I liked it better than most here too. The main character was based on Anna Nemptsova, who appeared at a talkback (last week, I think). She wrote for Newsweek into the 2010s (when it was headed by some Reuters people). I liked the acting a lot. though the actors speaking in Russian/Ukranian accents whenever they talked to an American seemed like a strange and unnecessary choice (I believe by the playwright). A speech by Kostya early on--Ivan the Terrible, actually terrible, Peter the Great...--is almost verbatim what a professor said to us in college,
Do you know who is speaking in Russian on the TV screens in scene one? Yeltsin?
One funny aside: While standing near the hearing device table, I heard a man asked if they were to translate the speeches from Russian to English. |