Helen Hunt and Kristin Scott Thomas are leading revivals of the Russian classic whose blend of comedy and tragedy is baked into our own dramatic heritage

What kind of play is The Cherry Orchard? As a new production starring Helen Hunt and Kenneth Branagh beckons in Stratford, I am reminded that it is a question people have been asking since the play’s inception. Chekhov himself wrote that what had emerged in his play was “not a drama but a comedy, in places almost a farce”. Stanislavski, who directed the Moscow premiere in 1904, violently disagreed. “It is a tragedy,” he told Chekhov, “whatever prospect of a better life you hold out in the last act.”

While the debate continues, I hope we shall not be told by anyone involved in the new RSC production that they are at long last restoring the play’s comedy. It is a critical cliche that the British sentimentalise the play and treat it as a lament for the decline and fall of a pseudo-Edwardian aristocracy. In my experience of the play – and I have seen about 20 productions – this is simply untrue. We generally do The Cherry Orchard very well because its blend of styles and moods is something baked into our own dramatic heritage. Eschewing the academic formality of the French, for whom tragedy and comedy are rigidly defined genres, we are used to a glorious impurity in drama: a culture that can produce Twelfth Night should have no problem in comprehending The Cherry Orchard.

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Prospero is reimagined as a conductor in this superbly orchestrated version of Shakespeare’s tragicomedy

Kenneth Branagh is said to have played 35 Shakespearean parts, albeit back in the day. Seeing him speaking in verse these days is something of an event, all the more so when he is making a return to the Royal Shakespeare Company after more than 30 years to take on, for the first time, Shakespeare’s magician, deposed duke and tyrant occupier. Even the king turned up for it some days ago.

Branagh’s Prospero initially follows in the vein of his fast and feverish King Lear, performed in the West End in 2023. He seems to be speeding through the part rather than inhabiting it, too puckish, almost larky, rather underwhelming. It is the show itself that casts its spell through its enchanting sights, sounds and ensemble accomplishments. Richard Eyre, directing his first Shakespeare play at Stratford, does a stupendous job of bringing an overt sense of performance to the production.

Promo for the much-anticipated sequel, in which Streep is reunited with Stanley Tucci, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt, clocks up 2.5m views in eight hours

The first full-length trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 has been released, and given more details on David Frankel’s hotly anticipated follow-up. In the promo, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly and her right-hand man Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, are seen reuniting with Anne Hathaway’s Andy and, later, Emily Blunt’s Emily.

Priestly remembers neither, nor even her habit of referring to all her fashion magazine assistants as Emily – presumably on account of her withering alpha-editor status rather than, say, dementia.

Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner unite for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Michael Sheen launches Welsh National Theatre and Bridget Christie revs up for a return to the stage