By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN?: Saturday 15 July (matinee), runs through 22 June 2024 RUNTIME: 165 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

We’re in the front row and at the start of Act 2 a character asks the audience member on our left to get up on stage and dance with them.

• Read on for reasons including how this striking adaptation is a triumph of gig theatre

The Cherry Orchard was written in 1904, the last play Chekhov penned and tells the story of aristocratic Russian landowner Ranevskaya who returns to her family estate before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage and sold to the son of a former serf.

The family leaves to the sound of the titular cherry orchard being cut to the ground and the work is viewed as a comment on the futile attempts of the aristocracy to maintain its status and of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its new-found materialism.

Writer/director Benedict Andrews previously gave us an extremely memorable Cat On A Hot Tin Roof starring a naked Jack O’Connell and this striking adaptation is a triumph of gig theatre.

Perhaps the 1st thing to mention about it is that 6 members of the superb ensemble cast including its 2 brilliant leads take seats in the front row with the lights turned up throughout the production giving it the sense that we are complicit in what we are about to see.

Hoss plays the returning Ranevskaya and it is when the band – drummer, bass player and keyboardist – join her, the rest of the cast and selected members of the audience for the last hurrah of a party onstage that this piece really takes flight.

Akhtar, who has won 2 BAFTAs and a Children’s and Family Emmy for roles including in James Graham’s Sherwood, swigs from a beer can often and impresses with the amount of keepy-uppies he can do with a football playing the brash social climber Lopakhin.

Eanna Hardwicke (TV’s Normal People), complete with comedy squeaky shoes, impresses both with a football, playing a guitar and in a minor melancholy unwanted love role also.

Daniel Monks, a former Best Theatre Actor monsta winner, is maturing as a fine character actor and here, often barefoot, has many moments where he shines as the academic Pyotr. While Nathan Armarkwei Laryea (A Strange Loop, Barbican Centre) plays against type as a vicious, tracksuited and slider-wearing personal assistant.

June Watson (As You Like It, @SohoPlace) proves a reliable bridge to the past as the ageing Firs who has quite literally seen it all.

A striking element of the production is the removal of the red carpet which adorns the stage and walls as the titular cherry orchard is decimated at the show’s close.

We were delighted to have caught this production at the end of a short run before its close and wonder because it is so good whether it might take root in the West End at a bigger venue later this year?

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Donmar Warehouse Tickets
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