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Who Killed Comrade Rabbit?

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman

The Blank Theatre

Through July 26.

In 2012, Ilia Volok appeared locally in a stage adaptation of Gogol’s Diary of a Madman, in which he portrayed the mental dissolution of a petty bureaucrat living in Czarist Russia. Volok was compelling to watch even though the cumbrous prose made some of his performance slow going.

Volok’s current solo show – co-written with Willard Manus, and directed by Barbara Bain – is similar in some respects and different in another.  Once again Volok depicts a humble man of little power or consequence – this time an actor named Alexander Mushkin – tormented by fear of powerful forces that he believes may be out to get him. 

But whereas Gogol’s pencil-pusher created much of his distress from his own imagination, Mushkin has good reason to be afraid. The performer is being summoned to Secret Police headquarters where he anticipates having to testify against his employer and mentor, the famous stage director, Konstantin Stanislavski.  It’s a lose-lose situation, any way he looks at it. One has to agree.

This fertile terrain for black humor – and it is that – doesn’t get ploughed, though. The problem is the script.  The dialogue, instead of being dense, is too sparse. The story needs detail – more information about Mushkin’s estranged wife Ludmila, just to cite one example, and what caused her to leave him.

Instead, much of the 70-minute piece is taken up with improvisational behavior that elaborates on the character’s fundamental dilemma but is repetitive.

Designer Phi Tran’s set aptly evokes the dressing room of a Moscow theater circa 1937.  Derrick McDaniel’s lighting design and David B. Marling’s sound add to the musty ambience. All that’s needed now is a better play.

The Blank Theatre, 6500 Santa Monica Blvd. Hlywd.; Wed., Fri-Sun., 8 p.m.; through July 26. https://www.plays411.com/whokilledcomraderabbit.