The Cherry Orchard Belvoir production with Pamela Rabe as Ranevskaya started last night and the first reviews and photos are online:

From theconversation.com:
Belvoir’s production is timely. We are still emerging, bleary-eyed into a world we know has changed, and has been changing economically and environmentally for decades now. But we have no collective capacity to see or to control the horizons against which this change is taking place. Will this future that is already happening have room for people who live, behave and consume like we do? Probably not.

So, how should we behave now? Is it okay to cling to the past for as long as we can? Or should we already be living differently, be different? What does it mean to still laugh and enjoy company if these are the very things that might be shielding us from reality?

At the height of the gloriously insane third act of the play, Ranevskaya — here played by Pamela Rabe in a role she embraces with all of her considerable resources — shouts out, “This might not have been the best moment for a party!” You think?

As she and her extended family await the fate of the auction on their home, they drink, laugh, sing and dance. Until they don’t.

Read the full article here

Photos by Brett Boardman