The audience at the Théâtre des Nouveautés was on its feet by the end of the evening. After Boris Godunov and Hamlet, Nikolai Kolyada offered the Tarbes audience a vibrant finale with The Cherry Orchard on Saturday night for the last evening of the 20th anniversary of Russian Week. A veritable whirlwind of energy swept through Anton Chekhov's play. The atmosphere of a Russian nobility's twilight reign, lost in frivolity just as it is about to be swept away, becomes a perpetual celebration with the twenty or so actors of Nikolai Kolyada's company giving it their all. The somewhat temperamental surtitles are forgotten, and the audience is irresistibly carried away for three hours by the festivities, the laughter, the dancing, the torrents of tears, the rage too, the music, by that door at the back of the stage from which the actors spring as if from a jack-in-the-box, by the frenetic pace and the sheer energy of the performance. In any case, the text scrolls by far too quickly for us to really read everything!
In this cherry orchard, the essence lies in the atmosphere of a distinctly Russian madness, in the baroque staging, in the vitality of this Russia that refuses to submit to a predetermined fate. There is probably only a director like Nikolai Kolyada, with his creativity and his Russian identity, who could bring us this perspective on Chekhov's play. It is with this cherry orchard, shaped like a giant tiered birthday cake, that the 20th anniversary edition of Russian Week comes to a close, an edition rich in beautiful theatrical moments and powerful images that will remain etched in our memories. And in emotion too, like that of Marie-Anne Gorbachevsky and Nikolai Kolyada facing the audience at the end of the performance. A week that already makes us want to mark our calendars for the next Russian Week. But we'll have to wait two years!
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