Maybe it was a coincidence but it probably wasn't. In any case, this is what happened when I returned home after taking in Mikhail Ugarov's production of Caryl Churchill's "Far Away" at the Praktika theater last week: I turned on the television to watch the following reports in a single 30-minute newscast.
Supporters of Hamas and Fatah battled each other in the streets of Gaza, killing seven and wounding 10 times more. Soccer fans in Italy rioted in the streets after a policeman breaking up a fight accidentally killed an innocent bystander. Students in Finland returned to their high school for the first time since a classmate went on a shooting spree, killing eight before turning his gun on himself. In Cambodia, officials arrested Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge foreign minister under Pol Pot, who masterminded the slaughter of up to 1.7 million of his countrymen between 1976 and 1979. Approximately a dozen ships ran aground or sank in the Kerch Strait between the Azov and Black Seas during one of the worst storms there in years. A man in Berlin attempted to attack German Chancellor Angela Merkel as she met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Unrest spiraled in Pakistan as President Pervez Musharraf confined rival politician Benazir Bhutto to house arrest for the second time in a week.
Seeking refuge, I turned to the Animal Planet channel. The program in progress informed me that bear populations from Australia and the Orient to the Arctic are under extreme attack from humans. Poachers, encroachers and polluters are driving many bear species to the brink of extinction.
Hello world. And -- because this has not been a digression -- hello Caryl Churchill.
Churchill has emerged as one of the most prescient playwrights of our time. She is openly political and intensely polemical about the issues that concern her. In plays such as "Drunk Enough to Say I Love You," "A Number" and "Serious Money" she has tackled such topics as Britain's dependence on the United States, human cloning and dirty dealings in the British stock market. "Far Away," written in 2000, is characteristic of her work in that it mixes pointed social commentary with formal dramatic innovation. The production at Praktika is Ugarov's second time around with Churchill; he staged "A Number" at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater in 2004.
"Far Away" is a brief but challenging piece that comes to us rather in the form of an image reflected in a shattered mirror. Three scenes, running approximately 20 minutes each, provide glimpses of three incidents in the childhood and adulthood of a character named Joan (Viktoria Tolstoganova). We first witness her confrontation with her aunt Harper (Yelena Drobysheva) when one night she sees her uncle beating strangers to a bloody pulp out by the barn. Next we watch as she carries on with Todd (Grigory Kalinin) at a shop where both work making fancy hats for people condemned to death. Finally, all three characters come together as a war rages around them outside -- one in which animals, insects and everything else have joined humanity in a race to extermination. Even the weather, Joan tells us, has declared itself an ally of the Japanese.
This all transpires in a utilitarian space designed by Andrei Klimov. A pair of tables and a few hat racks can be moved around to create obstacles for the actors as they wander the stage.
Churchill wrote a compelling triptych about the all-pervasive lies and iniquities of the modern world. Part One is a fairy-tale-turned-horror flick, something like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" emerging from "Charlotte's Web." Part Two, to continue the cinematic comparisons, is rather like your typical Julia Roberts date movie morphing into your worst nightmare ever. Part Three is the Discovery Channel gone berserk -- every catastrophe ever predicted involving man and the environment comes into play here. Cats, we are told, have entered the war against the French while in China babies are being slaughtered.
No one, however, is more than moderately concerned about any of this. As a young girl, Joan questions why her uncle clubs people to death by the light of the moon. But her aunt assures her those were traitors out there. They had to be killed for the good of everyone else. Years later, when Joan learns that the fashionable headgear she designs is worn by death-camp inmates being led to execution, she only hesitates briefly before hammering out the next hat. In fact, when Todd claims he will confront their boss and risk being fired, Joan warns him not to be so rash.
These people inhabit a territory where atrocities are the rule, and denial and perjury the modus operandi for dealing with them. These people will say or believe anything to avoid facing the truth about who they really are and what they are doing.
Appropriately, nothing is explained in this play and very little bears more than the vaguest resemblance to definable, real world events. The atmosphere of allegory remains strong throughout. Everything takes place in a far-off land in a time none of us ever has known. In principle this allows for one of the great strategic elements of theater to be put into action -- the moment of recognition which occurs when a spectator in a hall draws conclusions for himself. Churchill creates a fantasy world which each of us is free to interpret. Who are the countries and the politicians responsible for this carnage? It's anybody's guess. But there's one thing Churchill is very specific about: her intention to evoke a sense of horror and instinctive recognition in everyone who encounters her play.
At Praktika, the act of recognition occurs but the sense of complicity and horror rarely kicks in. As if confusing the playwright's message with the attitude of her characters, the actors in this laidback, almost lazy, performance are too blase to create heat or horror. In the second segment Joan and Todd make love on the workshop tables as energetically as they might sleep or sweep the floor. Ugarov interrupts their phlegmatic romance on occasion with video clips showing heaps of naked humans being readied for slaughter. Looking less like Dachau than a nudist colony get-together, these images have almost no integral link to what transpires on stage. The actors stop and watch along with the spectators, apparently understanding the connection no better than they do.
Here we encounter the danger and the difficulty of theater that is called upon to evoke indignation through nonchalance. If the latter isn't implemented with near-perfect precision, the former has no chance of being achieved. This production of "Far Away" is more apt to provoke indifference than indignation, thus defeating everything Churchill set out to accomplish.
No one will deny it -- making political theater is difficult in an age when politics have outdistanced even the most fantastic writer's imagination. But the fact remains: Something is wrong when a daily newscast is more memorable and more startling than a play about the news.
