The Cherry Orchard at the Palmer Hall, Fairford

Anton Chekhov's 1904 tragicomedy ‘The Cherry Orchard’ is a brave choice for an amateur dramatics group, and is certainly a far cry from the pantomimes that are usually the closest thing the small Cotswold town of Fairford gets to proper theatre. The play has a substantial cast, with many complex themes, and although some of its subtleties are lost in the mix, overall the Meysey Players have put together a very good production.

The Cherry Orchard of the title is situated on the estate of an aristocratic Russian family that is struggling to adapt to the changing times. The emancipation of the serfs had occurred some forty years beforehand, allowing former peasants to rise up and become successful businessman and at the same time reducing the power of the landed gentry. As such, nobody is quite sure where they stand in relation to both one another and the world in general. Servants come and go seemingly as they please, the aristocrats continue with the extravagance to which they have been accustomed despite the fact they can no longer afford it, and members of the emerging middle class take advantage wherever they can.

The nobles who live on the estate, led by Mrs Lyuba Ranevskaya who is ostensibly the head of the family despite her complete inability to make decisions, are at the beginning of the play so much in debt that their home will have to be sold. This is such a distressing situation that they do their utmost to avoid thinking about it, dismissing the plan of local businessman Lopakhin to sell some of it off as summer cottages, a plan that would indeed result in the destruction of the orchard but would at least allow them to keep their ancestral home. The servants, although concerned that they will lose their positions if the estate is lost, are wrapped up in pointless love affairs and it is only Ranevskaya’s adopted daughter Varya who makes any attempt to economise and thus improve matters.

Most of the comedy is in the form of farce, with a clumsy clerk and poor-mannered nobleman providing the bulk of the laughs. The overall feeling of the play however leans more towards tragedy; themes of unrequited love and loss abound, and the only characters who are satisfied by the finale are Lopakhin and the highly objectionable manservant Yasha.

The production was rather slick for the first night of a complex play performed by a group of amateurs, with only one slight slip up on lines noticeable throughout the whole evening. Some of the acting was perhaps a little over the top, but mostly the characters were very well realised. Special mention should go out to the actors playing the roles of Firs, the aged servant whose decline was symbolic of that of the Russian aristocracy, Lopakhin and Gayev, Ranevskaya’s slightly loopy billiard-obsessed brother. All of these had real stage presence and could easily put some professional actors to shame. The costumes and set were also impressive, especially as they had so much to fit onto such a small stage.

The play is running every night until this Saturday, 28th November, at the Palmer Hall in the middle of Fairford, and there are plenty of seats left. Tickets are only £10/£12 and can be bought on the door. The action starts at 7:30. This really is a good event for the town, and I highly recommend anyone in the area to go and see it.

The Meysey Players

Miss Julie at the Rose Theatre, Kingston

'Miss Julie', playing until 28 November at the Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames, is an 1888 drama by Swedish playwright August Strindberg. It is a relatively short play, running here without an interval, but manages to pack a considerable emotional punch into its 90 intense minutes.

The bulk of the stage is taken up by a large 19th century kitchen, complete with working stove and water pump. On either side of this are bedrooms, and behind it lies a slightly creepy, ethereal wood, with long thin trees reaching up to the rafters. The play opens with a lone servant cooking onions - certainly the first time I have ever seen actual cooking taking place on stage. These onions turn out to be for the dinner of Jean, a smartly-dressed valet and the man betrothed to Kristin, the cook. The pair work in the stately home of a great Count, a man who is never seen but of whose presence we are very much aware. Despite their engagement, the pair seem somewhat prickly towards each other, perhaps reflecting their different desires in life. Kristin is devoutly religious with a strong sense of what is proper, and is content with her position of servitude. In contrast, Jean is a fiery, well-educated man tortured by the senseless inequality of his position who dreams of being his own master.

They start gossiping about Miss Julie, the Count’s daughter who has recently broken off her engagement, an event about which she seems to feel a sense of humiliation. To escape these unpleasant thoughts she has taken to frolicking with the servants, raucously dancing at their Midsummer's ball and generally behaving in a way inappropriate to one in her position. She bursts into the kitchen and begins to flirt outrageously with Jean despite Kristin's presence. Kristin, exhausted from her hard day's work, soon falls asleep, provoking Miss Julie to be even more blatant in her attempted seduction. Jean is initially reticent, but eventually succumbs to his lust, with the end result being that he pulls Miss Julie off into his bedroom and they have sex.

This is the pivotal event in the play, and the bulk of it is spent with the two protagonists arguing over its consequences. Miss Julie feels she has fallen and can no longer occupy her lofty position as a Count’s daughter; in contrast Jean feels this could be his chance to rise up and follow his dreams. However, both characters are confused and they constantly change their minds as to what is the most appropriate course of action.

Miss Julie herself is a mass of contradictions; she has been fed starkly opposing views and values by her mother and father and as such has no idea who she really is and what she actually believes. Her indiscretion is the last straw that causes this inner turmoil to break out and she rants and raves as it threatens to tear apart. Jean is the more grounded of the two, coming up with genuine plans and suggestions in amongst Julie's hysteria. Whenever the Count is mentioned however, this steely façade crumbles and he becomes the humble, pathetic servant once more. They are doomed and both know it.

