The Cherry Orchard

Lyubov Ranevskaya returns from Paris to the estate where she grew up. It is mortgaged, the debts are due, and in August it will be sold at auction. The cherry orchard — famous, beautiful, and no longer profitable — will go with it.

Lopakhin, a merchant whose father and grandfather were serfs on this land, has a plan that would save them: clear the orchard, divide the land, lease it out as summer cottages. He says so plainly, and repeatedly. The family listens, changes the subject, gives a ball, and does nothing. The estate is sold. Lopakhin buys it himself.

Chekhov called it a comedy; Stanislavski staged it as a tragedy, and the argument has never really been settled. The play watches a class that cannot act being replaced by one that can, and it refuses to grant anyone the dignity of a grand exit. It ends with the sound of axes in the orchard, and with the old servant Firs, forgotten, locked inside the empty house.

Chekhov's last play, first performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in January 1904, six months before his death.