"Far Away" (Daleko) plays Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. at Praktika, located at 30 Bolshoi Kozikhinsky Pereulok. Metro Mayakovskaya, Pushkinskaya. Tel. 544-5545. www.praktikatheatre.ru. Running time: 1 hour.
Supporters of Hamas and Fatah battled each other in the streets of Gaza, killing seven and wounding 10 times more. Soccer fans in Italy rioted in the streets after a policeman breaking up a fight accidentally killed an innocent bystander. Students in Finland returned to their high school for the first time since a classmate went on a shooting spree, killing eight before turning his gun on himself. In Cambodia, officials arrested Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge foreign minister under Pol Pot, who masterminded the slaughter of up to 1.7 million of his countrymen between 1976 and 1979. Approximately a dozen ships ran aground or sank in the Kerch Strait between the Azov and Black Seas during one of the worst storms there in years. A man in Berlin attempted to attack German Chancellor Angela Merkel as she met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Unrest spiraled in Pakistan as President Pervez Musharraf confined rival politician Benazir Bhutto to house arrest for the second time in a week.
Seeking refuge, I turned to the Animal Planet channel. The program in progress informed me that bear populations from Australia and the Orient to the Arctic are under extreme attack from humans. Poachers, encroachers and polluters are driving many bear species to the brink of extinction.
Hello world. And -- because this has not been a digression -- hello Caryl Churchill.
Churchill has emerged as one of the most prescient playwrights of our time. She is openly political and intensely polemical about the issues that concern her. In plays such as "Drunk Enough to Say I Love You," "A Number" and "Serious Money" she has tackled such topics as Britain's dependence on the United States, human cloning and dirty dealings in the British stock market. "Far Away," written in 2000, is characteristic of her work in that it mixes pointed social commentary with formal dramatic innovation. The production at Praktika is Ugarov's second time around with Churchill; he staged "A Number" at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater in 2004.
"Far Away" is a brief but challenging piece that comes to us rather in the form of an image reflected in a shattered mirror. Three scenes, running approximately 20 minutes each, provide glimpses of three incidents in the childhood and adulthood of a character named Joan (Viktoria Tolstoganova). We first witness her confrontation with her aunt Harper (Yelena Drobysheva) when one night she sees her uncle beating strangers to a bloody pulp out by the barn. Next we watch as she carries on with Todd (Grigory Kalinin) at a shop where both work making fancy hats for people condemned to death. Finally, all three characters come together as a war rages around them outside -- one in which animals, insects and everything else have joined humanity in a race to extermination. Even the weather, Joan tells us, has declared itself an ally of the Japanese.
This all transpires in a utilitarian space designed by Andrei Klimov. A pair of tables and a few hat racks can be moved around to create obstacles for the actors as they wander the stage.
Churchill wrote a compelling triptych about the all-pervasive lies and iniquities of the modern world. Part One is a fairy-tale-turned-horror flick, something like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" emerging from "Charlotte's Web." Part Two, to continue the cinematic comparisons, is rather like your typical Julia Roberts date movie morphing into your worst nightmare ever. Part Three is the Discovery Channel gone berserk -- every catastrophe ever predicted involving man and the environment comes into play here. Cats, we are told, have entered the war against the French while in China babies are being slaughtered.
No one, however, is more than moderately concerned about any of this. As a young girl, Joan questions why her uncle clubs people to death by the light of the moon. But her aunt assures her those were traitors out there. They had to be killed for the good of everyone else. Years later, when Joan learns that the fashionable headgear she designs is worn by death-camp inmates being led to execution, she only hesitates briefly before hammering out the next hat. In fact, when Todd claims he will confront their boss and risk being fired, Joan warns him not to be so rash.
These people inhabit a territory where atrocities are the rule, and denial and perjury the modus operandi for dealing with them. These people will say or believe anything to avoid facing the truth about who they really are and what they are doing.
Appropriately, nothing is explained in this play and very little bears more than the vaguest resemblance to definable, real world events. The atmosphere of allegory remains strong throughout. Everything takes place in a far-off land in a time none of us ever has known. In principle this allows for one of the great strategic elements of theater to be put into action -- the moment of recognition which occurs when a spectator in a hall draws conclusions for himself. Churchill creates a fantasy world which each of us is free to interpret. Who are the countries and the politicians responsible for this carnage? It's anybody's guess. But there's one thing Churchill is very specific about: her intention to evoke a sense of horror and instinctive recognition in everyone who encounters her play.
At Praktika, the act of recognition occurs but the sense of complicity and horror rarely kicks in. As if confusing the playwright's message with the attitude of her characters, the actors in this laidback, almost lazy, performance are too blase to create heat or horror. In the second segment Joan and Todd make love on the workshop tables as energetically as they might sleep or sweep the floor. Ugarov interrupts their phlegmatic romance on occasion with video clips showing heaps of naked humans being readied for slaughter. Looking less like Dachau than a nudist colony get-together, these images have almost no integral link to what transpires on stage. The actors stop and watch along with the spectators, apparently understanding the connection no better than they do.
Here we encounter the danger and the difficulty of theater that is called upon to evoke indignation through nonchalance. If the latter isn't implemented with near-perfect precision, the former has no chance of being achieved. This production of "Far Away" is more apt to provoke indifference than indignation, thus defeating everything Churchill set out to accomplish.
No one will deny it -- making political theater is difficult in an age when politics have outdistanced even the most fantastic writer's imagination. But the fact remains: Something is wrong when a daily newscast is more memorable and more startling than a play about the news.
"Far Away" (Daleko) plays Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. at Praktika, located at 30 Bolshoi Kozikhinsky Pereulok. Metro Mayakovskaya, Pushkinskaya. Tel. 544-5545. www.praktikatheatre.ru. Running time: 1 hour.
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