Eimuntas Nekrošius' production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard is something one finds difficult to watch but fascinated nevertheless. On the face of it, what could be simpler than to stage a play that has been performed hundreds of times? A story about people living in their orchard, then losing it and each other...

Nuances, psychology, traditional approaches to staging, implications – all this relates to a different, higher level. Yet the parable remains the same ruthlessly clear one. It does not require an effective image overshadowing the main idea. Nekrošius is habitually regarded as a stage director who relies on metaphor, but he is also keen on parable, leaving the viewer little room for maneuver. He does not play around with contexts, languages, and genres. He discards [traditional] stage settings and the ignominious Moscow Art Theater atmosphere. He is determined to leave the audience face-to-face with all the cataclysms contained in the parable.

His Cherry Orchard's rhythm is slow and heavy at first, matchingly accompanied by Gustav Mahler's Titan Symphony. We see Firs (played by Aleksei Petrenko) onstage, alone, dusting clothes which those inhabiting the mansion will put on later. The choice of the actor impersonating the old footman could not be better. It is ideal and one finds it hard to imagine another Firs. The old man is always alone, even when there are many people around. Remote, gray-bearded, with a reserved and somehow concealed expression on his wrinkled face, he humbly chews his daily bread and is constantly preoccupied with his chores. He is one of those figures we tend to forget once they are out of sight, and this is evidence of the actor's extraordinary dramatic skill.

The leitmotif is set by Mme. Ranevsky (Ludmilla Maksakova) once she appears onstage. And she appears in a manner no one can possibly expect, behind those assembled to bid her welcome, dragging a black couch, then lying on it, stretching her arms. Then someone places a small bouquet on her chest, a gesture addressing not only death (i.e., her dead son and husband), but also Loss, as does the whole performance. What is actually lost is shown in the first two acts.

What makes Chekhov's play especially difficult to deal with is the author's definition of it as a comedy, something that has frustrated a number of stage directors. More often than not it is rendered as a very grave drama. Nekrošius appears to have met the author's challenge. His Cherry Orchard is actually a comedy in the best sense of the word. The first two acts sparkle with humor. The main characters return home, but their attitude is that of little brats let loose. Grownups back to their former nursery, the room they used to love – as evidenced by the opening lines. Theirs was a happy childhood. At that time they knew no worries, were carefree as only children can be. And now, decades later, they want to relive the experience. They play, dance, make faces at each other; even the ever-concentrated merchant Lopakhin (Yevgeny Mironov) succumbs to the frolicking mood. Standing outside of this small pretty merrymaking crowd are Anya [Mme. Ranevsky's 17-year-old daughter], maidservant Dunyasha (Anna Yanovskaya), and Varya [Mme. Ranevsky's adopted daughter, aged 27], played by Inga Oboldina. They are so kind-hearted and well-wishing, it is hard to say which of them is best. While Anya is so very tender, a real angel of childhood with white rabbit ears, Dunyasha shows marked character, and Varya is a Goldonian passionate type (incidentally, a totally unorthodox approach to the character). She is white-red-black, Angel-Colombina-Innkeeper. The first two acts are their realm, their return to childhood.

Mme. Ranevsky adds an obviously discordant note to the festive mood. Nekrošius must have chosen Maksakova for the role considering her conspicuously negative charm. She acts and speaks with anguish, she is a figure from a different world. Her emphasized solitude, subconsciously keeping aloof from the rest (perhaps unable to love?) in the first half of the play is substituted by something that makes her drop out of the outline. Nekrošius mostly relies on close-ups, so the actors have nowhere to hide (the stage setting being reduced to the least imaginable minimum), on Meyerhold's maxim that action, playacting, came first, and on the importance of psychological nuances. Every character is assigned a set of gestures which he or she is supposed to use, along with the lines, to compose and convey his/her corporeal message. Lopakhin, for example, addressing Mme. Ranevsky, saying, "As you already know, your cherry orchard is to be sold to pay your debts, and the sale is fixed for August twenty-second; but you needn't be alarmed, dear madam, you may sleep in peace; there's a way out. Here's my plan. Please attend carefully!" – pats her forearm with his other hand in a chopping movement. Anya repeatedly raises her hands the way a tree raises its branches. Varya, telling how obedient she will be, quickly presses three fingers, bunched, to her forehead like an Orthodox believer does when making the sign of the cross. Any change of mood onstage turns into an outburst of movement, individual as well as collective. Sustaining this rhythm requires the cast's utmost professional preparedness. It is also a heavy emotional strain on every actor. Maksakova is apparently unable to cope with this extremely difficult task, so she seems to struggle through her portrayal relying on timeworn cliches, but these are techniques practiced by a very different drama company. As a result, her performance becomes too vividly alienated.

Acts Three and Four are dominated by Mme. Ranevsky and Lopakhin or, rather, by Lopakhin alone. Mironov's performance cannot be defined in so many words. His merchant Lopakhin seems to gain scope and momentum slowly but surely, turning into the underlying character, the motive force of the whole performance, precisely what Anton Chekhov sought, stressing the importance of this particular image. Mironov's Lopakhin is taciturn, keeping all his skeletons in their closets. He is not romantic but businesslike, focused on some inner expediency. He flirts and ponders lofty topics, swashbuckles, and acts generously, demonstrating a savage kind of chic. He even sings. The actor succeeds in drawing a very delicate line between such outward extravagance and an inner self-discipline, being governed by an ultimate goal, something Lopakhin always has in mind, circumstances notwithstanding.

In Act Three, the tension mounts tangibly. They still make merry, but it verges on hysteria, a tragic farce preceding the fatal end. Birds are chirping, the sound magnified by the loudspeakers until its becomes a head-splitting shriek. The heroes are tortured by anticipation and the audience cannot but share the sensation. The crucial moment, the news about the orchard having been sold, comes as an anticlimax – another stage director's trick. Lopakhin enjoys his sullen triumph. Then everybody leaves, except Firs. The old footman, his usual lonesome self, keeps scrubbing the peeling wall.

Act Four is a postscript, the calm after the calamity. Lopakhin wants everyone out of the mansion now that it is someone else's property. No trace must be left of its former owners and residents. Not even Varya. Yet no one seems able to leave. They leave in the end, actually stepping back, hiding in the backdrop, so that only a pair of an angel's ears are seen to the sound of the toy windmills on long rods. It is a puppet Eden, a small paradise lost forever, the way we lose our childhood. And our happiness, sooner or later.

All this is to the accompaniment of heavy blows considerably louder than the kettledrums in the Titan Symphony at the beginning of the play. Then there is the string-ripping finale. The sound is like that of a window being boarded over in an old abandoned house, a tree being chopped down, or a knock on the door with someone inside waiting for the deadly news. To this author, the sound was like that of a pile-driver on a huge and alien construction site nearby. Even Lopakhin does not seem to have anything to do with this construction site, its superhumanly insistent tempo reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch's canvases of horror.