Chekhov's masterpiece, about a Russian family losing its ancestral home, combines a lament for a vanishing past with a hopeful dream of the future. In the century since its first performance, the cherry orchard has under...Chekhov's masterpiece, about a Russian family losing its ancestral home, combines a lament for a vanishing past with a hopeful dream of the future. In the century since its first performance, the cherry orchard has undergone a wide range of conflicting interpretations: tragic and comic, naturalistic and symbolic, reactionary and radical.