No Fur, No Feathers At the beginning of last year the actress
Caroline Blakiston set about learning her lines for the role of the eccentric governess in Chekhov's The Cherry
Orchard. This time though the lines were in the original Russian. A couple of months later she was on stage by the Black Sea, the lone English performer with the provincial theatre company of Taganrog,
Chekhov's birthplace. As opening night arrived, the cast greeted her with: "No fur, no feathers" - the Russian equivalent of "break a leg".
Producer Richard Bannerman