Astonishingly, Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle is still alive today. And Fraser Grace has written a play about him, a flawed affair that blends melancholy with crass agit prop.
It starts well, with Andrew Neil’s dignified, compelling Kalashnikov, lecturing us on the extraordinarily simple weapon that made him a hero back in Stalin’s day. Loyal to old Joe, he has no truck with modern politics, and lives in isolation with his daughter Makka and granddaughter Elena. Into their seclusion steps Owen Oakeshott’s nerdy journalist Volkov, claiming he wants to make a documentary about Kalashnikov.
There are definite shades of Chekhov in this portrait of fading Soviet royalty unable to escape the past. It’s just a shame that Volkov and Maggie O’Brien’s Makka are so unutterably tedious. And that late on Volkov suddenly turns into an avenging angel who takes Kalashnikov to task for the damage his creation has wrought over the decades. This swerve in tone underscores rather than mitigates the thinness of Fraser’s exposition-heavy text.