Writer: Anton Chekhov
Director: Benedict Esdale
The old order is being swept away in a deluge of bitterness and bankruptcies. A once-despised underclass is getting rich and buying out their old overlords. A crumbling stately home with its famous, white-flowering cherry orchard is threatened with clearance to make way for (“vulgar”) holiday villas. The poignant balance of sympathies in The Cherry Orchard between the elegant slave-owning aristocracy of the past and the brash, energetic pioneers of the future is held in perfectly precarious equilibrium by this excellent production.
Flywheel Theatre’s thoughtful and emotionally compelling rendition of Anton Chekhov’s final play, originally set in Russia at the start of the 20th century, is semi-transposed to England in the 1970s. There are super-wide, appliquéd flares, sparkling jerkins, puff-sleeved blouses. Costume and set designer Rebecca Ward leans into the period detail with homely surroundings and a colourful wardrobe. Large, stylised branches of cherry blossom frame the stage and the characters’ divergent outlooks: irreplaceable beauty or superfluous frivolity? A background rumble in the darkness, perhaps of the community-altering railway, snaps off suddenly as each scene begins.
The sometimes-nearly-three-hour run-time is slashed to 90 minutes, but this show tenderly preserves the elegiac soul of Chekhov’s meditation on loss, change, love and memory. Director Benedict Esdale and dramaturg William Dunleavy have created a witty, interval-less version of The Cherry Orchard that never drags or falters and yet gives the play’s more serious moments room to breathe.
Maggie Bain plays Lubov, whose name literally means “love” in Russian, with power and poise. Arriving home from five years abroad in a long fur coat and stylish suit, spendthrift Lubov tries to keep her dignity as she loses the house where she grew up, where her son drowned, and where her family have lived for generations. Getting non-binary Bain to play the family matriarch is part of an ingenious pattern of gender-blind casting that forces the focus more clearly onto essential power dynamics between characters. Conor Dumbrell plays (maid)servant Dunyasha, following the family with a video recorder. Rachel-Leah Hosker is business-savvy Lopakhin, usually a man, and invests the role with sharpness, passion and sensitivity. Her Scouse accent is perfect for conveying Lopakhin’s frustration as she tries to force the too-long-cosseted family to be more pragmatic.
Lubov’s verbose and feeble brother Gaev is played by Elliot Pritchard, the second (after Bain) of three guest actors, who join the five core members of Flywheel Theatre for this production. The third “satellite” is veteran actor Paul Bentall as Fiers, the ageing family retainer and outmoded soul of the old house. His rambling speech about what used to happen to the fruit from the orchard (“they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them…”) manages to be simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking.
That every character on stage has their own individual reaction to Fiers (affection, impatience, amusement) is tribute to detailed direction and committed ensemble work, even more impressive given the company’s compressed rehearsal time. The core cast is also outstanding. Jessica Temple as Varya is the play’s hard-working emotional heart, unrewarded, disappointed, occasionally hoping for more, puffing out her cheeks in a completely relatable sigh as her chaotic family leaves the stage. Her sister Anya (Cash Holland) is a lovely contrast, wide-eyed and idealistic, with a more-than-platonic interest in Jaemon Anthony Crosby’s 70s-style student ideologue Trofimov. The two of them look forward to a radical new future that feels sadly less substantial than the surging winner-takes-all forces of triumphant capitalism.
A radio mutters between scenes about Callaghan and changes of government, possibly hinting at parallels with the arrival of Thatcherism. But the production still uses full Russian patronymics, refers to Moscow, “Kharkov”, and telegrams, even with a cream 70s telephone on set. Rather than being confusing, the mismatch somehow serves to celebrate both Riverside Studios’ 1976 opening production of the same play and Chekhov’s turn-of-the-century original. This Cherry Orchard blends naturalistic dialogue and symbolic undertones.
A perennially relevant play about changing times and divided societies, The Cherry Orchard is having a particularly resonant moment. A Royal Shakespeare Company production, starring Kenneth Branagh as Lopakhin, closed in Stratford-upon-Avon at the end of August, and a new West End version, with Kristin Scott Thomas, opens in October. Flywheel Theatre’s relatively modest take on Chekhov’s masterpiece is likely to hold its own among this year’s Orchards in terms of intelligent direction and emotional clout. This is Flywheel’s first 2026 production and the five core actors are presenting four more classic plays as a repertory season over the next month. The quality of this show suggests all of them will be worth seeing.
The Cherry Orchard runs until 12 September 2026.
Radical Classical runs until 10 October 2026.
