BLACK MILK. To 1 March.
London
BLACK MILK
by Vassily Sigarev translated by Sasha Dugdale
Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs To 1 March 2003
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm
BSL Signed 27 February
Runs 2hr One interval
TICKETS 020 7565 500/020 7565 5100
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review Timothy Ramsden 6 February
Tight direction and skilled acting give polish and conviction to a raw study of modern Russian social change.Plasticine, Vassily Sigarev's first play, was an explosive look at Mother Russia's delinquent urban children. Its script called for mammoth, impractical scenery - the need for it swept away in a promenade premiere at the Theatre Upstairs (then, in a way to please Willy Russell's educated Rita, by doing it on the radio).
This follow-up goes rural, and mixes Russian peasants recognisable from Turgenev or Chekhov with sharp-minded city entrepreneurs. It's devastating even if, under the surface sheen of Simon Usher's scrupulously-acted production, there are rough-edges in the dramatic construction.
The city people are not the sharp-suited type. Pregnant Poppet and loutish Lyovchik turn up carrying massive carriers filled with electric toasters, which they proceed to sell via his silver-tongued, smiling sales-pitch to locals who can't even understand their function (one gums hers up with dough, mistaking it for a bread-oven), let alone the extortionate prices.
Sigarev opens with a long narration (the Narrator then disappears though Usher unifies the action by returning him to deliver the closing stage directions), letting us in on the dilapidated railway waiting-room where the action's set, calling it the Motherland's back-end. Suzan Sylvester's surly ticket-clerk's no match for Lyovchik's sales persistence - Paul Ready is spot-on as the eternal opportunist who soon melts her into conversation and price-haggling.
Though she separates herself from the locals of this dead-end locale, Sylvester's clerk is the least-focused character:a brightness of manner belies the way she's taken in.
But as the sullen chorus of locals (an anonymously amplified cast-list for these) shuffle on with the toasters they've been conned into buying, hoping in the imposing but unconfident Mishanya - the suitably bear-like Gary Oliver, fetching bullets when words have failed - Sigarev's picture of a society hurtling ahead of itself is poignant and vivid.
The contrast's heightened by Sarah Cattle's finely played Poppet, chain-smoking, lollipop-chewing and responding to every challenge with foul-mouthed abuse.
But showing the negative's the easy job for drama and Sigarev's second act is harder to take, until its pessimistic conclusion. Ten days on, Poppet's given birth and been cared for by Di Botcher's slow-witted, gold-heartedly maternal Auntie Pasha. However it's been for the baby - in the old pram Lyovchik openly despises - it's been an express miracle turnaround for the mother.
When she arrived, Poppet wouldn't even sit on the dirty seats. Now she wants to make her home in this remote hamlet. She comes up against her boyfriend's blandishments, and the rough stuff beneath his easy manner. Sigarev relies on audience goodwill to believe in her quick-change attitude and by leaving the young people alone simplifies the final working-out of the insubstantially-established conflict within Poppet.
Still, this is an urgent report from the interior of a society rollercoasting through change: if anything, its sharp structural jolts heighten the turbulence and strengthen the sense of the tornado blowing through post-Communist society.
Poppet: Sarah Cattle
Lyovchik: Paul Ready
Ticket Clerk: Suzan Sylvester
Mishanya: Gary Oliver
Auntie Pasha: Di Botcher
Petrovna: Sheila Reid
Drunk: Alan Williams
Director: Simon Usher
Designer: Delia Peel
Lighting: Simon Bennison
Sound: Ian Dickinson
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
2003-02-09 17:06:39