The Cherry Orchard - Walter Kerr (essay date 1969)

Walter Kerr (essay date 1969)

[Kerr is an American dramatist, director, and critic who won a Pulitzer Prize for drama criticism in 1978. A long-time drama critic for the New York Times, as well as the author of several book-length studies of modern drama, he has been one of the most important and influential figures in the American theater since the 1950s. In the following excerpt, Kerr discusses the merits of Chekhov's and Stanislavsky's respective conceptions of The Cherry Orchard.]

Now, here's a curious thing. The Cherry Orchard, perhaps all of Chekhov, cannot be truly sad unless it is funny.

I had never seen a Moscow Art Theater performance of The Cherry Orchard until the company paid a courteous visit to City Center, and I went with a half-dozen contending questions in my head. Chekhov had never liked what Stanislavski did with the play: the author insisted he had written a comedy and that the director had made...

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