Tinkerin' the Land of Soviets -- Guest Review by Doctor Terror
Holy Fool (Park Theate)
'Cancel culture' is a topic much discussed these days as government, and society in general, tries to balance the need for free speech with a desire not to offend too many people. 'Being cancelled' can mean anything from career-destroying censorship to acquiring a reputation as 'too hot for t'telly'. What it tends not to mean these days is being sent to a gulag in Siberia and/or killed. Compared to trying to be creative while living under Joseph Stalin, the grievances of, say, Graham Linehan or Jim Davidson seem pretty small potatoes. Try being Dmitri Shostakovich!
But perhaps all the recent talk of getting cancelled gives a play that might otherwise be seen as remote from much of our recent experience a sense of topicality and urgency. While backstage with his pregnant physicist wife Nina (a towering performance by Jenna Augen), Shostakovich (the captivating Benjamin O'Mahony) hears that this performance of his adventurous, experimental opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is about to be granted an audience of Uncle Joe himself and suddenly begins to dread the following morning's reviews.
What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse as the Soviet authorities, representing Stalin at the top of the pyramid, force Dmitri to write triumphalist, easy-on-the-ear tunes firmly in keeping with 'Socialist realism' and he tries to sneak in touches of his own to convince his more astute listeners that he isn't completely playing ball. The poster depicts him walking a tightrope made of a violin string while the other strings snap either side: it is a vividly accurate metaphor. Meanwhile, the remaining cast members, Fergus O'Donnell and Phoebe Price, play various other characters who, while often fictional, allow expositional conversations of great complexity without ever feeling arch or unrealistic. There are plenty of snatches of Shostakovich's music and a perhaps unexpected burst of Killing Me Softly with His Song (its title perhaps all too significant) in a pivotal late scene set in American tract housing in bright sunshine. Did Shostakovich become (to quote the play) 'Stalin's Scheherazade, his Holy Fool', or was he his own man? Or both? Or something in between? It is left to the audience to decide.
Authors Rosalind Adler and Lea Sellers have done a masterful job and Kate Fahy's direction is dynamic and involving. As always in the Park theatre, the audience is sat very close to the stage and this has the effect of drawing you into the action. Earlier this year, we saw how effective this kind of staging was in Artistic Director Jez Bond's Whodunnit 4 with its celebrity sheriffs. It is no less impressive here.
The play was apparently written at the request of Simon Russell-Beale who, although taking no active part this time, was apparently very involved in the early stages of development. Interestingly, he played Lavrentiy Beria in The Death of Stalin , a film which shares this play's darkly satirical humour. So has all this made me more sensitive to the plight of Boy George, dropped before even starting his role as Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar for writing a fiercely pro-Netanyahu song which rather jarred with the public mood? Nope.