by Anton Chekhov –– Directed by: Volker Schmidt 

“I was born here, my mother lived here, my father, my grandfather... I love this house, I can't imagine life without the cherry orchard, and if it has to be sold, then sell me along with it…”, says Liubov Ranevskaya, who returns, after a few weeks overseas, to her estate. The cherry orchard, whose beauty is praised in the first act of the play, is more than that. It is synonymous with home, childhood and carefree youth, while its recurrent blossoming seems to guarantee a new beginning, a constant renewal of life. But in the end, reality catches up with everyone. 

The Cherry Orchard is the Russian writer's last great drama, which he wrote before his untimely death, and is described as a comedy. It is rightly interpreted as a turning point in time: the aristocrats, squandering their fortunes abroad, disappear, and enterprising petty bourgeois take their place. But Chekhov wouldn't be the author every director dreams of if he didn't present this shift as a human comedy. It's a tale of wasted lives, illusions and tangled love stories: Ljubov Ranevskaya loves the man who has taken her last money, Varya refuses to be pushed into a marriage with Lopahin, and the eternal student Trofimov loves Ania even though he considers himself superior to love. In the end despair prevails. But the journey continues.