Janet Suzman’s production of The Cherry Orchard, featuring an SA cast, is a huge critical success in Britain. HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports
IT is firmly rooted in South African soil. But Janet Suzman’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard has received rave reviews after it opened last weekend in Britain.
The production – the Russian playwright’s masterpiece on life in a run-down provincial Russian estate adapted to suit the South African situation – has been hailed by critics countrywide. Incorporating a cast of British and South African actors, the play – now showing at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre – has been described by British critics as “a theatrical breakthrough”, “a sensitive contemporary adaptation of a classic drama”, and “an accurate depiction of the contradictions in post-apartheid South Africa”.
It is Suzman’s directorial debut at the Birmingham Rep and the first play co- produced with the Market Theatre to be staged there. And it is the first predominantly South African production – six of the nine actors are South African – to have been given special permission by the normally sticky British Equity for its actors to perform in Britain. The production opens in South Africa in 1998.
Suzman first thought of staging a contemporary South African version of The Cherry Orchard seven years ago with Barney Simon, co-founder of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. Simon – the man who is credited as being partly responsible for making the Market Theatre the unofficial national theatre of South Africa – died shortly after South Africa’s 1994 elections.
In late 1995, Roger Martin, an English actor, showed Suzman his “South African” version of The Cherry Orchard. It is around this framework that Suzman has built her own production. Retaining the theme of the original – a psychological journey in which the characters learn painfully about relinquishing the old way of life – the play has been meticulously transposed from Tsarist Russia to South Africa.
It also exposes some of the most difficult issues facing the country: liberal guilt, the problem of “coloureds” who were not white enough for the old South Africa and are not black enough for the new, and the restoration of tribal homelands. “There is no doubt that the real root of this play is in South Africa,” says marketing director of the Birmingham Rep, Katie Anderson. “It puts an authentic voice into the mix.”