Theatre review: The Cherry Orchard(Harold Pinter Theatre)

I think after a few fairly trad productions of Chekhov I'm ready for creatives to go back to being a bit more avant garde with him; the team of adaptor Conor McPherson and director Ian Rickson, reuniting at the Pinter after their Uncle Vanya, won't be the ones to do it though. The Cherry Orchard is part of an estate that once came with its own serfs; they have all been freed from their ancestral ties to the land, but the story takes place when their emancipation was still in living memory. The ancient Firs (Karl Johnson) even remembers the time before as the best of his life, and his liberation as a catastrophe, while the hereditary owners of the land have never quite got their heads round the way things have changed for them: Lady of the house Ranevskaya (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just returned from five years in Paris where she's managed to spend the last of their money.Now the whole estate is up for auction, but the family have still convinced themselves some last-minute miracle…

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