Neva

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman

Theatre of Note

Extended through February 20

RECOMMMENDED

Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderon’s one-act is set in St. Petersburg on a fateful Sunday, January 22, 1905. That date, dubbed by historians as “Bloody Sunday,” was the day that soldiers for the Czar fired on a peaceful crowd of striking workers and their families — not unlike the cop-on-black violence of our own day. Led by a Russian cleric, Father Gapon, they had gathered to petition for an eight-hour work day, the freedom to strike and the right to vote. The march had been pre-approved by authorities, but the discharge of a gun by a panicked soldier precipitated a massacre that served as harbinger for the revolution to come.

Calderon’s historical fantasy doesn’t take place on the streets, but in the shadowy confines of an ill-lit theater space where Olga Knipper (Claudia de Vasco), the widow of Anton Chekhov, and two other actors, Aleko and Masha (Daniel Jimenez and Anna Safar) await the arrival of their director and the rest of the company. These folks are presumably delayed — or are possibly deceased — as a result of the eruptive violence beyond the theater walls.

The trio inside, led by a bossy and egocentric Olga, indulges in playacting and the other sorts of narcissistic shenanigans that theatrical artists are sometimes prone to engage in. Calderon’s fictive Olga (the real-life actress was an artist much loved and respected by her husband and colleagues) is especially keen to re-enact the death of her spouse six months prior. She assigns Aleko to portray the dying writer and Masha to depict the physician who tended to him in his last moments, while Olga, recalling herself, grieves by his bedside.

In the course of the elaborate game-playing, secrets out; we hear of a one-night stand between Aleko and Masha, of Alek’s aristocratic upbringing, and eventually of the proletarian leanings of the unhappy Masha, who in the course of 75 minutes transforms from the butt of ridicule by the others to a subversive seer of the future.

Calderon, who grew up during the repressive regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, is pretty definitive in indicting artists who use theater as their personal playground, far from the realities of actual human suffering.

That message comes through sharp and clear in director Diana Wyenn’s accomplished staging (though designer Joey Guthman’s lighting is a bit too obscure in places). It’s played out on a tiny raised proscenium by an ensemble so adeptly immersed in the material that its loony elements and absurd illogic begin to seem almost commonplace.

As Olga, a spoiled and sensuous prima donna, De Vasco both anchors the action and dominates till near the end. But it is Safar as Masha, with her visceral howl of the oppressed, who leaves the most indelible mark.

Theatre of NOTE, 1517 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. (Thurs. Feb. 11 only, 8 p.m.); through Extended through February 20. shockpulsela.com.  Running time: one hour, 15 minutes with no intermission