Ivan Turgenev’s ‘A Month in the Country’ is set on a Russian country estate in the 1840s. The play explores the painful complexities of unrequited love - petty jealousies played out in a world of stifling ennui. (An excellent production of the Brian Friel version, directed by Lyndsey Turner, is running at the Donmar Warehouse, London until 3 October.)

Michel: It occurred to me a while ago that we regret most of the things we say and we regret even more all the things we don’t say; so that our lives just dribble away in remorse.

Natalya Petrovna, an intelligent, sophisticated woman in her late 20s, is bored by her marriage to Arkady, a rich landowner, seven years her senior, whose principal interests are weirs and winnowing machines.

Arkady: Yes, I always seem to be simultaneously very busy and very confused, don’t I?

Natalya sustains herself by spending time with debonair, attentive Michel, Arkady’s childhood friend.

Natalya: Don’t you know that nothing bores a woman more quickly than an excessive desire to please?

Though Natalya appreciates Michel’s devotion, she has never let their friendship develop into an affair.

Natalya: You know I love you. And the moment I say that, the moment I make that acknowledgement, I think… that man has never made me suffer; that man has never made me cry; and if I have never cried because of him, I can’t really love him, can I?

The equilibrium is disturbed by the arrival of Aleksey, the handsome 21-year-old tutor to Natalya’s son.

Natalya: He’s so unlike us: he’s so… unjaded.

Natalya falls in love with Aleksey. But so does Vera, her 17-year-old ward, precipitating rivalry, conspiracy and betrayal.

Natalya: I feel… unhinged…And dangerously irresponsible – giddy, heady, almost hysterical with irresponsibility.

Patrick Gibson as Aleksy, Sophie Okonedo as Natalya, with Alistair Petrie as Michel looking on - Photo *Helen Murray*

Poor Aleksey finds it all very confusing.

Aleksey: I’m here a month and what happens? Arkady fights with Michel. Michel fights with Natalya. Natalya fights with you. Anna fights with Michel. And in some way I seem to be the cause of it all.

Amidst the romantic chaos, there is a strong sense that these listless, chattering aristocrats are not listening to each other.

Natalya: You are a kind man and a subtle man and a man of great delicacy. But there are times when I think you know nothing about me.

They are too caught up in their own immediate problems and their own private worlds.

Natalya: You’re not talking to me at all; you’re playing a private little game of your own. You’re like those lacemakers in those gloomy, airless rooms – each one totally isolated, totally concentrated on those minute, complex, subtle little stitches. As if nothing in the world mattered but those ridiculous little stitches.

I found myself thinking that Natalya’s lacemaking analogy applies as much to the contemporary world of work as it does to rural life in pre-revolutionary Russia. Heads down, we labour to address our most pressing problems. We become absorbed in the detail, lost in the politics of the present. We begin to ignore our relationships; to abandon all sense of perspective and proportion.

We would do well to look up occasionally; to consider the broader picture and the longer term. We need to retain our vision.

Natalya: You gaze at me all the time, don’t you? You know every thought in my head – don’t you? You analyse everything I think, everything I do – don’t you?...Don’t tell me there’s a little portion of my mind that you haven’t invaded?

Written around 1850 and first published in 1855, ‘A Month in the Country’ was not staged until 1872, and then it was criticised for being ‘undramatic.’ It shares its character-driven narrative and melancholy tone with much of Anton Chekhov’s work, which it preceded by some forty years. It was only in the wake of Chekhov’s success - when in 1909 Konstantin Stanislavsky staged a production in Moscow - that Turgenev’s play was properly appreciated.

Vera: Esteem – affection – love; maybe you’re right; maybe they are synonymous; maybe they should be.

Inevitably the misaligned affections at the core of this splendid piece lead to disappointment, misery and heartache.

Michel: All love is a catastrophe. Look at me. An endless process of shame and desolation and despair when you are stripped – you strip yourself! – of every semblance of dignity and self-respect; when you grovel in the hope of a casual word or a sly smile or a secret squeeze of the hand.

Vera’s attempt at reassuring words falls on deaf ears.

Vera: Everything’ll soon be back to normal.
Natalya: For God’s sake, can’t you see that it’s the normal that’s deranging me, child?

As Natalya observes, life cannot be quietly managed, elegantly navigated. Survival and success require stronger, more robust decisions; bigger, bolder actions.

Natalya: You are so eloquent about ‘nature’, Michel; so sensitive, so responsive to it. ‘Nature’ must be flattered….But of course you’re wrong about ‘nature’. Nature is blunt and crude and relentless. Nature cares about nothing except itself – surviving and perpetuating itself. Your exquisite nature is a savage.

'When you looked into my eyes,
My heart never skipped a beat.
And when you touched my hand,
Didn't feel it down to my feet.
And when you kissed me so,
I didn't feel my body shaking.
And when you had to go,
Didn't feel my whole heart breaking.
It didn't mean much to me.
It didn't mean much to me.

And when you closed the door,
Didn't have to dry my eyes.
And when you didn't call no more,
I barely even realized.
I never listen for your voice,
Every time I pick up the phone.
'Cause you never even crossed my mind,
Until I had to sing this song.
It didn't mean much to me
It didn't mean much.’

