Friday, 5 September 2014

The Cherry Orchard over the summer

The cherry orchard
Two of the main characters
Mrs Ravensky throughout the play the elements unfold as at first we see her as a rich woman who has great estate and has the wealth to travel to the likes of Paris. As the story goes on we find she has tragedy happen to her many times from her boy who dies before the present day and then the loss of her husband. This leads her to have a face of happiness on the outside but her emotional state to be questionable and if she is capable to hold on to this estate. It is as her love confuses her at times in the play and it leads her to make bad decisions. And this is how her estate is in trouble due to her spending of money that you notice through the play. She seems to expierence visions of the past in the play ( her mother walking through the cherry orchard ) this shows audience she can’t let go of the past and the fact she returns to Paris at the end of the play reinforces this as she runs back to be with her new lover she craves the feeling of love.

Lopakhin we instantly find out due to a flash back at the start of the play that this now business man use to be a peasant but has always been with the estate as before laws changed his grandparents owned his family. He seems to be very on his feet when around Mrs Ravensky as if he is self-conscious of what she think of him as both character go back to their past it shows a contrast of how he as a peasant was worse off than Mrs Ravensky. The fact he buys the estate and marries Varya is to spite Mrs Ravensky as he is now a part of the upper-class family even though their family were rude and cruel to his parents and their parents. It is like he hasn’t got gratitude to Mrs Ravensky for what she did for him as a young child or her kindness.

 A student at the university in the local town, who knows Mrs Ranevsky from tutoring her son Grisha before he died.  He has spent most of his adult life at university studying new things. He is concerned by human health as he studied peasants and their life of low income. In ways he is an outsider so brings a different view to events happening in the show and this allows the audience to consider new views and ideas of the paly just through one character.


My opinion of the play is that it is structured and well written but some of the story did not make that much sense to me, I don’t know if that is because I am from a new generation and we have had open access to much more tragic stories and events. Meaning we don’t pity the characters as they are losing an estate. I would not have believed this was meant to be a comedy as I didn’t really see or maybe understand any humor in the play. But past the negatives it is a strong story and has a lot of details and great characters that can be brought to life in many different ways as they are only described briefly in the play.

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