I saw the play this past Saturday, at the matinee performance. The Rose is a fantastic, modern theatre not yet two years old, which has an expansive stage and has been designed so that every seat provides a terrific view. Unfortunately, barely 10% of the 900 seats were filled. This is a crying shame, as 'Miss Julie' is well worth seeing, and certainly a better use of time than shopping, which is what the majority of visitors to Kingston that day seemed to be absorbed in.

The acting is excellent. I felt a little sorry for Lucy Briers, the actress playing Kristin, as she had to spend most of the play pretending to be asleep, but when she did get to do something she did it well. Rachel Pickup captures the wildness and instability of Miss Julie but gives her enough depth that she seems human, allowing the audience to feel sympathy for a character who could easily be made abhorrent. Daniel Betts is also good as Jean, changing in a more controlled fashion between calm realism, passion and cruelty.

My only complaints would be that it is not completely clear why the initially level-headed Jean would risk all for a moment of passion with his feared employer's daughter, and that the ending is rather sudden. Otherwise though, it was a play that I am very glad I went to see, even if the experience was not exactly enjoyable. I was left feeling emotionally pummelled, and that, for a cast of just three in a near-empty theatre, is no mean feat.

Rose Theatre

Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic

Showing at London's Old Vic until 20th December, Inherit the Wind is a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee based on the famous Scopes monkey trial of 1925. The play's revival is timely given both the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth and the rising tide of Christian fundamentalism in places such as the USA; indeed one wonders what kind of reception it would receive in that country at present. However, the main aim of the authors was not to specifically espouse evolution but rather to champion the rights of people to think for themselves, a pertinent issue in the fifties due to the scaremongering of McCarthyism.

In the first half of the play the scene is set: we are in a small town in Tennessee, populated by inherently good-natured but easily led Christians who are stirred up with a mixture of excitement and revulsion. They are thrilled that the famous politician Matthew Harrison Brady is coming to town and greet him with cheers and a picnic, but the reason for his visit - the fact that a local teacher, Bertram Cates, has given lessons on evolution, and is to be prosecuted by the state - has them fuming. They are even more riled to discover that Cates is to be defended by the famous agnostic lawyer Henry Drummond, thought by some to be the devil himself. The bulk of the action takes place in the courtroom, where these two legal titans battle it out; one using his conviction that every word in the Bible is literally true, the other by appealing to common sense and rational thought.

The play has a large cast of 41 (and one monkey) which is used to great effect to create the early 1900s small town atmosphere. One scene, in which an eager audience hums the tune to ‘Amazing Grace’ whilst the preacher bays his message of damnation and hellfire, is particularly chilling. Best though, is the acting of the two leads. David Troughton is utterly convincing as Brady, a man desperate to return to the political spotlight who is well-meaning but blinkered by his narrow religious viewpoints. In stark contrast is an almost unrecognisable Kevin Spacey, whose sharp comic timing and stage presence are ideal for the quick-witted Drummond. The play's ending is perhaps a little forced, with one event in particular seeming unnecessary, but everything up until that point more than makes up for it. In short, ‘Inherit the Wind’ is both entertaining and thought-provoking, and so is well worth going to see.

The Old Vic

Scopes Monkey Trial

Culture? In Swindon?!

On Saturday 12th September I went to see the Old Town Theatre Company's (OTTC) production of ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ at the Swindon Arts Centre. The play, written by Stephen Lowe and based upon the novel by Robert Tressell, charts the progress of a group of painters and decorators, and that of their employers, over a brief period of time in Edwardian England. This may not sound the most promising of themes, but within a few minutes I was gripped. It begins with the workers chatting as they get on with their job, and it soon becomes clear that there is a socialist in their midst, the opinionated and highly skilled Frank Owen (there is a particularly inspired scene in which Owen explains how capitalism works using no other props than knives and slices of bread). Pitted against him we have the foremen and the owners, who are bleeding their workers dry and in the process becoming filthy rich, having convinced themselves that they are worthy of such excessive remuneration because they ‘work with their minds’ whereas the workers ‘work with their hands'. The struggle for survival in which the workers are embroiled is wonderfully evoked, and we empathise fully with their dilemma: do they fight to try and change the system, and risk losing their livelihoods, or do they shut up and bear it, reminding themselves that they are fortunate to have a job at all?

The acting was uniformly excellent; the only quibble I could think of being that the accents were wont to lapse from thick Yorkshire back into Swindonian. This was an amateur production, but if I hadn't known this I wouldn't have guessed it. And being amateur, it was incredibly cheap at just £7.50 for a full price ticket - a bargain by any estimation. The set and props were basic, but this was what was needed, the play after all being about a group living in abject poverty. In short, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and I would strongly urge anyone in the Swindon area to go along to the OTTC’s next production.

The OTTC website
Swindon Arts Centre