The famous Italian director, Giorgio Strehler, defined ‘The Cherry Orchard’ as a vaudeville, a tragedy, a farce, a drama. Tuminas’ spectacle comprises all the elements of these genres, still the vaudeville characters seem to dominate. We encounter two separate worlds that are not capable of helping each other or even communicating wth each other.
Rimas Tuminas, just like the legendary theatre director of our times, Peter Brook, rejects the landscapes that Czekhov loved, he rejects even the visual sign of the cherry orchard as he does not present a play about trees and beauty – he shows us people. The fascinating beauty, the ultimate loss of harmony is personified in a figure of Raniewska, performed by Egle Gabrenaite.
‘You have never seen the Cherry Orchard blooming in this way. It does not matter at all how many different adaptations of this classical drama by Czekhov you have seen, it the first time we can really see it (…) The spectacle oscillates between a cartoon and a drama. It works perfectly. As a performance it is so different, so non-English, also in the style of acting. The actors perform with their whole bodies – from face expression to the movements of tiptoes – they stop rooted to the ground when the performance finishes’. (Geoff Hammerton)