director of The Cherry Orchard has to confront:
• Act One and Act Four have the same setting: a room that is “still called the nursery.” In Act One this “nursery” appears to be a room that has for years been closed off from the rest of the house (that is, since the death of its last occupant, Ranevskaya’s son Grisha). In Act Four this same room has somehow become a space that everyone moves through while packing to leave. How does a director (and designer) reconcile this?
• At the beginning of Act One, Lopakhin talks to the maid about an incident from his youth. What makes him think of this now? And why to the maid? Or is this just the only way Chekhov could give the audience needed “exposition”?
• When Charlotta is introduced in Act One, she is asked to perform a magic trick, but doesn’t want to. Why not? Is she just tired from the journey?
• Anya and Trofimov have often been portrayed in productions as being a young couple in love. Alone at the end of Act One, Trofimov says, “My sunshine! My springtime!” These words have generally been interpreted as referring to Anya. In Act Two, the couple’s efforts to get away from the others have been interpreted as the desire of two young lovers to be alone. But if they are in love, why don’t they show this love toward each other in Acts Three and Four? Why, in Act Four, isn’t their parting more difficult?
• Why doesn’t the family try to do something to save themselves? Entire productions have been built around answering this question, and by interpreting these characters as being “incapable of doing anything but talk.”
• At the top of Act Two, Charlotta confides her “life story” to two uninterested and preoccupied servants. Why to them, and why at this time? Perhaps Charlotta, as I’ve heard explained, is “just an eccentric”?
• In Act Two, Varya, Anya and Trofimov arrive together. Why are they together? Is there any reason why they are together?
As I said, every director has had to ask himself these questions.
But what if the settings of Act One and Act Four were never meant to be the same? What if the family actually does try to do something to help themselves? What if Anya and Trofimov aren’t in love? What if Charlotta doesn’t confide her life story to two uninterested servants? And so on.
That is, what if, instead of confusions in need of interpretation, these “problems” were simply the result of cuts and changes made, not by the author, but by the director and actors during the course of difficult and volatile rehearsals? What if during such a time, during such rehearsals, changes to the script were made, lines rewritten and rearranged, a setting (Act Four) removed, and so on. And what if nearly every change made was to the detriment of the play?
I believe all that is true, and the following list of the major differences between the two versions will explain why.
A) The location of the setting of Act One and Act Four.
Though the setting for Act One is the same for both versions, in the pre-rehearsal script, the setting for Act Four is another room, not the nursery, and most likely an entryway, the same space where the dancing occurs, just offstage, in Act Three. So in Act Four people do not walk through the nursery on their way out; therefore the Act One nursery can be designed for what, I believe, is its intention: a room that has been shut off from the rest of the house for years, ever since the death of the son.
This has important consequences for most of the characters, as no one has been in this room for a very long time. And so just entering this nursery must evoke in each of them lost or repressed wounds and memories.
As the play opens, Lopakhin follows the maid, Dunyasha, into this room, probably after having heard the train whistle. He follows her in to ask a question and only then realizes where he is—in a forgotten inner sanctum. Memories pour out of Lopakhin, all related to this room. In the pre-rehearsal version, Lopakhin last visited here when he was “five or six.” In the later, post-rehearsal text, he last visited when he was “fifteen.” The greater the distance, of course, the greater the jolt to his memory, which helps explain why these memories seem to suddenly pour out.
So Lopakhin, with memories overwhelming him, doesn’t actually talk to the maid, but rather to himself, and, perhaps, to this room where he once found refuge so many years ago, as a young boy, and was treated so well by a girl.
Anya calls from offstage, “Let’s go through here.” So it is clear that this nursery is not the “direct” route to where they are headed, but rather a detour. This room has been opened up for a purpose. One could even say that here is the underlying “plot” of the entire first act—everyone dealing with this room, and the memories and ghosts it evokes.
Gaev’s “bookcase speech” then is not some random memory of a man who has random bursts of nostalgia, as it is often played. It is much more immediate and about an event that has recently occurred. He explains that just “last week” he pulled out the lower drawer. It seems, then, that they opened up this room only last week, no doubt in preparation for Lyubov Andreevna’s return. So this room is new for everyone.
One begins to sense that after all these years since the boy’s death, the family is now ready to try and deal with this nursery and its memories, wounds and guilt.
Trofimov enters. Why is he here? There is no suggestion in the play that he has come often or has ever been back since the boy in his charge accidentally drowned. It is even possible that this is his first time back. In any event, as the nursery has been closed off, he too has not been in this room for years; this room where he spent his youth, before the death of his charge and before the guilt that that would have brought him. A guilt that he now carries with him and constantly brings up, in different ways, throughout the rest of the play.
So at the end of Act One, when Trofimov, alone, says tenderly, “My sunshine. My springtime,” isn’t he referring to the eleven-year-old Anya, to this nursery, to the lost child, and to his own lost youth? Instead of the beginnings of a love affair that never evolves in the play, perhaps these last two words are the cri de coeur of a man wracked