Kaarin S. Johnston April 14, 2014
1
The Cherry Orchard; A Comedy in Four Acts (1904) by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
If this play is a comedy, it should speak to your head (your intellect) more than your stomach (your
emotions).
CHARACTERS: (5 Women and 7 Men + passerby, who could be crew)
Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya (Gayev’s sister)
Had married a lawyer (“a commoner”) instead of a man from her own class; he died six years earlier
because he was an alcoholic. She had two children, a daughter named Anya and a seven year old son
who drowned in the river a month after his father died. She had also adopted Varya, a girl from the
servant [ex-serf] class. According to her she had an affair with a man in Russia just before her son
died. After the death of her son she left Russia and went to Menton where she bought a villa and
nursed her evil lover for three years. Then the villa had to be sold to pay off their debts. They went
to Paris where her lover stole her money and left her for another woman. She then tried to poison
herself. While in Paris she didn’t send any money home to support her daughter, step-daughter, and
servants. It was also during this period that her and her brother’s nana (wet-nurse) died. Once the
family in Russia realized they were going to lose the estate because they were unable to make the
mortgage payments, Anya was sent to Paris with her governess to bring her mother back home. When
Anya found her she was living on the 5
th
floor, in a place that was bleak and uncomfortable. Before
they left Paris she took Anya up in a hot air-balloon. On the way back she spent money lavishly and
seemed to have no understanding of the value of money.
In Act I she says, “If only I could forget my past!”
Anya (17 years old; Lyubov’s daughter)
Had left home on the train at Lent to go to Paris with Charlotta as her companion to find her mother
and is just now returning. She has no money, “not a kopeck.”
Varya her step-sister says she looks like a nun. She has had the responsibility to keep the servants
and family fed with very little money. Everyone assumes she is going to marry Lopakhin but he has
never asked her. In fact, in Act II he says to her, “Get thee to a nunnery, Ophelia—Ophoolia.” (It is
not clear that he knows what the phrase means.) Her fantasy is to walk to Kiev, Moscow and other
Holy places. Her terrified reaction to the drunken beggar in Act II shows that she couldn’t walk alone
around the country. According to her, the old servants are spreading the rumor than she only feeds
them dried peas.
Gayev Leonid (51) Lyubov Andreevna’s brother) Makes moves as if he is playing billiards and
such comments as, “Yellow into the corner. Then off the cushion into the middle pocket.” Often
sucks on fruit drop hard candies. He says his sister is, “depraved.” He swears to everyone the estate
will not be sold—that their aunt, the wealthy countess, will save them. He says he has the love and
respect of the peasants and that, “You have to know your peasant!” (Obviously he lives in the past.)
In Act II his sister angrily calls him an old woman.
Lopakhin: his father was a serf owned by Andreevna and Gayev’s father
Everyone assumes he is in love with Varya, possibly because he comes from peasant (serf) stock, and
plans to marry her. He hasn’t proposed. Said to be very busy with a large estate.
Firs Very old and hard of hearing. Was a serf on the estate and when the serfs were freed; he stayed
with the family as a servant. According to him, 50 years earlier the family knew how to dry the
cherries, soak them, pickle them, make jam with them and sell them in Moscow and Kiev. The recipe
has been lost and no one knows what to do with the fruit in the years the trees do bear cherries.
