If there is one clear message in Chekhov’s last great masterpiece it must surely be that change, like gravity, is an irresistible force. Whether we harness that change, resist it or try to ignore it, the change will happen nonetheless. As I took my seat for the matinee performance and opened my programme, it was clear at once that there have been many changes since I was an active member of the Hampstead Players.
To begin with, the group has been blessed with the talents of many fine actors I’ve seen little or nothing of. As Lopahkin, the former serf now raised into the burgeoning middle class, Adrian Hughes gave us an engaging and watchable study of a man who, for all his success in escaping his humble roots, never seemed more than a heartbeat away from tugging his forelock to Bonnie Taylor’s capricious, mercurial Ranyevskaya. Also outstanding was Matt Williams as the idealistic perpetual student Trofimov, full of passion and hope for the future; a powerful, nuanced performance. Adam Baxter and Malcolm Stern brought the laughs as Ranyevskaya’s billiard-obsessed brother Gayev and her cheerfully shameless freeloading neighbour Pishchik, though for me the funniest performance was that of Emma Lyndon-Stanford as Charlotta, the family governess – as finely judged a piece of character acting as I’ve seen in Hampstead Parish Church.
Speaking of the building, its acoustic remains a challenge for higher pitched voices and some of the young women in the cast did struggle to make themselves heard if not facing front. But the more low-key scenes between Hoda Ali’s Varya and her stepsister Anya (Michaela Clement-Hayes) and between Anya and Trofimov were staged with touching intimacy. In the context of the many new (to me, at least) faces, David Gardner’s casting as Firs, the ‘evergreen’ footman who has seen so many changes and new arrivals in Ranyevskaya’s household, seemed particularly apt. His mother-hen fussiness throughout the play was splendidly counterpoised by the poignancy of his abandonment at its end.
For the most part, Bill Risebero’s assured direction was deliberately unobtrusive, but I particularly enjoyed the energy he injected into the party scene by using the live musicians of the Gregory Schechter Klezmer Band, whose authentic interludes lent great atmosphere throughout. Faced with a range of costume requirements that ran from ‘serf chic’ to ‘Parisian glamour’, Christine Risebero rose marvellously to the challenge, with the women’s costumes particularly fine. Above all, as I left the church after the show, I was struck by the pleasant irony of having just watched a play whose characters seem often to be paralysed by fear of change, performed by a society whose members seem to thrive on it. No stranger to irony himself, I think Chekhov would have approved.
The Cherry Orchard (1)
Ben Horslen