El Nogalar is a retelling of the cherry orchard using a mexican border estate rather than the Russian aristocracy. Several of the characters from The Cherry Orchard are either cut or rolled into one in this adaptation. Also, the themes are slightly altered in order to fit into the plight of Mexican citizens, particularly women, by the drug cartels.
As an adaptation of Chekhov’s original work, El Nogalar does not maintain the same dynamics between the characters and the ‘orchard’. The adaptation puts much more emphasis on the dangerous environment the women are in, rather than highlighting a change in the society’s structure as a whole. Lopez is constantly talking to the scary man on the hill through his blackberry. Where are the corresponding incidents in The Cherry Orchard? This play, for me at least, reads much more like an original play that plagiarizes specific elements of The Cherry Orchard when it is convenient to the plot, rather than a well-thought out homage/adaptation. In particular, the relationship between Lopez and the rest of the characters is no where near as deep as Lopakhin and the Ranevskies. Lopez, as the only man in El Nogalar takes on much more of a power position than Lopakhin in Chekhov’s version.
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