REVIEW: The Cherry Orchard at Riverside Studios 8 – 12 September 2026

‘Kicks things off with considerable pizzazz’ ★★★½

Fifty years after Riverside Studios opened with a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Flywheel Theatre Company brings the play back to the same stage as part of its five-play “Rep: Radical Classical” season. Five actors, five plays and five weeks mark Riverside’s 50th anniversary – and The Cherry Orchard kicks things off with considerable pizzazz.

Chekhov’s premise remains intact: aristocrat Ranevskaya returns from Paris to her family estate to discover that its beloved cherry orchard must be sold to pay the family’s debts. While the play depicts a fading Old Russia amidst profound social change, Flywheel retains these cultural references while paying clear homage to the 1970s Britain in which Riverside first staged it. This is the production’s strongest and most distinctive choice, sustained through its staging, lighting and costumes.

Radio broadcasts refer to the Winter of Discontent; a dance macabre becomes a fifteen-second disco complete with glitterball; and Ranevskaya, usually a glamorous faded aristocrat, becomes a more androgynous figure in tailored suits and a flamboyant cow-print coat. Casting Lopakhin as a woman creates a particularly effective parallel between the self-made businesswoman and estate-owner Ranevskaya. Both wear gloriously colourful suits and even share physical mannerisms, emphasising their status as representatives of competing worlds while increasing our sympathy for both.

Maggie Bain is excellent as Ranevskaya, maintaining her charisma as the household’s emotionally warm but financially irresponsible matriarch. She moves convincingly between affectionate mother, naive lover and scornful judge of both perpetual student Trofimov and Lopakhin, whose plans for the orchard she cannot bear to contemplate. Yet the production’s condensed seventy-minute runtime sometimes works against its emotional weight. Ranevskaya’s recognition of Trofimov as the former tutor of her deceased son Grisha, for instance, passes so quickly that it feels almost glossed over.

The same problem affects Trofimov and Anya, who have too few moments together for their romantic connection to develop fully, despite charming individual performances. Cash Holland gives Anya girlish warmth and serene innocence, while Jaemon Anthony Crosby’s Trofimov is funniest when his intellectual self-importance collapses: mortified that Anya has repeated his lofty claim to be “above love”, or snapping at Lopakhin to “Stop waving your hands about!”. Rachel-Leah Hosker, to her credit, has embodied this particular mannerism so exhaustively that the audience rather agrees.

Crosby and Elliot Pritchard’s Gaev make an excellent pair of confused, forlorn men attempting to become voices of reason in an equally confused household. Jessica Temple brings moving loyalty to Varya, while Conor Dumbrell makes an impression as Dunyasha despite appearing in only a handful of scenes.

Paul Bentall’s Firs, meanwhile, is perhaps the production’s most faithful link to Chekhov’s original world: a weary, overlooked servant who reminisces with fond frustration about Gaev’s childhood antics. His physicality – the limp, stumbling steps and determinedly upright posture – is especially convincing. Translating Firs’s final frustrated “nyedotyopa” as “bungler” neatly captures his contained anguish as the play closes and the cherry orchard disappears.

The production’s greatest moment, however, belongs to Hosker, when Lopakhin reveals that she has bought the orchard herself. Initially she folds inward, announcing the purchase almost confessionally. But after Varya drops the household keys before her in contempt, humiliation erupts into an outpouring of remembered grievance. Hosker brilliantly conveys the competing triumph, shame and resentment of someone whose family once served on the estate and who now owns it. The staging sharpens the cruelty: Ranevskaya’s family may have lost their home, but they still have one another. Lopakhin, victorious, stands alone.

Not every element of Flywheel’s concept fits so neatly. The mixture of Russian references and a 1970s British backdrop occasionally feels disjointed, and the brief disco sequence, though charming, arrives with little context. Yet this layering also gives the production the quality of a theatrical time capsule: Chekhov’s 1904 Russia refracted through Riverside’s 1970s history and viewed again fifty years later.

The set reinforces that sense of memory, resembling a grandfather’s living room, with three rugs and a solitary chair that becomes the household’s designated place of reminiscence. Ranevskaya, Gaev and finally Firs each occupy it as they recall what the orchard once meant to them.

Each actor gives a convincing performance, and the production is strong even if its seventy-minute condensation could use more breathing room to allow its emotional relationships to develop fully. As a first glimpse of Flywheel’s Rep season, however, it is undoubtedly successful.

After the curtain call, Jessica Temple sincerely thanks the audience for supporting Riverside and theatre, encouraging everyone to return for the rest of Rep, “if nothing else to see if we make it to the end.”

Well, I wish I could – and I hope they do.



The Cherry Orchard at Riverside Studios until 12 September, part of Flywheel’s Radical Classical Rep Season running until 10 October

Box Office: https://riversidestudios.co.uk/whats-on/u1Z-the-cherry-orchard/

Cast

Jaemon Anthony Crosby: Trofimov

Conor Dumbrell: Dunyasha

Cash Holland: Anya

Rachel-Leah Hosker: Lopakhin

Jessica Temple: Varya

Maggie Bain: Lubov

Paul Bentall: Fiers

Elliot Pritchard: Gaev

Creative team

Adeyinka Akinrinade: Producer, Veritas Productions

Benedict Esdale: Artistic Director, Flywheel Theatre

Nik Haukohl: Associate Producer

Mercy Ola: Assistant Producer

Jack Dugan: Creative Associate

Rebecca Ward: Video, Costume & Set Designer

Lauren Vickers: Stage Manager

Fran Cattaneo: Casting Director

William Dunleavy: Dramaturg

Brett Kasza — Lighting Designer

Anna Wood: Sound Designer

Miranda Mazzarella: Photographer

Rebecca Thomas: Graphic Designer

Nell Rose: Costume Supervisor/Maker

Isobel Jones: Design Assistant

Catalina Tudorache: Costume Assistant

Thespis Theatrical Costumiers: Costume supplier

Cup Of Ambition: Marketing