Chekhov is always someone I grapple with from time to time before deciding what I really think of the play. This was good, but mildly pointless. I didn't feel changed or moved by reading it, and I wonder about what seeing it would have changed. It certainly would have a different feel to it in production than it did in reading. ( )

A difficult play to read because many of the characters are diffuse, with multiple Russian names... Obviously a play with impact when performed, although I feel it has less to say to us now than it did when it was written. ( )

saw Anette Benning and Alfred Molin star in this play. not Chekhov's best but good times. ( )

Another example of how I'm usually disappointed when I listen to something that other people consider great, but which does not a priori sound appealing.

This probably reveals me as a philistine, but I just couldn't found much of value in this. We have a bunch of upper-class Russian twits who think the world owes them a living, who do absolutely nothing of value to anyone, not even things of abstract value like art or science, and who are bitterly disappointed when the tragedy that everyone has been warning them about for years finally arrives and no deus ex machina saves them.
The only character in the play I had the remotest sympathy for was the student who tells them to their faces that they are parasites and that their day is over, not that his warnings are heeded.

Maybe this play is viewed in the same way as Gone with the Wind nostalgia --- everyone who pines for this better simpler way of life assumes that for some reason they're going to be part of the aristrocracy in this alternate world, not one of the lower classes. ( )

Wikipedia: The Cherry Orchard (Вишнёвый сад or Vishniovy sad in Russian) is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski and within six months, Chekhov died of tuberculosis. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce, however, Stanislavski insisted on directing the play as a tragedy. Since this initial production, directors have had to contend with the dual nature of this play.
The play concerns an aristocratic Russian woman and her family as they return to the family's estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. While presented with options to save the estate, the family essentially does nothing and the play ends with the estate being sold and the family leaving to the sound of the cherry orchard being cut down. The story presents themes of cultural futility — both the futility of the aristocracy to maintain its status and the futility of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its newfound materialism. In reflecting the socio-economic forces at work in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of the feudal system in the mid-19th century and the sinking of the aristocracy, the play reflects the forces at work around the globe in that period.
SYNOPSIS in Wilson, Edwin: The Theater Experience, 6th ed. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1994.