Overview

A civilised and complacent culture is on the brink of collapse... The tide of change is coming. Madam Ranyevskaya's liberal world of privilege and pleasure is beginning to show cracks, but she and her family live on in denial.

Lopakhin wants to rescue Ranyevskaya. The hard-working son of one of her family's serfs, his new-found wealth can offer shelter and security to the woman he has loved since boyhood, but it will come at a high price. Meanwhile, revolution hangs in the air, the poor and hungry are pushing at the doors, and the tutor Trofimov predicts a tumultuous change for everybody.

Chekhov's final masterpiece is full of wild humour and piercing sadness in this fresh, funny and honest new translation by award-winning playwright and Russian speaker Rory Mullarkey. A portrait of changing times, it maps the building tensions between the desperate longing to hold onto what is familiar and the restless lure of the new.