Anton Chekhov’s final masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard, was first performed in 1904, a year before the first Russian revolution and only months before he died.

The play follows a group of people coming to terms with a great change which will mean the end of their way of life – the loss of the cherry orchard. The group is a microcosm of Russian society at the turn of the 20th century – the gentry, rich in land and full of entitlement, but often cash-strapped; their servants – keeping everything going, with their own ambitions and stories; and a surprisingly large number of people in between – the adopted daughter who runs the estate, the chambermaid whose hands have become white and soft and, most strikingly, Lopakhin, the son of a peasant who is now enormously rich and in a position to save or destroy the cherry orchard.

Through this domestic setting The Cherry Orchard explores large themes: social change and the struggle for a more just world; the human search for fulfilment and meaning in life; and the tangled mix of love, hope, longing and regret that characterises so many relationships. Like all Chekhov’s great plays it manages to be very funny and also deeply moving a the same time.

We are using a translation by Michael Frayn, himself a brilliant playwright and fluent in Russian. The result is an extremely faithful rendition of Chekhov’s work in modern, idiomatic English that feels like an original play not a translation.