The Cherry Orchard

Description

The play focuses on an aristocratic Russian woman and her family as they return to the family's estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. While presented with options to save the estate, the family essentially does nothing and the play ends with the estate being sold and the family leaving to the sound of the cherry orchard being cut down. The story presents themes of cultural futility - both the futility of the aristocracy to maintain its status and the futility of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its new found materialism. In reflecting the socio-economic forces at work in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of serfdom in the mid-19th century and the sinking of the aristocracy, the play reflects forces at work around the globe in that period but does not represent the true feeling of many aristocrats at the time.

Anton Pavlevich Chekhov was born on January 17th, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. To this day, Chekhov's literary reputation primarily rests with his short stories, and Chekhov's early plays, written primarily in his early 20s, are not well-remembered. It was only in 1896 that he began to turn his attention back to drama; in the eight remaining years before his death, he managed to complete four plays: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya,The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov was the in-house playwright for the Moscow Arts Theatre, which had been founded by his friend Vladimir Nemirovich-Davchenko. During this time, he fell in love with one of the Theatre's leading actresses, Olga Knipper, and would marry her in 1901. Chekhov wrote his last two plays after he had been diagnosed, in 1898, with tuberculosis. The Cherry Orchard itself was written over a period of more than two years, from early 1901 to late 1903, during which Chekhov was often in doctor-imp