The Cherry Orchard at the RSC ★★★

The world is changing. The old order is crumbling and unsustainable; change is required. Everybody knows it; it hangs over everything. Can those with the power dare to do what needs to be done? Are we a fly on the wall at a meeting of the cabinet of the latest UK prime minister? No, we’re on a country estate in Russia, circa 1904, a little before the Russian Revolution.

Across Russia, the aristocracy is in decline, and people are starving. Madame Ranyevskaya (Helen Hunt) returns home after five years in Paris to find her family and the estate drowning in debt. Lopakhin (Kenneth Branagh) is a wealthy businessman with a solution: Cut down the estate’s cherry orchard to build holiday rental cottages. Will they or won’t they? If they do, they destroy the thing that defines them. If they don’t, they lose that thing forever anyway.

The answer is quickly evident: This family of aristocrats languish around, lunching, spending money they don’t have, and retreating to unreliable memories (all in beautiful costumes by set and costume designer Anna Fleischle). They are incapable of facing reality, hoping for a relative or miracle to save them, waiting passively for their fate.

Director Tamara Harvey captures their inertia well. The party at which the family dance, drink, enjoy magic tricks and reminisce as their future is decided at the auction, off stage; their delaying tactics as they depart the estate for the last time; these are deeply human responses to change. Yet, experiencing it occasionally borders on boredom. It’s hard to care about most of these characters, Helen Hunt’s Ranyevskaya, in particular. Although the death of her husband and loss of her son are stated, her grieving is superficial. Although we see her give away money she cannot afford, it seems driven more by lack of awareness than generosity. It’s difficult to understand why her brother Gaev (Bill Pullman), her daughter Anya (Chumisa Dornford-May) and Lopakhin are so beguiled by her.

There are few characters that we can really root for. Top of the list: Ranyevskaya’s other daughter Varya (Ester Smith), who has been trying to hold everything together since her mother abandoned the family to wallow in grief, and Lopakhin. The other is Pishchik (Guy Henry).

Pishchik is suicidal, deep in debt, frequently pished, constantly asking for money, and also hoping for a miracle. In true Chekhov style, he is also wonderfully funny. Henry honed ‘drunk’ in The Tempest at the RSC earlier this year and is, once again, an irresistible sot. We all rejoice when he gets his miracle.

Branagh is magnificent from his first, blustering, comedic entrance to his final exit – his stance, his demeanour, his rich and wonderful Northern Irish accent. His what? Yes, his Northern Irish accent. Why has Lopakhin been given a Northern Irish accent? Is it to signal subtly that he is the son of a serf? Do Hunt’s and Bill Pullman’s regular American accents signal aristocracy or an inability to master any other? The purpose is unclear and the effect distracting.

Lopakhin is a successful, rich businessman who cannot shake off his humble beginnings. He loves Ranyevskaya, her brother Gaev and her sister Varya (Ester Smith) but cannot find a place amongst them, even as they are humbled by the loss of everything they hold dear. And, when he triumphs through buying the estate on which his forebears were once indentured slaves, he also loses because the family he loves are lost to him.

Varya is the adult in the room. She does the small things she can to stave off disaster, but she is also powerless to save the estate. Smith’s performance is nuanced and highly effective. The most poignant moment of the night is Varya’s subtle, beautiful heartbreak when Lopakhin fails to propose, every emotion visible in a scrunch of Smith’s face and her delicate hand movements. This is not a failure to love; it is Lopakhin’s failure to step out of his birth rank. It is tragedy.

Chekhov insisted this play was a comedy, and there is humour in this production: from Pishchik, from Gaev, from Lopakhin, from Dunyasha (the delightfully expressive Amber Gadd), and, particularly, Yepikhodov (endearingly played by Andy Rush). Despite this, the overall effect is heavy on the tragic and light on the comic.

With Branagh’s standout performance and some strong support, there is much to enjoy. Sadly, The Cherry Orchard never really blossoms. ★★★ 3 stars