By PATRICK MARMION
Published: | Updated:
The Cherry Orchard
Harold Pinter Theatre, London
Rating:
Rating: Two stars
Kristin Scott Thomas and Stephen Mangan are actors at the top of their game, or so I thought ahead of this listless reboot of The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov's great Russian masterpiece from 1904.
After all, Olivier award winner Scott Thomas is riding high as ice-queen head of MI5 Diana Taverner in Apple TV's Slow Horses.
And former Green Wing star Mangan has just completed a whirlwind comic turn on stage in Florian Zeller's marital farce The Truth in the West End.
We now find ourselves with Scott Thomas playing Madame Ranevskaya, a bereaved woman returning to her provincial childhood home, surrounded by the titular orchard on an estate in need of fiscal stimulus.
Mangan is Lopakhin, a self-made man who was born a peasant but is now offering to bail her out.
They are surrounded by ten other characters in various states of destitution, desperation and emotional paralysis.
We now find ourselves with Scott Thomas playing Madame Ranevskaya, but in Conor McPherson's hollowed-out 'reimagining', any sense of place or class struggle has vanished
The Cherry Orchard is a subtle study of tragic self-delusion from a time when Russian society was falling apart before the first revolution of 1905.
Yet in Conor McPherson's hollowed-out 'reimagining' of the play, any sense of place or class struggle has all but vanished.
Instead, the action looks like it's been transferred to the 1980s – a peculiar move, at odds with continued references to the end of serfdom in 1861.
Even the ballistic precision of Chekhov's dialogue is ditched for blandly contemporary idioms, allowing actors to use their native accents. But with no sense of history, little is at stake.
Ian Rickson's production, likewise, leaves the actors in a cultural vacuum. Scott Thomas is a deracinated lady of leisure, finding escape in inscrutable private reveries.
She sets herself apart with an air of lofty indifference, Romanesque eyebrows expressing stony impatience and vexation.
It's a tricky role, defined by avoidance and passive aggression, but it needn't be cold.
Mangan, meanwhile, parades his peasant pedigree and laments being dismissed as an 'uncouth money grabber'
Mangan, meanwhile, parades his peasant pedigree and laments being dismissed as an 'uncouth money grabber'.
Yet he has the airs, graces, and RP accent of a public schoolboy. Crucially, we never feel the agony of his romantic flip-flopping with maid of the house Varya (Vinette Robinson), who is desperate to be released from service.
With nothing between them, there's nothing to lose.
The sharpest tool in the box is Karl Johnson as ancient manservant Firs. Lapsing into disinhibited dementia, he rakishly humps a wooden chair.
A festive interlude with dancing and magic tricks in a party after the interval brings fleeting focus. Otherwise, it's like watching a herd of cats purposelessly gathered on Chloe Lamford's damp-riddled set.
A few desultory artefacts, including a shrine of religious icons, are largely ignored – just like the play's historical moment.
The play runs until January 9.