What: The Broadway transfer of Peter Morgan's play about Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, who first helped Putin's ascent to power and then became one of his most vocal critics.
And? The play is bookended by Berezovsky telling us how the West doesn't understand Russia, doesn't understand its soul. This is probably true. However, I don't know that the play itself (written, after all, by a Westerner, the bulk of whose works have centered on British politics and monarchy) does much to elucidate. The whole play still feels very much like a Western lens. It also doesn't manage to shed much light on the enigma of Putin himself, who seems a timid nobody until he takes control of Russian government and never lets go. He remains a cypher.
But. What if we say this is deliberate. What if we admit the Western lens of this play and say that's a choice, that Morgan isn't trying to write from within the Russian mentality. Why, then, this play? Why now? I found myself for most of the performance trying to discern what story the play was telling. But if we ask that question with the acknowledgement of the deliberately Western lens, maybe this play is a warning to us, to not be complacent. Putin took power during Russia's brief era of freedom from its totalitarian communist rule. Democracy on its own doesn't protect itself as remaining a democracy, not when people act in bad faith to tip the balance. Britain and the US are not free from the risk of fascism, and we know damn well that there are people who would like the next election to be the last election. They're saying it openly at this point.
So while I can't necessarily say this is a great piece of theater that will stick with me, competently done though it is, I can see why they want to tell this story now. Michael Stuhlbarg is wonderful and eccentric and elastic as Berezovsky (and continues to make me regret having missed his performance in "The Pillowman") and will probably get a Tony nomination.
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| A scene from the Almeida Theatre production. Photo by Marc Brenner. |
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