[Chekhov] uses farce as a satiric device, to alienate us from a character so that we will not become too sympathetically involved with his spurious self-pity or melancholy posturing.

The Cherry Orchard is unusual among Chekhov's dramas in that the central focus is not the problem of choice among the intelligentsia. Whereas The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters are all related to fundamental questions of identity for their author as a professional doctor and writer—the problem of art, the problem of science, the problem of education and upbringing—The Cherry Orchard is a play about social mobility and change. In particular, the play examines a moment in time when large-scale industrialisation had made possible a proletarian solution in addition to the evolutionist-technological vision of his earlier literature. The estates on which the action of the earlier dramas takes place are of course historically typical, insofar...