I am naively unaware of how expensive these seats are and that I have in my possession a golden ticket for a show that will not play again until July. The expense and rarity of this production is due to its stellar cast, boasting names such as Yevgeny Mironov (Lopahkin), Liudmila Maksakova (Liuba) and Aleksey Petrenko (Firs). These actors are stars spinning prolifically in Russia's theatrical orbit. Chances of them meeting in perfect alignment for a reunion of The Cherry Orchard are slim. This cosmic phenomenon happens once every few months, and you'd better have your binoculars ready or you'll miss it.

I have read The Cherry Orchard many times. First when I was sixteen, at school in London. We were taught the rudiments of Stanislavsky's "System". We even put what we learned into practice, and acted out scenes from the play in a very "realistic" style. "Sub-text" is a word that cropped-up frequently when discussing Chekhov, and "comedy". The perversity of human nature, absurdity, non-sequitur, characters stumbling over one another not quite managing to communicate, paralyzed by fear and the inability to take the most basic of actions to help themselves. Of course, this should all be performed in the most realistic style possible, as Chekhov was presenting "Life As It Is." It was not until years later, on revisiting the texts at university, that a hidden world of symbolism, metaphor and poetry began to shimmer through. Perhaps the laws of this world, the rules of this text, were not strictly condemned to Realism after all. Well, certainly not so with the Nekrošius version. He turned all of my preconceptions on their heads, twisted their guts and wrenched them right out of me.

On entering the theater, the audience was enveloped by the pungent aroma of cherry wood incense burning on stage through a gap in the curtain. Before the action had even started we were being eased into this new world through our sense of smell. Our ears were gently pleasured throughout by soft, dream-like music that made the suddenness of another sensory assault particularly traumatizing. As the family sat peacefully in the countryside, Chekhov's stage directions describe the sound of a mineshaft cable cracking from far away. In place of this, Nekrošius introduced an ear-splittingly loud sound of crickets, deafening the audience. Just when you expected it would stop it grew louder, continued and elongated until it became unbearable to some audience members who cupped their hands over their ears. Our bodies shuddered with the vibrations of a thousand cricket cries. We were immersed in the sound of the countryside, reminding us of how deeply we are connected to our land, of how a place seeps in to our fiber and envelopes us, becoming our very bones.

Robert Jackson, Professor of Russian Literature at Yale University and an authority on the work of Dostoyevsky, was visiting our class at the Moscow Art Theater School. Our ART acting students are adapting scenes from three Dostoyevsky novels in class and asked him many questions about translating from book to stage. He urged them to be deeply immersed in the texts, learn their laws and find different ways of representing them. They were advised to start afresh, to look with new eyes. A text is an opening into a new world. It has horizontal and vertical possibilities, poses questions and presents problems, demands diverse answers and solutions. You must read broadly. A text has its ambiguities, and it has its own direction – it knows where it's going, even if the author does not fully grasp it. This resonated with me when watching Nekrošius' production of The Cherry Orchard. He read a well-known, well-worn text with fresh eyes. He deeply understood its laws and essence, finding a way of taking it into his self and melding an entirely new form to encase it. Brushing aside the usual, expected interpretations of the play, Nekrošius created new outcomes for the characters by allowing their relationships to travel the hidden paths. Nor was he afraid to fully uncork the play's heady, aromatic symbolism. The text may have been Chekhov, but the flavor was entirely Nekrošius.

The set was simplistic. The orchard itself was represented by a spinney of metal weather vanes at the rear of the stage. Perhaps they symbolized the constant changing of the times, blowing aside the old Russia and allowing a new way of life to be swept in on a fresh wind. The rest of the stage remained bare apart from a ruin of ragged rocks in the centre. Instead of the "auction party scene" being full of dancing and music it was muted and childlike. Varya, Anya and Charlotta performed a short dumb show. Wearing pairs of white paper hare's ears, Anya and Charlotta hopped comically around the stage. Varya appeared with a shotgun to mime killing them. This idea re-occurred in the final image of the production as all the characters, sporting their own paper hare's ears, ran into the forest of weather vanes, reaching down and shaking them to their roots. The vanes hummed with a shimmering, metallic rustle that was silenced by a clap of gunshots. The aristocrats had become an endangered species no longer safe in their natural land, hunted out by a New Russia.

Ranyevskaya's first appearance is usually amongst a crowd of family and friends, energetic and bustling as she enters her house. Nekrošius chose a still entrance. The entourage, still at the train station, stood with their backs to the audience waiting for her to step off the train, waving delightedly. Unseen to them, she crept slowly along the front of the stage and laid herself on a divan, curling up like an invalid child, broken, back home at last. It was poignant and surreal to see a middle aged woman tip-toeing to Firs as Lopahkin expounded his plans to rent the cherry orchard. Ranyevskaya hid behind Firs' back, peeking over his shoulder and seeking refuge from the world like a little girl. This dynamic was reversed later when she walked slowly around him, as if seeing him for the first time, shaken by how he had aged, comparing him to the Firs from her childhood. She reached out as though to embrace him and instead straightened his coat and collar, re-adjusting his sleeve as he looked up at her like a lost child. It was his turn to be cared for. Moments like these, invented by Nekrošius and his actors, were the most poignant and unexpected. Although not specifically described in Chekhov's stage directions, Nekrošius had the imagination to extend the text by manifesting the hidden possibilities.

Similarly, the outcome of the love triangle between Yasha, Dooniasha and Yepihodov was original and surprising. Yasha is usually portrayed as a cosmopolitan man of the world, womanizing, smooth and confident. Here he was a gangly, awkwardly comical character, a pompous Malvolio. Dooniasha began as a giggly, haphazard girl with an electric shock of white hair. As the play progressed, it became obvious that her feelings for Yepihodov were real, if deliberately suffocated. There was genuine love and concern between them both. Her passion for Yasha was an empty, needy obsession. As the show progressed, her hair flattened. She became more sophisticated, her clothes more refined. She gradually grew in to a confident, self-possessed young woman. Her final farewell scene with Yasha is normally played with neediness and desperation when he rejects her, leaving her broken-hearted. In this version she began to cry, whimpering like a child to create a drama and beg attention. Then, in a second, the hysterics stopped. She looked at Yasha and realized that she did not care. Her suffering disappeared like vapor. She matured as a character and was able to undergo such self-realization, allowing her to end happily with Yepihodov. On another hopeful note, the stunted relationship between Varya and Lopahkin followed Chekhov's text and they remained separated by a gulf of fear and inertia – that is, until the final moment. Just before the cast donned their hare's ears and ran into the weather vanes, Varya and Lopahkin were seen shyly holding hands. Perhaps it is possible for these absurd human beings to break through the non-sequitur, stop stumbling over one another and find the courage to communicate, to finally overcome their fears and take the most basic of actions to help themselves after all. Nekrošius showed us that Humanity is self-sabotaging and ridiculous. At the same time, we possess the ability to overcome our fundamental weaknesses and obtain our own happiness. We are not entirely hopeless.