Though i have walked past it on many occasions over the years this was my first visit to the intriguingly located Eastwood Park Theatre.It is set in a complex of newish buildings which also house a large swimming pool as well as the council and administrative offices for the district , all set within the grounds of a attractive park with lush flora with a country like expansive feel.
The play itself was completed in the final year of Chekhovs life , though he had intermittently written it in good periods and bad ones as Russian Society fluctuated between high points and low from the period of the initial emancipation of the Serfs to the period just prior to the great revolution of 1905 , he was weighed down by personal and social strife as well as illness.The plays is a kind of testimonial to characters which have appeared throughout his work , and a commemoration to the era from which the future is uncertain yet a return impossible and not desirable.A tension between realistic reform and the crashing momentum of snowballing change gives the play the effect of comedy laced with deep tragedy which shocked Chekhov when he saw it performed in Moscow as veering far to much towards the latter to be almost unrecognisable from the balance he was trying to capture.
Since then versions have either gone from one to the other , only rarely getting the mixture right.
The cast which performed the play were a good wholesome mixture of young and old and did justice to the work by not going for too much background symbolism , for example the cherry orchard is never seen , and letting the dialogue take the fore.
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