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The Rise and Fall of Gorbachev
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17100 |
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THE ARTS
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12 / 1990 |
1,345 Words |
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Claudia Woolgar
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Now that the Berlin Wall has crumbled and free elections are sweeping across Eastern Europe, a dramatic shift of focus has occurred in the arts. The mistakes of the past in Eastern Europe now serve as inspiration to the writers of Western Europe; and as the artists from the East perform more and more in the capitals of the West, the fascination grows.
Two men who leaped onto this new bandwagon are British playwrights Howard Brenton and Tariq Ali. They had already collaborated on a play reacting to the Salman Rushdie affair, which had a very brief run with extremely tight security. Iranian Nights was a high-profile "issue play," and was notable not only for its subject matter but because it stood out from the dearth of political plays on London stages during the 1980s.
With the Royal Shakespeare Company's new play, Moscow Gold, Brenton and Ali have joined forces again to bring political theater - and the changing scene in Eastern Europe - to the London stage. Billed as "a glasnost play," Moscow Gold tells the story of the changing face of the Soviet Union from 1982 up to the present. Its topicality has ensured considerable interest, combined with the fact that it is the last production before the Barbican (home of the RSC) closes for four months due to lack of funding.
Tribute to Meyerhold
In addition to being a political play, the production of Moscow Gold stands as a tribute to the Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold. It was only recently revealed - thanks to the workings of glasnost - that Meyerhold died a particularly gruesome death at the hands of the KGB. Fifty years later the Soviet Union's great experimental director is the theatrical inspiration of Moscow Gold, and Meyerhold's theory of "the circusization of theater" is faithfully adhered to throughout the production, both by the director Barry Kyle, and the eminent half-Russian designer Stefanos Lazaridis. Meyerhold's "theatrical circus" meets with varying levels of success (it is a somewhat curious and arbitrary bed-fellow for the rise of Gorbachev and the collapse of communism) but Moscow Gold is certainly a visual extravaganza.
The set in the opening scene is a striking mass of red - whether through fidelity to communism or to Meyerhold's belief in the symbolism of color remains ambiguous. A huge revolving metal table, reminiscent of a circus ring, has its cover ripped open, disgorging Lenin and a pageant of workers proceeding "to construct the socialist order." As a backdrop curtain falls away a huge white statue of Stalin is revealed (or rather, somewhat curiously, just his legs). And so the stage is set for the recent events of history to take place.
Breton and Ali's first mistake is to try to show everything. As Soviet leaders vote from their coffins and Kremlin cleaners rather too flippantly attempt to convey the workers' lot, one can only note that any encyclopedia could have told us as much. As members of the Politburo hide behind half-face masks and easy quips are made about Reagan ("Chernenko is in excellent health" - "Yes, I am aware that he is younger than Reagan.") Brenton and Ali offer nothing more than historical dates briefly flashed on state. An underdeveloped subplot allows a brief moment of reflection, but the suffering of the ordinary man in the street, which lends itself to theatrical treatment, is swept under the carpet by the tide
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