The Cherry Orchard, Young Vic **

The Cast of the Cherry Orchard

It has been a blinding season at the Young Vic, with Streetcar just being nominated for a London Evening Standard award along with A View from the Bridge and the Scottsboro Boys, who both in turn have received west end transfers. All of the pieces have been edgy and exhilarating and have challenged its audience. This production, therefore, seems slightly safe and disappointing. The actors were great, with some such as  Hugh Skinner's Simeon giving a great comic role. Having been described as a tragi-comedy, I was expecting for Stephen's adaption to contain more laughs than it did as well as perhaps see through several themes which are picked up for one act and then are not referred to again. Also, through Mitchell's direction of the part of Peter, he is portrayed too much as the one sane man in a house of lunatics. A mixture of Stephen's text and Mitchell's direction shows him to be the man that has all the answers if everyone just listened to him where in fact, he is just as useless as everyone else. This combined with a mixture of needless full- frontal female nudity and a lack of any heart leads to a, frankly, lack- luster production of a true classic.