Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

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Volume 11 Number 3, December 2010

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LENIN'S EMBALMERS BY VERN THIESSEN

WJT 2010

 

on a balmy October night so rare in our town

we watch the decay of the Soviet Revolution

play out at the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre

 

two Jews attempt to live the life of apparatchiks

while coincidentally creating a new religion

by embalming Lenin for Stalin's benefit -

Stalin who as played by David Fox echoes

the German wolf - science and political poker

with a gulag pointed at their heads

they conquer the decay of Lenin's body

 

and ensure their own demise

 

in it's own way a typical pre-1948 Jewish story

it never did go well for Jews toying with power

in a country not their own. A good lesson to recall

 

written with insight and wit, deftness of touch

its production taught some lessons, too:

 

don't make a heavy subject heavier

(one already made lighter by the playwright!)

with a clunky lumber-covered set

don't keep the actors in the dark

with moody lighting and gobos galore

when no one could hide from Stalins glare

(nor should Foxs radiant rendition

be secreted by shadows)

don't move from theatrical story-telling

with style to plodding naturalism

just to get a theatre body

into a vat of actual water

 

when we've just seen that it's possible

to serve vodka from empty bottles

and to drink from empty glasses

and that actors can play different roles

and that it only takes one female actor to play

all the Nadias in Russia

then why make this move at the end of act one

 

the process of embalming

may have been tedious, but must it be

for us. Neither moody music nor gobos

in an operating theatre alleviates a death

of dramatic action

 

dare to let go and let the actors

along/alone with the audience

 

when designers and directors run interference

a play is better left read

 

and now our October of old has returned

 

- P.K. Brask