Janet Suzman

The Free State: A South African Response to Checkov's the Cherry Orchard

Janet Suzman's contemporary take on Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, relocated to that part of South Africa known as the eastern Free State, looks at the lives of whites and blacks shifted irrevocably by the winds of political change. It is 1994 and democracy has replaced apartheid. But with new freedoms come new problems of identity and loyalties. Chekhov's enduring themes of change, time and family fidelity take on new resonances in Suzman's adaptation.