Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . .
“It’s better in this country sometimes to mind your own business. It’s safer.”
What an understatement! Judging from the title of the play wherein this line is uttered, you can guess what country is being referenced, and what a dire warning it is to anybody who doesn’t heed it.
The protagonist of Vladimir, Erika Sheffer’s chilling new play about the price of telling the truth in Putin’s Russia, is unfortunately in the business of NOT minding her own business. Played by a fiery Francesca Faridany, her name is Raya. She’s a Russian journalist for a small, so-called “independent” newspaper called Moscow Novosti (meaning “news”) and she’s just returned from covering the war in Chechnya (in 2004). The bandage on her arm (from burns) is only one of the prices she’s paying for the cause she’s pursuing—namely, to expose Russia’s brutality and end this terrible war that is costing so many lives on both sides. Her editor Kostya (Norbert Leo Butz) can’t stop her from risking her life, and her daughter Galina (Olivia Deren Nikkanen) can’t stop her either. Indeed, no one can.
Raya can’t help herself. Not only is she planning to return to Chechnya to continue coverage, she’s also pursuing multiple stories to expose “Vladimir” (Putin) during his first term. One story involves massive tax fraud in which the government effectively embezzled twenty million rubles by exploiting an American-based company in Moscow. In this pursuit, she’s put her editor and her publication in peril—as well as the young accountant Yevgeny (David Rosenberg) whom she’s recruited to expose the government’s involvement.
Meanwhile, Kostya, her editor and friend, moves on to the state-run Media One (TV) as Managing Deputy Director, essentially joining the establishment. But Raya continues her pursuit of truth, undeterred—not by the wounds she received covering Chechnya, nor the poisoning she suffers at the end of act one (by dark government forces trying to stop her.)
At the same time, Raya is pursued by a ghost—that of a young girl named Chovka (Erin Darke) whom she met while in Chechnya. She becomes a character in a book that Raya is writing. This ghost becomes instrumental in Raya’s increasing self-doubt – as to whether her efforts will make any difference in a society that she realizes is beyond saving. “You have to cure yourself of hope,” Chovka says, referring to her own traumatic and tragic experiences in Chechnya.
“You know what he’s doing?” Raya tells her friend Kostya in the throes of crisis, referring to the man whose first name bears the title of the play and who casts a dark shadow throughout. “He’s making it so we can’t tell which way is up, like a pilot, you know, when they can’t find the horizon? Just total confusion. And numbness. Until you feel like there’s nothing you can do, so you just do nothing.” Raya says this, while at the same time Yevgeny, the young accountant she encouraged to expose the government’s participation in the tax fraud, is being arrested for his efforts.
As Raya becomes an increasing threat to the government, Kostya begs her to take the opportunity to leave Russia while on a visit to New York (that she’s making to promote her new book), and thereby save her own life. Will she do it? That is for you to discover.
Erika Sheffer is an astute writer with an impressive understanding of today’s Russia, although sometimes she gets ahead of her audience in this new, ambitious work that seeks to address its many complexities. Act One introduces many characters and complex sub-plot lines; thankfully, they are streamlined in Act Two, as the high stakes for Raya and Yevgeny build to an agonizing climax. Daniel Sullivan’s exacting direction and Mark Wendland’s severe, multi-location set suit the gravity of the subject matter.
A company of able actors play these compelling characters who must make difficult choices. As Raya, Francesca Faridany is pugnacious and stubborn to a fault in her pursuit of truth, irritating everyone around her. And yet she elicits our empathy and respect as she struggles to face the ultimate truth—of whether her (fruitless) efforts are worth the price she is paying. Norbert Leo Butz, always an engaging performer, elicits our compassion for the ambivalent Kostya, an editor who makes the grim choice of complicity for the sake of survival, while at the same time admiring (and loving) Raya for the courage he doesn’t have. Of all the characters, the nerdy accountant Yevgeny, played by an affecting David Rosenberg, elicits our strongest empathy. Drawn into the moral fight by Raya, he risks everything . . . and pays the greatest price of all.
Vladimir is a morality play—and Erika Sheffer should be commended for writing it. Ever since the recent tragic death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison, it was only a question of time that we’d get a response from the theater. And now here is a powerful one. The first, let’s hope, of many in response to the criminality and inhumanity of the current Russian regime.
Meanwhile, Vladimir is especially chilling because it comes at a time when we in America are also being threatened by the dark forces of would-be authoritarianism. Indeed, when Raya and Yevgeny (in separate but parallel moments) speak achingly of their love of “home” despite everything, their words could well be ours.
Vladimir. Through November 10 at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues). www.manhattantheatreclub.org
Photos: Jeremy Daniel
