The Cherry Orchard, review: this Chekhov staging yields little fruit but Ian McKellen is superb

This summer, the 82-year-old Ian McKellen became the oldest Hamlet on record in Sean Mathias’s age-, gender- and colour-blind production at Theatre Royal Windsor. Now that same company shifts from Shakespeare to Chekhov, while McKellen gains several decades – and plummets down the social order – as he goes from youthful prince to octogenarian manservant.

The physical transformation alone is remarkable: from a sprightly, exercise bike-riding Hamlet to the bowed, shuffling Firs. On entrance, McKellen removes his fur hat to reveal a vulnerable shaved head, while his giant, frizzy protuberance of a beard looks like Gandalf if he’d been struck by lightning. Perhaps it’s the physical representation of Firs’s increasingly clouded mind.

It’s a beautifully detailed portrait, and it’s simply impossible not to watch McKellen. Which, since he’s theoretically a background player, is something of a problem. There might be a dramatic scene in full flow, but you can’t take your eyes off his fumbling Firs, hands trembling in their fingerless gloves as he unfurls a parasol for Ranyevskaya with tender dedication.

Beyond his sparse dialogue, he keeps up a steady flow of mumbles and chuckles. Each line reading is evocatively embellished; when he talks of cherry jam, his tongue darts out as if to taste it. Hearing him complain about “the wrong trousers” in his warm Lancashire tones, you can’t help but think of Yorkshire neighbours Wallace and Gromit, while an extended bit of business with a shaky tray is Victoria Wood’s Two Soups sketch reborn. McKellen has the last word, too. The ancient retainer, symbol of old Russia, is forgotten in the empty house: a moving end for his sad clown.

Elsewhere, Mathias’s production is more uneven. While Chekhov labelled his work a comedy, and was dismayed by Stanislavski’s solemn version, he surely didn’t mean slapstick. Several performances skew very broad, like a scenery-chewing Roberts Daws as buffoonish spendthrift Pishchik.

Mind, there isn’t much scenery to chew. Lee Newby’s design features some period elements, like ornate chairs and chandeliers, and a front door is lifted in and out, otherwise we’re confronted by the bare brick back wall of the theatre. It suggests that the estate is already consigned to history. The family are ghosts – they just don’t know it yet.

However, the poignancy of that is undercut by having two banks of audience seating on stage. It’s a continual distraction, and creates a very deep, narrow playing space with poor acoustics; any upstage dialogue is muffled. Mathias’s guiding vision is also tricky to suss. Loren Elstein’s handsome costumes place us in turn-of-the-century Russia, and the sound effects are prosaically naturalistic – like the insistent birdsong or a horse and carriage – but the beggar is Welsh and Martin Shaw’s Lopakhin a chip-on-shoulder, flat-cap-wearing Northerner. It just doesn’t cohere.

Francesca Annis is an effectively flighty Ranyevskaya, most honest when she admits that she’s afraid of silence. On losing her precious cherry orchard, she weeps inconsolably – juxtaposed chillingly by Shaw, who abandons his gruff affability for the wild laughter of triumph. Alison Halstead is a magnetic Charlotta, pondering existential questions between magic tricks, but a brusque Jenny Seagrove is weirdly miscast as the loquacious Gaev.

What’s missing is the sense of the brute force of change. Ultimately, this is a hopeful Cherry Orchard, with Missy Malek’s equitable Anya and Ben Allen’s earnest student Trofimov placing their faith in a better future. Perhaps that optimism is needed in our turbulent times.

Still, the play isn’t quite the thing here. McKellen is the reason to make the trip.

Until Nov 13. Tickets: 01753 853 888; theatreroyalwindsor.co.uk