The Whole of Italy Is Our Orchard: Strehler's Cherry Orchard

Giorgio Strehler called Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard a masterpiece, an example of the best that bourgeois society has left us. In 1974 Strehler embarked on his second production of the play, having been dissatisfied with his first staging in 1955. Both productions were presented at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano. Like Peter Stein, who subsequently directed The Cherry Orchard in Berlin for the Schaubtihne am Lehniner Platz (1989), Strehler did extensive research on previous Chekhov productions, and both directors took as the starting point for the development of their respective concepts Stanislavsky's initial 1904 staging of the play. However, different cultures, theatre histories, and social and political situations generated diametrically opposed transpositions of Chekhov's dramatic text onto the stage.