The Cherry Orchard review – the RSC’s starry cast brings a disappointing lack of sparkle

From the publisher

Laura Wade’s reworking of Anton Chekhov’s final, plaintive play brings a dazzle of big names. Helen Hunt is aristocratic matriarch Madame Ranyevskaya, Bill Pullman her brother, and Kenneth Branagh (so soon after his lead role in the Royal Shakespeare’s production of The Tempest) their nemesis, Lopakhin, a shopkeeper’s son here who takes over the reins of the family estate and represents the rising forces against Russia’s old order of ossified elites. But for such a starry cast Tamara Harvey’s production has a disappointing lack of sparkle. You do not feel the story’s charge, its complications around love and its stinging losses. The tone is too soft-edged, almost endearing, and the…

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