"Revolutions" is intended to be a major four-year celebration by the
Royal Shakespeare Company of Russian and Soviet drama (RSC supremo
Michael Boyd did much of his training as a director in Moscow), and on
the press day it sometimes felt like the old Soviet era. Not only was
the train service to and from Stratford-upon-Avon cancelled all day
without prior notice, but that suspect cadre of reactionary
intellectuals, i.e. we, the critics, were being admitted after a month
of previews to the penultimate performance of each of the two plays:
each can be seen again next Thursday only.
However, these are petty cavils when set against the events of
The Grain Store. Natal'ia Vorozhbit
depicts life on a Ukrainian collectivised farm in the early 1930s, when
Stalin's policies led to millions of deaths from famine. Particular
focus is laid on the tortuous relationship between Mokrina, the
daughter of a comparatively comfortable
kulak family and thus a target of
especial persecution, and Arsei, a peasant trained as a Party activist
who secretly feeds her.
Samantha Young and Tunji Kasim turn in a pair of strong performances at
the centre of a production by Boyd which fully realises his ensemble
vision for the RSC. A host of familiar faces crop up in minor roles,
from Sam Troughton as the leader of a travelling agitprop theatre
troupe right up/down to Greg Hicks as a tramp and Kathryn Hunter as a
peasant activist who, after being locked in the grain store of the
title, begins to experience quasi-religious trances of truth-telling
and prophecy.
This aspect feels like an awkward and superfluous business to British
sensibilities, although I suspect that to Russian and Ukrainian ones it
is a natural outgrowth of the play's dealing with the official
Stalinist suppression of Orthodox Christianity. However, it remains at
odds with a predominantly direct depiction of a major issue or event.
This central trait is shared with
The
Drunks by Mikhail and Vyacheslav Durnenkov, which addresses a
matter recently referred to by Russian president Medvedev as a
"pandemic", alcoholism. When protagonist Ilya (Jonjo O'Neill) returns
from the Chechnyan war with a piece of shrapnel in his brain, it makes
him unable to drink, which is at once the currency and the curse of the
entire rest of the town. He also finds himself being used as a war-hero
poster-boy for three competing mayoral candidates, all advised by the
same eminence grise. This latter figure is played with fearsome cool
(and disconcerting contact lenses) by Christine Entwisle, one of a
number of semi-regulars in the productions of director Anthony Neilson.
(This is also the first time Neilson has directed his father Sandy on a
public stage.)
The piece is a blacker descendant of
The
Government Inspector, and Neilson incorporates extra Gogolian
verve into Nina Raine's translation. Yet despite the big issues
involved, neither play really feels weighty enough to stand in the
first rank of a programme of work as significant as the RSC envisages
this to be.
Written for the Financial
Times.