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Directed by
Martin Harvey
Finborough
Theatre
Director
Neil McPherson
Cast includes
Michael
Bottle
Su
Elliott
Leah
Fells
Leslie
O'Hara
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Finborough
Theatre
Asylum
Theatre Company
6
- 30 March 2002 |
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Scene: a bread
shop in Rural Russia; yet again the
wrong delivery, and the train that brought
the mostly stale loaves had to be pushed
the last half mile to the village. Just
another day for Pania serving her village
– "Settlement Seven" – just
as she used to under the Soviet Union.
Pania (Su Elliot) and her shotgun live
together quite contentedly, especially
on days when she does not have to get
up at 4 am to push a train. Today, though,
is a little different. Pania has employed
Inna Igorovna to help her in the shop.
Inna (played by Leah Fells) has cerebral
palsy. In Soviet times she had been
kept in an institution for disabled
children. After the Soviet Union collapsed
the institute was disbanded – and
Inna was free. Her hope in working as
Pania's assistant was that one day she
would be of use to the society that
previously regarded her as a drain on
its resources
The real story
underlying this account of a disabled
girl trying to find a place in society
is the lack of change that the post-Soviet
world has brought to individual lives.
Pania highlights this. She is a true
worker at heart, but she has no hope
that the new more democratic society
will prove to be any more successful
at relieving life's strain than the
Soviet Union was.
The young woman
and the old woman between them illustrate
the chasms between hope and disillusionment,
between naivety and experience –
and between thereby the old and the
new Russia. This opposition of expectations
creates a strong bond between Inna and
Pania, the young woman looking up to
the older one and she, in turn, gaining
a fresh perspective on life.
But Inna is
not accepted as she wishes to be. People
treat her differently because of her
disability. They want to give her what
she wants least in life, their charity.
Even Pania seems to be guilty of this;
she tries to convince Inna that this
is not the case, but it seems that in
truth she has employed Inna as a favour
to a friend, and could better manage
without her dropping the bread everywhere
in her clumsy attempts to help.
The play squarely
addresses the clash between old and
new Russia, a conflict which expresses
itself in numerous ways – not just
in Inna's fight against the prejudices
of both the old and the new in her effort
to be an accepted member of society,
but also in the relation of subsidiary
characters to the principals. The "bourgeois"
art teacher (Leslie O'Hara) contests
Pania's communist outlook; there are
repeated references to the Russian Mafia
and corruption, and to the paranoia
engendered by the Preferment policy
of the old Soviet Union.
James MacDonald
packs a lot of information about Russia
and its present discontents into this
piece – almost too much, really;
a smaller cast, with more focus on the
principals, would have issued in a play
just as vivid but clearer and more dramatically
streamlined. But it is instructive theatre
for all that, and brings contemporary
Russia interestingly into view.
Elizabeth
Shenton. |
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