Christopher Rei
Jasmine Kimiko and James Morris (Photo by Deverill Weeks)
ling and James Morris (Photo by Deverill Weeks)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
A Few Thoughts Theatre Co. at Atwater Village Theatre
Through August 31
RECOMMENDED
Ukraine was still officially part of the Soviet Union when The Lord of the Rings was first published in Russia in 1982. Its mythology quickly gained popularity in both places, and this compounded in the 1990s when tough times in both countries propelled people to escape into worlds of fantasy. Then came the Russian invasion in 2022; in Ukraine, the notion of Russia as interchangeable with the bleak volcanic land of Mordor that Tolkien conjured in his books became widespread. Likewise, the likening of Russian soldiers to Tolkien’s fierce humanoid monsters, known as orcs, seized the public imagination.
Which is why it makes sense that the three soldiers trapped in a bombed-out iron and steel works plant in Keith Szarabajka’s new play, Slava Ukraini! (or Waiting for Elon), fill their conversation with frequent references to various figures from the book. Two of the soldiers, Olha (Jasmine Kimiko) and Vitaly (James Morris), are Ukrainian. Vitaly is open, warm, and trusting; Olha, who outranks him, is a tough, take-no-prisoners kind of woman, someone you definitely wouldn’t want to piss off with a careless word or gesture, or bump into in a dark alley. (Be nice to her, though, and she displays her charm.)
And Vitaly adores her; the two are lovers as well as fellow soldiers, making hay on empty stomachs, even as gunfire and explosives burst around them.
The hanky-panky comes to a halt when Yevgeny (Christopher Reiling) a Russian soldier, discovers their hideout. It’s he, however, who is taken prisoner, and the rest of the play is a dialogue in which he pleads his benign intentions even as the three of them exchange political opinions — about Putin, about Israel, about Gaza, about the West — a conversation that grows edgier the longer they speak. Vitaly, it turns out, is Jewish and an actor, and while not an ideologue, he’s of the belief that the Israelis are still the good guys. Yevgeny, on the other hand, is a Putin-apologist, with a disturbingly racist pan-Slavic perspective.
Some of this dialogue, emerging so swiftly and in the context of Yevgeny’s capture, doesn’t play 100% convincingly, notwithstanding the importance of the issues discussed and the playwright’s intent, certainly worthy, to have them aired. Also, having Yevgeny lightly trussed up with zip ties rather than tightly bound provokes one to wonder why he, a larger man, would not have broken free and attempted to overpower his captors multiple times during the dialogue. And Vitaly’s appeal to a villain like Elon Musk to rescue him and Olha from their predicament (via a video shot on his phone at the top of the play) seems hardly in keeping with this character or with the humanist perspective of the piece as a whole.
But other aspects of the production work beautifully, in particular the nuanced scenes between Kimiko and Morris as colleagues and lovers. Under Tony Pasqualini’s direction, both are excellent in their roles. Pasqualini also deserves a lot of credit for the production’s sharp clear pacing and his staging of the actors in a tight space where tech options — lighting by Matt Richter, a utilitarian set by Brad Bentz — are limited.
A Few Thoughts Theatre Co., Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm, Mon., 8 pm; thru Aug. 31. Tickets here. Runtime: approximately 75 minutes
