In late 2003, the Stanislavsky Fund celebrated three significant dates in the world of the theater: the 100th anniversary of The Cherry Orchard, the 100th anniversary of its first production at the Moscow Art Theater, and 100 years since the death of Anton Chekhov, a great Russian playwright who determined the course of international theater development for the 20th century. This production by the outstanding Lithuanian director Eimuntas Nekrošius with a cast of renowned Russian actors, an international theatrical project made possible by the Moscow Cultural Commission as part of the Open Theater Program, was timed to these dates.

Nekrošius had blown sky-high the common take on the Russian classic. Where the author himself had seen a comedy and previous directors saw melodrama, Nekrošius perceived a tragedy of universal proportions, which embraced the playwright's living pain and all his predictions of the future. This Cherry Orchard was a cosmic cataclysm enacted by a brilliant cast, each of whom played a larger-than-life, many-layered and incredibly complex character. The actors wrote the life stories of their heroes like a classical novel.

The focus of the production was the figure of Yermolai Lopakhin. It was after The Cherry Orchard opened in 2003 that many critics hastened to declare Yevgeny Mironov the number-one actor of the Russian stage.

(Now playing with a different cast. Mr. Mironov has left the production.)