The first thing to say about The Cherry Orchard is that its author thought it was funny, and said so repeatedly, in writing, to a director who did not agree and staged it anyway as an elegy. Chekhov went to his grave irritated about it.
\nThe second thing to say is that Stanislavski was not simply being obtuse. The play is about a family that loses its house because none of its members can bring themselves to do the one obviously sensible thing that would save it. Whether that is funny depends almost entirely on how far away you are standing.
\nThe sound in the second act
\nThere is a stage direction that has caused more argument than any other line in the text: a distant sound, as if from the sky, of a breaking string, dying away, mournful. Nobody agrees what it is. A mining bucket, says one character. A heron, says another. Chekhov, asked directly, declined to explain.
\nOur production takes the direction at face value and lets the sound be exactly what it says it is — something that breaks, far away, that nobody can see. The characters hear it, stop, and then carry on talking about lunch.
\nOn not cutting Firs
\nProductions in a hurry cut the final scene, where the old servant is left locked in the empty house. It is four minutes long and it is the reason the play exists. We have not cut it.
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