RUSSIAN NATIONAL MAIL. To 9 April.
London
RUSSIAN NATIONAL MAIL
by Oleg Bogaev translated by Noah Birksted-Breen
BAC (studio 2) To 9 April 2006
Tue-Sat 8.30pm Sun 6.30pm
Runs 1hr 20min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7223 2223
www.bac.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 March
Fantasy and reality contrast and collide in a pointed Russian fantasy.
Sputnik Theatre, devoted to Russian drama, has been able to bring their production of Oleg Bogaev’s fantasy across London from Islington’s Old Red Lion Theatre thanks to the annual ‘Critics’ Choice’ season jointly arranged by Battersea Arts Centre, which provides the space, and ‘Time Out’, providing the critics and their choices from the past year on the London fringe. A crow’s-flight between the venues might pass somewhere near Sloane Square, where the Royal Court Theatre gave Bogaev’s play its first British reading; he is a playwright whose fame largely stops at his homeland’s border.
Well might the cast summoned up in the principle character’s mind include Bolshevik leaders, as the writer hails from Ekaterinburg, scene of the last Tsar’s execution in the early heady days of Russian Communism. They occupy, along with cosmonaut Gagarin, a Martian companion from his space-flight, and Hollywood star Vivien Leigh, a space vacant in Shukov’s life.
All this happens in a cramped and humble room where Kevin McMonagle’s Zhukov sends himself letters – and replies – from such notables, or others lost to contact. It’s a terminal existence for this Russian nation’s male and McMonagle creates it in detail. There’s the indolent lying on his bed, the voices adopted for others’ letters, the moments of surprise when he discovers a missive he’s just planted in his room, and momentary enthusiastic surges amid the dreary torpor.
The rest of the acting doesn’t match this, but the fantasy figures popping-up behind his bed or taking possession of the room are caught in apt, simple outline. They have the self-absorbed confidence and simple outlines which characterise the fantasies of the famous dreamed-up by anonymous loners in bed-sitting rooms, as their minds chewing over the past in place of a present that has no reality.
In contrast is the little domestic puppet-figure, made largely of brown paper with wooden-spoon arms, which moves with gentle, affectionate delicacy on to Zhukov’s sleeping body, a companion he never acknowledges, and a stage figure more alive in its deliberate, detailed movement than the remote ones embodied by humans.
Trotsky/Puppeteer: Darren East
Martian/Puppeteer: Zoe Hunter
Lenin: Nick Afka Thomas
Gagarin: Sam Emery
Vivien Leigh: Elisabeth Stuart
Ivan Sidorovich Zhukov: Kevin McMonagle
Queen Elizabeth II: Leila Gray
Director: Noah Birksted-Breen
Designer/Costume: Julie Marabelle
Lighting: Henry Dawn
Sound: Hans Biorn Lian
Assistant designer: Teresa Prada
2006-03-30 18:29:08