The Cherry Orchard Cherry Orchard" was Chekhov's tribute to himself. Many of the characters in the play hearken back to his earlier works and are based on people he knew in his own life. It should also be noted that his boyhood house was bought and torn down by a wealthy man that his mother had considered a friend. The breaking guitar string in acts 2 and 4 hark back to his earliest works. Finally the classic "loaded gun" that appears in many of Chekhov's plays appears here, but this is his only play in which a gun is shown but not fired.
Ann Dunnigan but Dunnigan contested that van Itallie's translation was nearly identical to hers, and sued him. In the settlement that followed, van Itallie accepted responsibility for the legal costs, and agreed to cease promotion of his version. Years later, van Itallie applied himself to new renderings of "The Cherry Orchard", "The Seagull", "Three Sisters", and "Uncle Vanya". In the introduction to Applause Books' 1995 compilation of these, van Itallie asserts that he "worked on "The Sea Gull", and later the other three plays, with a specially-made literal English translation and a selection of French translations." Dunnigan's final stage performance was in