Seeing the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Erika
Sheffer’s Vladimir two days after the 2024 presidential election was
painful. Not so much because the play—which closes Sunday—has problems (it does),
but because of its message.
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| Norbert Leo Butz, Francesca Faridani. All photos: Jeremy Daniel. |
Vladimir, set mainly in Russia in 2004, during the
early years of Vladimir Putin’s regime, is about the repression of journalistic
truth in an autocratic society. Judging by what we know of Donald Trump’s attitude
toward the press, which he calls “fake news” when it’s critical of him or his
policies, it’s impossible to watch the play without thinking that this could
happen here.
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| Francesca Faridany, Erin Darke. |
Which leads one to wonder, where are the mainstream American
plays that directly address the most pressing political issues of our day? Why,
as in another recent Putin play, Patriots, must
we go abroad to find our political villains?
Raya (a fiery Francesca Faridany, bearing a resemblance to
Edie Falco) is a severely determined, widely read journalist writing for an
independent newspaper called Moscow Novosti. Her character was inspired
by Anna
Politkovskaya, journalist and human rights activist. Raya’s the divorced
mother of Galina (Olivia Deren Nikkanen), who’s preoccupied with her upcoming
marriage to an unseen man named Sasha.
Raya’s vodka-swilling editor, Kostya (two-time Tony awardee Norbert
Leo Butz, hyperactive), walks a tightrope in keeping his paper going in a
repressive atmosphere. Kostya, for all his anti-Putin angst, accepts a job
provided through a university friend, an apparatchik named Andrei (Erik
Jensen), to manage a state-run TV station, an act of complicity he soon
regrets.
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| Norbert Leo Butz, Erik Jensen, Jonathan Walker. |
It’s the time of Russia’s conflict with Chechnya, and Raya,
having been injured while covering the war there (one arm is in a cast), wants
to return to further expose the human rights abuses of Russia’s military. Both
Kostya and Galina, fearful for her safety, strongly oppose it. Soon enough, the
stubbornly resistant Raya survives a familiar Putin method of dealing with his
opposition.
Meanwhile, a mild-mannered Jewish accountant, Yevgeny (David
Rosenberg, earnest), is asked by his American boss, Jim (Jonathan Walker), to
investigate how his investment firm has become the repository for a huge tax
refund. Jim is based on American businessman Bill Browder, who remains
a target of Russian interest. Overcoming his initial fears, Yevgeny is
practically bullied by Jim into agreeing to take on the assignment, only for him
to realize his anticipated martyrdom. Yevgeny was inspired by Sergei Magnitsky, who
uncovered massive tax fraud committed by the Russian government.
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| David Rosenberg, Jonathan Walker. |
Kostya, Raya, and Yevgeny’s stories interlock in a tale that
that also introduces Chovka (Erin Darke), a Chechen terrorist/freedom fighter,
call her what you will, in dream-like scenes. These all come under the mantle
of the notorious Chechen 2004 attack on a Russian school in Beslan in which
hundreds were killed, most of them children. The tragedy serves to emphasize
the government’s disinformation campaign regarding the number of victims, a
slap in the face to truthful journalism.
From it all, the message that seems to emerge is that
authoritarian governments require brave people like Raya and Yevgeny to stand
up to power and tell the truth, even at the cost of their health or lives. Not
a very encouraging takeaway. The number of Russian journalists who’ve died
while carrying out their duties is horrific. Seventeen have been killed since
the invasion of Ukraine alone. Is the only answer to simply do one’s job until
one becomes the next victim? Throughout, it’s impossible to disassociate what
we’re viewing from the implication that something similar lies in store for America
should we, too, be led by a power-hungry autocrat. Too late, one thinks when
it’s over.
This is summed up near the end when the accented-Raya says:
“And it make me so… mad, That one man should have such power, One. Small. Not
great intellectual, not insightful, Only talent is finding ugliness and knowing
how to use it. And yet this little man take up so much space. And I’m thinking…
I don’t want to give this man such power.” Hearing these words so soon after
the election of just such a man could not be more chilling.
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| Norbert Leo Butz, Francesca Faridany. |
But such moments are few in Sheffer’s episodic, occasionally
confusing, not fully convincing, two hours-plus play in which four of the
play’s seven actors play multiple roles. The scenes of Galina’s wedding and
Raya’s reading from her new book in New York seem extraneous.
Vladimir is enacted on Mark Wendland’s rather dark, unappealing set, selectively lit by Japhy Weideman, across which multiple locales are
scattered, some used to represent different places according to the situation.
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| Olivia Deren Nikkanen, Francesca Faridany. |
When the characters speak Russian, they do so in perfect
English, but when speaking English, it’s with a grammatically imperfect Russian
accent, which not all the actors have mastered. The purely Russian scenes (in
English, of course) lack any sense of being other than American, from the
colloquial dialogue to the way people move and express themselves. If you don’t
pay attention, you might think it was all taking place in New York.
There are many dramatic conflicts here, but whenever a
disagreement arises it’s blown up to shouting levels by veteran director Dan
Sullivan; when an argument flares into fisticuffs, the services of fight
director Thomas Schall are employed. Minor as it is, another bothersome touch
occurs when Kostya bursts into Raya’s apartment one night, frozen to the bone,
wearing only a thin leather jacket, which no rightminded Muscovite would don on
a Russian winter night. Jess Goldstein did the otherwise suitable costumes,
including Galina’s wedding gown.
Attempts at humor sometimes streak through the Russian
gloom, only a very few clicking. One that stretches credibility opens the play
with a scene of Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin (unnamed in the script),
about to deliver his resignation speech on December 31, 1999. He has to pee so
he does something so farcical it sets the wrong tone for everything that
follows. Later, farce again intrudes unnecessarily when Raya, in New York for
her book talk, is introduced by an incompetent employee in a bit even SNL would
have rejected.
Vladimir may not be the best example of a play with a contemporary political ax to grind, but it at least makes the effort, and certainly conveys strong points. We need more such plays, especially those that expose important American issues.
For example, the notes at the end of
Sheffer’s script declare: “In 2016 Vladimir Putin offered President Trump
access to Russian Intelligence officials indicted in connection with 2016 DNC
hacks, in exchange for allowing Russia to interrogate Bill Browder. President
Trump referred to this proposition as ‘a great offer.’” Is there not a play
waiting to be born from that morsel? Or must we wait until our new
administration is long gone before it’s safe to go back in the dramatic waters
again?
NY City Center Stage 1/Manhattan Theatre Club
131 W. 55th Street, NYC
Through November 10