The Womack Sisters, 'Didn’t Mean Much to Me’ (B Mann)

No. 586

‘The Cherry Orchard’ was Anton Chekhov’s last play. Written in 1903, it relates the story of a group of charming, listless, impractical aristocrats and their dependents, as they struggle to come to terms with the social and economic upheaval in Russia at the turn of the 20th century.

Lopakhin: If we can’t think of anything and don’t make up our minds on anything, then on August 22, both the cherry orchard and the whole estate will be up for auction. Make up your mind! I swear there’s no other way out.

At the heart of the drama is Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya, an indebted landowner returning to her family estate after five years in Paris. The property, which includes a beloved cherry orchard, is due to be auctioned to pay the mortgage. She is prompted to recall happier times.

Lyubov: Oh, my childhood, my innocent childhood! This is the nursery where I slept and I used to look out at the orchard from here! Look, Mother's walking in the orchard. In a white dress.

Lyubov and her brother Gayev are visited by Lopakhin, a wealthy local merchant from humble stock, who proposes a remedy to their predicament.

Lopakhin: You needn’t be alarmed, dear madam, you may sleep in peace; there’s a way out. Here’s my plan. Please attend carefully! Your estate is only thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into building lots, and are then leased off for villas, you’ll get at least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

Lyubov and Gayev are unconvinced.

Gayev: How utterly absurd!
Lyubov: I don’t understand you at all, Ermolai Alexeyevitch.

But Lopakhin persists.

Lopakhin: If you advertise now, I’m willing to bet that you won’t have a vacant plot left by the autumn; they’ll all go. In a word, you’re saved. I congratulate you. Only, of course, you’ll have to put things straight, and clean up.... For instance, you’ll have to pull down all the old buildings, this house, which isn’t any use to anybody now, and cut down the old cherry orchard….

Lyubov is particularly sensitive about any plan that threatens her treasured cherry orchard.

Lyubov: Cut it down? My dear man, you must excuse me, but you don’t understand anything at all. If there’s anything interesting or remarkable in the whole province, it’s this cherry orchard of ours.

Lopakhin tries to reason with Lyubov and Gayev, pointing out that the orchard only bears fruit every other year, and that then it produces more cherries than they can sell.

Resolute, Lyubov and Gayev instead consider the unlikely prospect of inheriting some money, borrowing from a wealthy but hostile aunt, marrying off Lyubov’s daughter to a rich aristocrat, taking out another loan… Anything but lose the cherry orchard.

Gayev: This orchard is mentioned in the ‘Encyclopaedic Dictionary.’

The central debate in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ reminds me of dilemmas played out in the world of contemporary commerce. We become attached to certain approaches and ways of working that have served us well in the past. We are sentimental about historic glories. And this nostalgia deters us from taking timely, realistic action. Sometimes we resist necessary change even when the solution to our problems is staring us in the face.

Lopakhin: You must excuse my saying so, but I’ve never met such frivolous people as you before, or anybody so unbusinesslike and peculiar. Here I am telling you in plain language that your estate will be sold, and you don’t seem to understand.
Lyubov: What are we to do? Tell us, what?
Lopakhin: I tell you every day. I say the same thing every day.

I saw a very good production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ recently in Stratford-upon-Avon, and came across a compelling essay in the programme, written by Dr Charan Ranganath, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of California at Davis.

Lopakhin: Just one word! [Imploringly] Give me an answer!
Gayev: [Yawns] To what?

Ranganath observes that Lyubov’s memories of the estate are rose tinted and selective. She happily recalls her innocent childhood, the nursery and her mother walking in the cherry orchard, but she chooses to ignore the fact that the house was also the location of her husband’s death and the drowning of her young son, and it is the source of her current financial hardship.

‘Memories are not mere recordings of past experiences. We do not replay the past so much as we pull up a few fragments of detail and context and use them to imagine how the past might have been.’
Dr Charan Ranganath

Ranganath goes on to explain that ‘the brain networks supporting imagination and episodic memory are enmeshed to such a degree that we often struggle to distinguish events we actually experienced from those we have merely imagined.’

We edit and curate our personal histories to meet our own agendas and sense of self, and this can lead to a kind of ‘paralysing stasis…a toxic nostalgia’: an unhealthy romanticisation of the past that prevents us from embracing the future. We would do well to direct our emotional energies towards more practical, productive outputs.

Trofimov: If the energy which you, in the course of your life, have spent in looking for money to pay interest had been used for something else, then, I believe, after all, you’d be able to turn everything upside down.

Chekhov described ‘The Cherry Orchard’ as a comedy. But when it opened at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904, the director Konstantin Stanislavski treated it as a tragedy. It’s easy to see why.

Firs (the elderly manservant): In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them… And then we’d send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, and nicely scented.... They knew the way....
Lyubov: What was the way?
Firs: They’ve forgotten. Nobody remembers.

(The Stratford-upon-Avon production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’ closes on 29 August. There’s another version of this classic play planned for the Harold Pinter Theatre, London from 3 October to 9 January.)

'Remember those who win the game,
Lose the love they sought to gain,
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity.
Their small town eyes will gape at you,
In dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received,
At seventeen.
To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came,
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball.
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today,
When dreams were all they gave for free,
To ugly duckling girls like me.’
Janis Ian, 'At Seventeen'

No. 583

A Month in the Country: Lost in Lacemaking

The Cherry Orchard: Imaginative Memory, Toxic Nostalgia