The Political Ghosts and Ideological Phantasms of The Cherry Orchard. A Sequel
The Political Ghosts and Ideological Phantasms of The Cherry Orchard. A Sequel

Summary/Abstract: Evoking Chekhov’s title, the cherry orchard is the primary metaphor in Nic Ularu’s The Cherry Orchard, a Sequel, a play that premiered at the La MaMa Etc. Theatre in New York on February 21, 2008. The attraction of Ularu’s play lies in an ideologically and politically constructed ghost text, populated by the ghost of Leninism brought to the Cherry Orchard at the twilight of tsarist Russia, in short, not only the ghosts of the dead characters emerging from Chekhov’s original but also the ghosts of an incipient Communism. If Ularu’s play seems at first glance no more than theatrical bric a brac, a quaint relic of its great Russian model whose only merit is that of resurrecting ghosts, I will argue that the Sequel also foreshadows a new political and social order in the interrupted patrilineal transmission of social and political authority and of the characters’ identity – an “afterlife” instance of dramatic perspectives and political ramifications.

• Details
• Contents