The Cherry Orchard

Anton Chekhov wrote The Cherry Orchard on the brink of the Russian Revolution and just before his own (very early) death. The characters live in a society that attempts the leap from feudalism to communism in a few decades; the personal struggles of a generation old before its time are played out against a landscape of social upheaval. The result is both funny and heartbreaking: the advent of the modern tragicomedy.