Throughout the rehearsals of our piece I have been trying to watch the other people in my class's interpretation of the character of Lophakin, and think what I could change about my character to make him more natural and effective to watch.
This image is from one of our rehearsals of last scene of the play, my character Lophakin is played by Solomon, I believe Solomon's interpretation of Lophakin was very different from mine, maybe because the scenes we both play our Lophakin's feelings are completely different. In my scene Lophakin turns from being excited to see Ranevsky again, to getting angry at her ignorance, and her disapproval of his help to save her and the Orchard. In Solomon's scene he is leaving the Orchard with most of the characters except Firs, who as you know gets left behind at the end of the play, and so Solomon in this scene in my opinion portrayed Lophakin in this scene to being happy, with the purchase of the Orchard and at times disappointed with Ranevsky's decision. So both of me and Solomon's interpretation of Lopahkin in my opinion reflected the thoughts and feelings of him in that particular moment in time.
I've also been looking at other interpretations of Lophakin like the 1999 film interpretation of 'The Cherry Orchard', Loparkin played by Owen Teale (all the way on the left), I believe played the character extremely well, and inspired me in some cases (characteristics), like the constant use of sarcasm he chooses to make Lopharkin use. I also loved his interpretation of the scene where he tells Ranevsky that the Orchard has been sold, and he's bought it, I felt that this scene was very effective and interesting to watch because I believe he really thought about Lopahkin's thoughts and feelings at the time, and you could tell he did that; so much that the naturalism felt so real that at one point I forgot that it was only a film.
Here is another scene of a interpretation of Lopharkin played by Ben, this is the first scene of the play and again I believe that Ben's interpretation was completely different to mine, this was because I believe that Ben made his character a bit more working class than ours, this is because he added a soft cockney accent to his voice, which hinted that he was from a working class family, and I believe could've been considered to be a smart decision on his part because some people see it as the progression of
the character, he starts of happy and fun, but begins to become more serious coming towards the end of the play.
Finally here is another interpretation of Loparkin, played by Josh, I believe Josh's interpretation of Loparkin is the closest to mine without a doubt, I think this maybe because his scene is fright after mine, so his feelings and thoughts are the same, so they would be portrayed in similar ways. In his scene he is again questioning Ranevsky about the selling of the Orchard, but she again is against it because of her memories there, and in Romy'a scene she expresses some of the terrible events that took place there, like the death of her son. I felt that some of his decision of the character were very powerful like, the decision he made to change the tone of his voice depending on what he was talking about, I believe he was did this very well and had complete control of how loud he wanted his voice to be, to express his characters emotions.
