'The Cherry Orchard' review — Kristin Scott Thomas is remarkable in this gorgeous, elegiac production

Read our review of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, now in performances at the Harold Pinter Theatre to 9 January 2027.

Summary

• Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard is revived at the Harold Pinter Theatre
• It features a beautiful new translation by Conor McPherson
• Kristin Scott Thomas brings majestic command and vulnerability to Ranevskaya
• Ian Rickson's gorgeous production features a haunting design and superb ensemble

We are entering a haunted house, seen through the prism of a dusty, austere room with damp patches invading the walls and an otherworldly shaft of light coming through the huge side windows. When Kristin Scott Thomas’s Ranevskaya returns home to this place full of ghosts, she describes it as a “crossroads”, and that sense of a liminal space – between past and future, one world and the next – pervades both Conor McPherson’s evocative new translation of Chekhov’s masterpiece and Ian Rickson’s gorgeous, elegiac production.

It can be tempting to judge the dithering, doomed aristocrat Ranevskaya, but the remarkable Scott Thomas gives her both majestic command (shades of her Diana Taverner in Slow Horses) and psychological reasoning: re-entering what was her son’s nursery before he tragically drowned, she is palpably grief-stricken and traumatised. She can’t countenance any change – not even if cutting down the cherry orchard and putting in lucrative holiday homes will save them – because there is such an emotional tie to this house and this land.

Looking out over the orchard, she recalls doing the same thing every morning of her childhood. “This is what it means to be happy,” she proclaims, and Scott Thomas puts such aching wistfulness into that line. She also confesses, in a softly vulnerable moment, that she can’t be on her own – “I’m frightened of silence” – which explains why she is considering going back to her feckless lover in Paris.

Tradition wrestles with the liberation, for others, of change in McPherson’s smartly judged script, which likewise balances romanticism with punchy, contemporary colloquialisms. Stephen Mangan’s peasant-turned-wealthy merchant is in awe of Ranevskaya – and, in this production, hopelessly in love with her – and Mangan is brilliantly excruciating as his socially awkward character keeps putting his foot in it. But he also delivers, with visceral intensity, Lopakhin’s rebuke that Ranevskaya’s father owned his serf father, and he is now reclaiming that power.

There are thoughtfully drawn characters throughout this superb ensemble, such as Peter Wight’s pompous Gaev, who senses the end is nigh and is battling for relevance; Anastasia Martin’s bitter Anya, furious that her mother and uncle plan to sacrifice her to a wealthy husband; and Megan Cusack’s vivacious maid Dunyasha, who lusts after not just Noof Ousellam’s toxic, greedy Yasha, but a more exciting life.

Strong too are Vinette Robinson’s bustling, practical Varya, who, in the agonising final scene, dares to hope; Karl Johnson as a befuddled but still pugnacious Firs; Ruby Bentall’s brusque Sharlotta, who proclaims that because her circus entertainer parents didn’t give her any ID papers, “I don’t exist”; and Jack Riddiford as the brutally blunt student who can sense the revolution coming.

Chloe Lamford’s eerie, melancholy design feels appropriately claustrophobic (we never go outside in this production), with a religious shrine for the dead drawing the eye in the stark space, while Sussie Juhlin-Wallén’s costumes are somewhere between period and modern dress. That fits with the sense here that although this is still a turn-of-the-century tale, it is also timeless in its exploration of love and loss, family and faith, the lure of nostalgia and the explosive force of change.

The Cherry Orchard is at the Harold Pinter Theatre to 9 January 2027. Book The Cherry Orchard tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Cherry Orchard (Photos by Johan Persson)