Listen to Norris Houghton discuss the difficulty of staging Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard
Theatre director Norris Houghton considering the challenges of staging Anton Chekhov's Vishnyovy sad (1904; The Cherry Orchard); from a film by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation, 1967.
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Transcript
LOPAKHIN: Everybody here? Nobody left behind? Everything is stored in there. Better be locked up. Let's go.
ANYA: Good-bye, house! Good-bye, old life!
TROFIMOV: Welcome, new life!
LOPAKHIN: Well, till the spring. Don't be long. Well, bye-bye.
GAEV: My sister, my sister!
MME. RANEVSKAYA: My wonderful, wonderful, wonderful orchard, my youth, my happiness--good-bye!
ANYA: Mama!
TROFIMOV: A-ooo!
MME. RANEVSKAYA: One last look at the window, the walls. Mother used to love this room.
GAEV: My sister, my sister!
ANYA: Mama!
TROFIMOV: A-ooo! A-ooo!
MME. RANEVSKAYA: Coming!
[Sound of chopping]
NORRIS HOUGHTON: And so ends Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," with a sound effect: the sound of an ax chopping down the trees in the magnificent orchard. A moment or so later another sound is heard. Listen:
[Sound of harp string]
a sad sound and a dying one--so say Chekhov's stage directions--rather like a harp string breaking quite high in the air, far off. Now, what do these sounds mean? Chekhov, we know, considered sound effects to be terribly important in evoking the right sort of mood in his audience. What then did he have in mind with this sound of the harp string? Here's a scene in which we first hear that sound.
[Sound of harp string]
MME. RANEVSKAYA: What's that?
LOPAKHIN: I don't know. Somewhere, far off, a bucket has fallen in a mine. But far off.
GAEV: A bird of some sort--a heron.
TROFIMOV: Or an owl.
MME. RANEVSKAYA: It's unpleasant. I don't know why.
FIRS: It was like that before the disaster; the owl hooted and the samovar hummed and no one knew why.
GAEV: Before what disaster?
FIRS: Before the serfs were set free.
NORRIS HOUGHTON: The harp string and the ax. On one level the ax is simple: the cherry orchard is to be cut down to make way for summer cottages. But is it also to be interpreted as a symbol of the revolution that was to destroy the old Russia to make way for the new? And the harp string: is this a symbol of a dying way of life? If so--and a good case can be made for such an interpretation--the meaning of Chekhov's play ought to be clear. Why, then, have producers of "The Cherry Orchard" found it so difficult to stage?
ANYA: Good-bye, house! Good-bye, old life!
TROFIMOV: Welcome, new life!
LOPAKHIN: Well, till the spring. Don't be long. Well, bye-bye.
GAEV: My sister, my sister!
MME. RANEVSKAYA: My wonderful, wonderful, wonderful orchard, my youth, my happiness--good-bye!
ANYA: Mama!
TROFIMOV: A-ooo!
MME. RANEVSKAYA: One last look at the window, the walls. Mother used to love this room.
GAEV: My sister, my sister!
ANYA: Mama!
TROFIMOV: A-ooo! A-ooo!
MME. RANEVSKAYA: Coming!
[Sound of chopping]
NORRIS HOUGHTON: And so ends Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," with a sound effect: the sound of an ax chopping down the trees in the magnificent orchard. A moment or so later another sound is heard. Listen:
[Sound of harp string]
a sad sound and a dying one--so say Chekhov's stage directions--rather like a harp string breaking quite high in the air, far off. Now, what do these sounds mean? Chekhov, we know, considered sound effects to be terribly important in evoking the right sort of mood in his audience. What then did he have in mind with this sound of the harp string? Here's a scene in which we first hear that sound.
[Sound of harp string]
MME. RANEVSKAYA: What's that?
LOPAKHIN: I don't know. Somewhere, far off, a bucket has fallen in a mine. But far off.
GAEV: A bird of some sort--a heron.
TROFIMOV: Or an owl.
MME. RANEVSKAYA: It's unpleasant. I don't know why.
FIRS: It was like that before the disaster; the owl hooted and the samovar hummed and no one knew why.
GAEV: Before what disaster?
FIRS: Before the serfs were set free.
NORRIS HOUGHTON: The harp string and the ax. On one level the ax is simple: the cherry orchard is to be cut down to make way for summer cottages. But is it also to be interpreted as a symbol of the revolution that was to destroy the old Russia to make way for the new? And the harp string: is this a symbol of a dying way of life? If so--and a good case can be made for such an interpretation--the meaning of Chekhov's play ought to be clear. Why, then, have producers of "The Cherry Orchard" found it so difficult to stage?