I love shows that open with a lie. Especially a lie about politics, as in the case of Lauren Yee’s world première, which finally opened after several world-changing events. First, this was scheduled to open at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2022. Sadly (for all of us), COVID-19 hit and hit hard, closing not only Mother Russia before it could even open, but an awful lot of theatre all around the country. Finally, however, Seattle Rep’s artistic director, Dámaso Rodríguez, was able to obtain it in time for this new première. It was certainly worth the wait.
The play opens with the title character, a maternal representation of Russia herself, Mother Russia. She's akin to Uncle Sam in the US, all dressed in red, white and blue, or John Bull, wearing a Union Jack waistcoat. This Mother Russia, though, is a nationalist figure, but also comes from a long line of theatrical women, such as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet—just bawdy enough but also really smart and with a cutting knowledge and no-nonsense morality, which allows her to be the symbol of Russia. Even more so, Brecht’s Mother Courage in his play, Mother Courage and Her Children is a show in which Brecht uses her figure to show exactly what women will do when they have to survive and help their children survive.
And that first lie Mother Russia tells us is that she isn’t even listed in the programme, you can’t find her there. A.) That is not true—she’s played by Julie Briskman and wonderfully so. But also B.) she’s been around for centuries, the very figure of Russia itself, before communism, during it, and after it. Of course, she won’t fit in one little programme. Briskman has the audience in her hands from word one of the play, being just a bit dirty and very, very aware of what she means as a country.
When she hands off the story to the other three characters in the play (Dmitri, Evgeny and Katya, played by Jesse Calixto, Billy Finn and Andi Alhadeff), we’re still in good hands. Dmitri has opened his own store. Unlike before the collapse of the Wall in Berlin (1989) when the Soviet Union began to fall apart, ending with its dissolving entirely in 1992, Dmitri now owns his own storefront, embellished with western products, toilet paper and Russian softcore porn. He wasn’t paid before, and he isn’t paid now, but at least he has work and is employed.
Unlike Dimitri, Evgeny now walks around aimlessly, without work and without pay, but he has a grand heritage: his father was the head of the KGB. They share the same name but things are very different for them. The play’s Evgeny has no hope until Dimitri hires him to take the day shift and spy on Katya, a pop star, now a schoolteacher who hates teaching and hates children, but at least it’s something to do.
Katya represents the collision of communism with Western culture: she’s modeled herself after folks like, say, Tina Turner or Janis Joplin and was a big item in her day. Now, she has very little left to do and gets paid very badly, which at least is more than Dmitri and Evgeny can say. They aren’t paid at all, but again, it fills the hours.
Unknown to either of the men, they are both dating Katya.
The four roles in Mother Russia are an actor’s dream. They are all simply trying to survive as capitalism takes over the old style economy. No one gets paid, or at least not a lot, and no one thinks they’re going to hit it big (the big lie of American economics for all but a few, the top 1%) and they all have their big moments, including a blow-up with that ends up with a shoot out and a few nasty fights, well staged by fight choregrapher Alyssa Kay. The fights look as well as they could on a stage in the age of movies threatening to crowd out theatre.
That doesn’t happen here. The set, costume and lighting design (Misha Kachman and Peter Maradudin) are all the kind of well-made production that used to be seen on American stages with a shop that rotates and transforms into a street, a bus stop, the grandfather’s house and the shop’s interior. Beautiful work all round, with sound design and music composition by Vincent Olivieri which exactly makes the point of the play: that American culture can overwhelm the lives of those in other cultures and countries.
But Mother Russia is still there in the climatic moments of the play to remind us not so. Mother Russia hasn’t left or been evicted in the world Yee has created. She’s there, and while things may come and go, she’s still there. She’s going nowhere.
A lovely play in a gorgeous production, it did so well in previews that Seattle Rep extended it another week even before the opening night I saw. It’s a lovely thing, and I suspect that we will see more productions of Mother Russia as the right wing capitalists continue to gain power, at least in my part of the world.