Review: Vodka, Fucking and Television by Breaking String Theater
by David Glen Robinson
This play, written in 2003, may reach an apex in the new generation of Russian plays. Breaking String Theater Company is getting used to this Russian art explosion, having produced a number of Russian plays in translation, and producing this extremely well written comedy with an exceptional ensemble of some of Austin’s most talented actors. Liz Fisher directs Vodka, Fucking and Television for Breaking String.
The only speed bump in the raceway to success for this sparkling vehicle is the obscenity in the title, which seems to have inhibited some of the more conventional marketing modes. No problem. Judging from the enthusiastic audience on opening night, word of mouth alone will counteract the dearth of posters in grocery stores.
The story behind VF&T is that of Russian theatrical creativity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The conduit for funneling the best new plays into English translations and on into the English-speaking world has beenJohn Freedman, theatre writer for the Moscow Times. Graham Schmidt, Breaking String’s producing artistic director, describes Freedman as the rare man in the right place at the right time: he was visiting Moscow on a Fulbright to write his doctoral dissertation on Russian playwright Erdman when the Iron Curtain fell. Freedman moved to Russia, and the rest is ongoing cultural arts history. Freedman has been instrumental in bringing Maksym Kurochkin to the attention of the West. For more on this story, read Michael Meigs’ profile of VF&T and Liz Fisher for AustinLiveTheatre.com.
VF&T takes its title from the three vices that beset a 33-year-old writer and Red Army veteran variously referred to as Hero, Poet or Writer. His name is just assymbolic as are those of the other characters. He is Everyman (artist variant), portrayed by Noel Gaulin. In one of the most effective play openings that I have seen in the curtainless postmodern era, the house opens with Gaulin already onstage in pajamas and robe in the midst of his small but serviceable Moscow flat. The interior design is definitely post-Soviet Union; the room has central heating. Gaulin spins and contorts in apparent writer’s block, his grimacing face lit mostly by the laptop screen mocking him with its emptiness. The vices have a peculiar presence in the apartment, too: the flat-screen TV blares, and, pity Russia, its daytime TV is worse than ours (unfortunately, a good third of the audience misses the flat screen amusements because a table and pile of blankets block them). The kitchen sink if full of dirty dishes and used drinking glasses and bottles of vodka and wine are everywhere. The bed clothing and scattered blankets and comforters convey the tumbled look of recent sex, hinting perhaps at more to come.
Hero struggles and eventually declines into a a giant hallucinatory spasm. The personified vices materialize and swirl around him. The vices loudly claim triumph over the writer, backing him into every corner in the flat. Clutching for control, Hero declares that he will reclaim mastery if he can banish at least one of the vices from his life.
The rest of the play is a kind of reverse Judgment of Paris. Hero insists that each vice must make its best case for staying in his life, and he says he will expel the vice with the least compelling argument. Of course, aided by addictive denial, all the vices make great cases for themselves. The ensuing speeches are a showcase of Kurochkin’s writing skill, and they all jab and torture Hero’s weakening psyche.
Noel Gaulin brings the play to a high level of intensity and keeps it there. He has in this play more material with which to work perhaps since The Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo early this year. Gaulin has an impressively large repertoire of gestures and tones, and his choices and shifts in emotionality are always surprising. At the same time, he is exceptionally generous with the ensemble and the audience. Director Liz Fisher found quiet moments in the dialogue and uses Steven Shirley's lighting changes to vary the play’s emotional level. These breaks allow the audience to take a breath and then mentally rush back for more. The hour-long play was performed without an intermission.
Jude Hickey, attired as a TV anchorman in his personification of Television, performed with a range as broad as all TV. His dialogue and gestures dripped with unctuous cynicism, which the audience enjoyed with revulsion (eww!) but which Hero didn’t get at all. This juxtaposition of disparate responses, pulled off neatly by Kurochkin, Fisher and the cast, is one of the subtle delights of the play. We also shouldn't forget the range of clownish characters Hickey enacted earlier on the flat screen TV.
Of greatest enjoyment in Hickey’s performance is his teaming with Joey Hood as Vodka. Together, they acted as a kind of Bobbsey Twins of temptation, knowing they have complete control over Hero. They elevate mockery to a highly effective torture device against Hero. Hood played Vodka with the overwhelming confidence brought on by a good stiff belt, the kind he took several times from the flask prominently carried in his vest pocket. Vodka is generous, too, bartending, cleaning glasses, pouring drinks, always vodka, and distributing them to the characters through everyone’s dialogues. After his “Man Cannot Live Without Vodka” speech, we, too, are confident that Vodka will remain in Hero’s life.
Adriene Mishler plays the titular Fucking, and she writhes, lounges and writhes some more throughout the play. Beauty, costuming and styling define her character as one of high erotic sensuality, but finally it is Mishler’s diction and timing that bring Hero’s torture vat to a full, rolling boil. Without a doubt, she too is a quality this man cannot live without. Her understudy Cami Alys also proved to be a hot, confident tormenter on the following Saturday night's performance.
The design fields of the play supported the onslaught of vice on poor Hero, none more so than the video design, credited to Lowell Bartholomee. As late as a year or two ago, in my experience, synching of video to stage action remained an iffy proposition. But in VF&T, once the sightlines are cleared and the action begins, video displays closely match the live dialogue and action, providing a droll silent counterpart of commentary. This is a credit to the actors as well as the designers and operators.
Yes, we see in this rollicking comedy the erosive effects of vice and addiction, its handmaiden. They daunt most of us and they cut short the creative production of many artists. This is the dramatic device of the play. But at the same time vices can be comforts that soften the edges and shield vulnerable creative types from the many assaults upon them. As director Fisher writes in her notes: “No wonder the greatest artists ended up in looney bins and early graves. Creation is a bitch.”
This strong message is that vices exist in a kind of regrettable balance within the artist. In another sense, though, vices measurably help to define the artist. Vices are there on the dark side of every personality, if only in inchoate form. The dark side is also where Plato’s artistic Sea of Madness is found, where every artist must set sail. The recognition of the defining qualities of vice has been a continuing theme, appearing in the twentieth century in American writers including Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald and perhaps stressed even more in our own times. Kurochkin gives us an updated version of the eternal morality play.
We should applaud with ongoing ticket purchases this new intercontinental theatre connection. Breaking String Theater Company has again produced a shining example of new Russian plays. Continue to do so, Breaking String, we welcome your efforts.
Vodka, Fucking and Television runs Thursdays to Saturdays through December 15th at Hyde Park Theatre.
Review by Dan Solomon for the Austin Chronicle, December 6
Robert Faires' feature on the December 8 live-streaming of the play, Austin Chronicle, December 6
Review by Susan Mikulin at www.austinfusionmagazine.com, December 12
EXTRA
Click to view Breaking String's program for Vodka, Fucking and Television
Vodka, Fucking and Television
by Maksym Kurochkin
Breaking String Theater
