He's really interested in what it means to move from one world to another,' says Patel, explaining the traditional premise revolves around a wealthy family who can no longer afford to run their large ancestral home, partly because the modern world has made things like unpaid labour illegal. ''The Cherry Orchard' was first produced in 1904 and is Chekhov’s last play. Vinay Patel's reimagining of 'The Cherry Orchard' brings this landmark play into the present, and future

Cue major disagreements about what to do next: stay onboard the vessel, or embrace unknown possibilities. The South Asian-British cast play members of an intergalactic crew, who have only ever known life on their craft until the discovery of a new planet in a habitable zone.

Written by Vinay Patel, whose credits include 'Dr Who' episodes and the BAFTA-winning 'Murdered By My Father', among other things, his version takes the original and drops it into the future. 21st Century Britain is, after all, stuck between what was, is, and might be.Ī brand new production of the tale opens at HOME this week. A socio-political comment on the futility of aristocratic self-preservation in the face of impossible odds, and the middle class carving out a role in the brave new world, to say the masterpiece resonates today would be an understatement. Another is to ignore the truth of this situation and try to maintain the status quo, in turn risking everything they hold dear.įirst written in 1903, Anton Chekhov’s final play, 'The Cherry Tree', is rightly regarded as a classic of 20th Century theatre. One option is to sell part of their estate for development, raising enough cash to save the rest of the property. Wealthy land owners in rapidly changing times find themselves unable to maintain the lifestyle they were accustomed to.

The cherry tree chekhov