The Cherry Orchard

You don’t need to stretch too far to make comparisons between The Cherry Orchard, the final work by playwright Anton Chekhov, and today’s recession. Set in 1904, it’s the story of a wealthy family forced to make concessions for dreadful financial times by selling an ancestral home. As the Russian Revolution looms, the family must come to terms with their change of fortunes. Chekhov could probably never have imagined he wrote this drama of bankruptcy, foreclosure and societal transformation that the play would resonate in contemporary America with such an unsettling echo.