Review: The Cherry Orchard, a Modern, Very British Take on a Russian Classic

The actors sit among the audience in writer-director Benedict Andrews’s new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s tragic comedy The Cherry Orchard. Originally produced at London’s Donmar Warehouse, it is now playing Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse. We sit in the round with only a bright orange carpet on the floor between us, like we’re in a supersize Quaker meeting (or, more likely for some of these characters, an AA meeting) and wait for the spirit to move someone to speak.

And these characters, first imagined by Chekhov in 1903, do speak directly to the hopes and fears of those of us living in 2025, a time when we still haven’t discovered how to properly balance dynamism with stability, if such a balance is even possible. That resonance is always apparent with The Cherry Orchard, but Andrews makes it more explicit here with contemporary language and costumes. It’s not as revelatory as it wants to be, but it does provide a platform for several haunting performances.

The titular orchard has been the country seat of a wealthy Russian family for generations, but rapid technological and social progress (including the 1861 emancipation of the serfs), coupled with dithering mismanagement on the part of the spendthrift family, has put the home in financial peril. Liubov Ranevskaya (Nina Hoss) has returned home from Paris ahead of the bank auction.

Rising local businessman Yermolai Lopakhin (Adeel Akhtar) has an idea to pay off the debt by chopping down the orchard and dividing the land into vacation rentals for the urban middle class. But Ranevskaya and her billiards-obsessed brother, Leonid Gaev (Michael Gould), scoff. They still think they can rescue the house the old way, by relying on the generosity of a rich aunt in Yaroslavl or, at very worst, marrying off Ranevskaya’s adopted daughter, Varya (Marli Siu), to Lopakhin. They’re both of peasant stock, after all! Reality only fully dawns on them when Lopakhin buys the orchard at auction—certainly a smarter investment than marriage into this family.

I’ve always felt a certain admiration for Lopakhin, a man who has risen by his own cunning to purchase the estate on which his ancestors were enslaved. But Akhtar’s sweaty, angry performance forced me to reconsider. When he returns to the estate following the auction, it should be as a conquering hero, but this Lopakhin is much closer to a football ultra who has just managed to knock out a French policeman. Bleeding from the head after Varya accidentally whacks him with a cue stick, he baptizes his wound in vodka as he stumbles through the audience slurring. Why is this win not enough? What thirst is he failing to quench? In this one unforgettable performance, Akhtar seems to encapsulate the entire pathology of the West.

If Lopakhin will never be satisfied, the central siblings suffer from chronic complacency. Hoss’s flighty Ranevskaya feels not entirely there, her elegant continental accent suggesting just how long she has been away. Designer Merle Hensel costumes Gaev like he’s about to attend a Sublime concert circa 1997, revealing a man who has never quite progressed beyond his youth—a feeling Gould supports with the enervating performance of a supercilious man child.

Daniel Monks is a standout as the radical student Trofimov, fired up like he’s ready to go on tour with Bernie and AOC. “We’re being held hostage by proto-fascist tech oligarchy while they amass obscene wealth, rob the rest of us blind, so they can fly off to Mars leaving us on a dead planet,” he snarls, radiating genuine rage as the Brooklyn audience cheers.

If you suspect that these words aren’t in Chekhov’s original script, you’re correct. Andrews has taken the liberty of inserting modern references so audiences in 2025 might feel the stakes in the same way a Moscow audience might have felt them in 1904, just one year out from revolution and 13 years away from an even bigger one, something newly converted Trofimov voters might want to think about.

It raises our blood pressure and the tension, but not nearly as effectively as May Kershaw’s original compositions, which undergird the climatic second half with the steady rhythm of an electric guitar. We can feel the bulldozer approaching, while sound designer Brendan Aanes makes us hear the chainsaws outside.

Andrews’s intimate, no-frills staging emphasizes the performances without the obstruction of major set pieces (one man in the audience is conscripted to play a bookcase). It makes a late scenic transition particularly arresting, when the carpet that constitutes the bulk of Magda Willi’s set is ripped up and the actors are left exposed under harsh florescence (lighting by James Farncombe) in the demolition site that is the only remaining physical evidence of this family’s power.

Karl Johnson delivers the most hilarious and heartbreaking performance as longtime family servant Firs. Decked out in multiple military medals (from which World War, we are uncertain) he shuffles and mutters about the travesty of emancipation, branding all dissenters “fuck wits.” Abandoned in the house after the family vacates, he curls up to nap on a pile of ripped up carpets, relegated to the ash heap alongside Blanche’s magic (said the theater critic).

Meant to be a comedy but regularly played as a tragedy before a well-heeled theatergoing audience (Andrews competently splits the difference here), The Cherry Orchard is an evergreen reminder that change will come. You can celebrate it or mourn it, but it arrives nonetheless.