Ilya Volok, Randy Lowell, John Kayton and Jan Munroe (Photo by Jenny Graham)
Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
Through May 26
RECOMMENDED
Few historical figures are more vilified than Joseph Stalin, who led the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — aka the Soviet Union — from 1924 to his death in 1953. While Stalin had political rivals liquidated and allegedly created a famine that starved millions of Russians, he also unified the disparate peoples of the former Russian empire after battling counterrevolutionaries and interventionist pro-capitalist countries — the U.S.A. included — in a civil war after the October 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Stalin also transformed a “backward” agricultural nation into an industrial powerhouse and a bulwark against Nazi Germany in World War II. Some believe Hitler would have prevailed if not for the Soviet Union, the leadership of Stalin, and the masses of his nation who fought and died in the Great Patriotic War.
Playwright David Pownall balances contrasting visions of Stalin — a man prone to poetry and profanity, deep loyalty and even deeper mistrust, kindness and cruelty — in his darkly comedic examination of the responsibility of the individual to the needs of the collective. Despite some bumps in director Ron Sossi’s production of Pownell’s fictional tale, we come away with a more nuanced version of a “dictator” whose love for his nation and its common people may have led to his most desperate actions.
In January, 1948, Stalin (Ilia Volok) and Andre Zhdanov (John Kayton), his head of cultural affairs, summon famed composers Dmitri Shostakovich (Randy Lowell) and Sergei Prokofiev (Jan Munroe) to a late-night Kremlin meeting. “You should watch where you’re going,” is the literal and symbolic warning the surly Zhdanov delivers to the cane wielding Prokofiev when he trips over a piece of furniture. A boisterous Stalin plies them all with vodka, drunkenly revealing poignant events that led him to abandon a Russian Orthodox seminary and embrace Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Meanwhile, a visage of Vladimir Lenin, who extrapolated from Marx’s writings the ideology to which Stalin adhered, watches over the bizarre proceedings from a high hanging portrait.
Stalin eventually drops the friendly façade: Shostakovich and Prokofiev have strayed into what Zhdanov has dubbed “formalism,” an artistic strain that caters more to Western — and non-Russian — tastes than those of the Russian common folk. Despite their previous works, which glorified the nation, Stalin calls them dilettantes, more interested in their own art than in satisfying the cultural needs of the people — “people aren’t always right” is Prokofiev’s haughty response. Stalin and Zhdanov want them to abandon their bourgeois inclinations and return to the proletarian fold. As the two artists dither, Stalin and Zhdanov present a violent example of the shellacking they will receive if they refuse to acquiesce. Shostakovich and Prokofiev must negotiate a way to salvage their careers as well as their lives.
Sossi ‘s skilled staging, coupled with designer Jackson Funke’s lighting plot, complements the more macabre moments as the lights dim and rise depending on Stalin’s mood or intent. However, even if the play is fiction, it is hard to picture Lowell and Munroe in their respective roles since they are decades older than their respective characters’ ages of 42 and 57. When Shostakovich is referred to as youthful and a “boy” and Stalin, 69 at the time, declares he is older than Prokofiev, the lines strain belief.
Nisha Sue Arunasalam played superbly behind a curtain on opening night, part of a conceit for the illusion that the actors all play the piano. (Michael Redfield plays at some performances.) This also adds to the play’s more comic moments, such as in Act II, when the soused quartet hilariously attempt to compose a politically appropriate musical piece based on Stalin’s favorite poem from his youth. Kayton as Stalin’s blustery and loyal confederate is a chilling presence who, despite Stalin’s sniping, has a true affection for his boss forged by war and political intrigue.
Kayton’s astute improvising salvaged Lowell as he struggled for a line at the performance I attended. Lowell does acquit himself as he and Munroe capably depict the anxiety of men facing imminent doom. Volok is a compelling Stalin, menacing when he is browbeating the composers to change their ways and surprisingly moving as he reveals his passion for the people and the vital need for Shostakovich and Prokofiev to bend to his will. Considering the conditions of the time, Volok’s Stalin, with all the fervor of the devout priest he could have been, makes a strong case for why Shostakovich and Prokofiev should bend to his will. It is understandable why recent polls show that Russian people still hold Stalin in high regard – and why capitalist Western powers still use him as a convenient bogeyman for anti-communist rhetoric.
What Pownall also explores, and Sossi and the cast ably convey, is the dilemma of how an artist, or anyone, survives a rigid regime and the censorship that ensues. How far does one compromise one’s principles to stay alive under the most precarious situations? Considering the current state of world politics, many of us may be forced to figure that out for ourselves sooner rather than later.
Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West LA. ; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru May 26. OdysseyTheatre.com Running time two hours and ten minutes, with a 15-minute intermission.
