By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Monday 5 October, opens 13 October and runs through 9 January 2027 RUNTIME: 150 minutes (including a 20-minute interval but aiming for 135)

Scott Thomas (Electra, Old Vic) from Apple TV’s Slow Horses leads this cast with wonderful grace, chutzpah and charisma as Ranevskaya, a broke aristocratic landowner returning to her under-threat estate in the country with the titular fruit-bearing wood.

• Read on for reasons including how Scott Thomas is less slow horses and more galloping show pony

She’s surrounded by a fine ensemble and comedian Stephen Mangan (Unicorn, Garrick Theatre) is a choice as merchant and son of a peasant Lopakhin who has plans to save Ranevskaya but also eyes for her as everyone assumes it is the landowner’s adopted daughter he is better suited to.

We’ve never seen Mangan better than he is here although the choice for laughs rather than threat with his character means this Cherry Orchard is not quite as fruitful as Benedict Andrews’ 2024 reimagining at the Donmar.

There’s much to enjoy elsewhere in the ensemble though with Jack Riddiford (Cleansed, Almeida) proving how chameleon-like he can be as a character actor with a memorable turn as the idealistic Trofimov when all around him are either relying on Ranevskaya for work, as hangers on or to pay their mortgage.

Karl Johnson’s (Endgame, Old Vic) ageing butler Firs is particularly tragic as a man who is losing his mind and can sense his station in life is also becoming as endangered as the titular orchard.

Jeff Rawle (Allelujah!, Bridge Theatre) is 1 of those outwardly charming hangers-on just looking to cover this month’s mortgage while there’s also much talent among the younger members of the cast with Megan Cusack as the lusty Dunyasha hugely entertaining while lovestruck Shubham Saraf (An Enemy Of The People, Duke Of York’s Theatre) tugs at the heartstrings.

Adapted by Conor McPherson (The Weir, Harold Pinter Theatre) and directed by Ian Rickson (London Tide, National Theatre), the pair last performed a similar trick with more success with Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya pre-Covid at this very venue.

The Cherry Orchard was Chekhov’s last play and McPherson and Rickson talk a good game in the programme particularly describing it as parading ‘a pageant of emotional weather systems across the stage which are constantly changing’.

It’s certainly that but it also combines a nostalgia for the past under threat by the inevitability of change with the foresight that nature is to be protected and that money will 1 day become an irrelevence when love, however inappropriate it seems, comes calling.

Act 2 works well with an air of celebration at the expectation that the estate be saved being shattered by an inevitability of melancholy of which we shan’t go into too much detail.

We suspect Scott Thomas will be the main draw here and she’s less slow horses more galloping show pony – A Cherry Orchard that’s ripe to taste then if not perhaps the best you’ll ever savour.

• Main pictures by via Facebook courtesy ATG Tickets
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