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Past Reviews Off Broadway Reviews |
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In crafting this "free adaptation" of Nikolai Erdman's 1928 play The Suicide, which was banned by the censors under Stalin, Buffini has succeeded in making the comedy comport to the modern production ideals. (It premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1979 following Erdman's death and was seen on Broadway the following year, but has been relatively rare on stages since.) She's compressed characters and restricted its locations to the single squalid tenement in which Semyon, his wife, and their closest acquaintances live. In doing so, she's also amplified the personal suffocation of Semyon and made it even more dangerously obvious that his home is fulcrum of all the best and worst parts of his life and death. Neither Buffini nor her director, Neil Pepe, have, however, otherwise improved or expanded on the original concept. From his vantage point within the still-young Soviet Union, Erdman witnessed first-hand the debilitating and dehumanizing impact of Communism on the spirit, and translated it to the stage with lacerating effect. And that does seep from the Atlantic stage as Semyon (Joey Slotnick) tries to navigate competing interests, from his wife Masha (Jeanine Serralles), her no-nonsense mother (Mary Beth Peil) and their go-along neighbor Yegor (Ben Beckley) to the über-romantic Kleopatra (Clea Lewis), the deceptively impious Father Yelpidy (Peter Maloney), the political dissident Aristarkh (Robert Stanton), the talent-deprived writer Viktor (Patch Darragh), and so on. But if you do get the necessarily overpowering impression of the culture of helplessness within which these people, like all so encumbered, are living, you aren't exposed to many commensurate theatrical thrills. A hesitancy, even a stuffiness, pervades the evening that prevents the laughs from percolating or the feelings from unsettling as they should. With the exception of the final curtain line, which drives home the devastation inherent in Semyon's treatment and the climate encouraged by Communism in general, the action unfolds from a discreet emotional distance, as if no one involved entirely accepts (or wants to present) the stakes as they've been outlined. This is most evident in Slotnick's portrayal of Semyon. Coming across as something of a Woody Allen hero, Slotnick projects the character's depressed air with a wink and a buoyancy that suggest that things aren't really as bad as all that. There's little sense that this Semyon would rip apart his marriage as a result of a disagreement about blood sausage with Masha, or that tuba lessons gone awry would inspire him to end his life. Never quite choked by the futility of his existence, this Semyon is at best parodically depressed, leaving the work without the core of darkness from which the acidic absurdity may naturally flow. Maloney also skims the surface as the opportunistic priest (his character is a bare variant on the ancient trope of the unholy holy man also being essayed on Broadway right now by Fred Applegate in The Last Ship), whereas Serralles and Peil are appropriately serious but also drab. Better are Beckley as the put-upon Yegor (watch him swell with smug pride as he crows his postal achievements, probably the only he's ever had), C.J. Wilson as the tough who lives upstairs, and Mia Barron as the, ahem, working girl who's his constant company and one of the few to see Semyon as he truly is. Only Lewis, who expertly balances desperation and ditziness as the amorous Kleopatra, and Stanton, whose Aristarkh is hilariously committed to his cause, strike flawless notes of personality within this universe. Andrew Mayer and Nathan Dame, who play Josh Schmidt's original period-evocative music live on a violin and accordion, do well outlining it with their more traditional notes. And Walt Spangler's vision of Semyon's tenement recalls M.C. Escher in its oppressively twisted design and shadowy sharp angles, all of which are hauntingly accentuated by David Weiner's lights. (The costumes are by Suttirat Larlarb and Moria Clinton.) These elements show that Pepe was, at least in some respects, on the right track, and that he understood and appreciated the task before him of capturing Erdman's emotional authenticity. Even if Pepe and the rest of this Dying for It are, at best, qualified successes, the play, like the one that inspired it, is an effective depiction of the horrors faced by millions of people in a time not that long ago. It acknowledges that the struggle for freedom—of spirit, mind, and body alike—is eternal, one that's just as apt to inspire comic treatments as real-world tragedies (like this week's attacks on the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo). And though the play admits that taking responsibility for yourself isn't easy, Buffini, like Erdman before her, sounds the clarion reminder that as soon as you sacrifice your willingness to do it for yourself, someone else will be all too happy to do it for you.
Dying for It
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