One of Russia’s most revered stage institutions, Moscow’s Vakhtangov Academic State Theatre has only recently made headway in the West, with additional government funding finally allowed the near century-old company to tour its lavish ensemble shows abroad for the first time.
The previous shows to be brought over were Chekhov’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ and an adaptation of Pushkin’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ – comparatively easy household-name sells.
But international acclaim has clearly emboldened them, because ’Smile Upon Us, Lord’ is another kettle of ryba entirely. For starters it’s not really Russian; it’s the company’s Lithuanian artistic director Rimas Tuminas adapting two books by his Jewish countryman Grigory Kanovich about life in the shtetl of old.
Hopefully the company’s name will be enough to draw an audience, because ‘Smile Upon Us, Lord’ is a haunting, intensely atmospheric work, a sort of brooding existential road trip with several good jokes and a primal sorrow at the ending of this old Jewish world.
Efraim Dudak (Sergey Makovetskiy, magnificently weary) is a cantankerous old duffer who just wants to be left alone with his beloved she-goat (an unexpectedly high-powered acting performance from Yulia Rutberg). Then one fateful morning he receives word
that his son has been arrested for the attempted assassination of the governor of Vilnius. Reluctantly, he bids his goat farewell, rounds up a pair of old pals, and begins the long horse-and-coach journey to the capital.
What follows is an increasingly surreal affair that vaguely brings to mind a weirder, bleaker Eastern European cousin of David Lynch’s old-guy-takes-a-very-slow-
making headway more metaphorically than geographically. There’s obvious touches of Beckett, too, but also something less abstract: from the ominous howls of distorted klezmer music to the group’s near-escape from pogrom-recalling ‘wolves’, the fate of Eastern
Europe’s Jews is heavily foreshadowed.
It feels like a show about facing up to fate and stepping into the future – but as the magnificently unnerving final scene suggests, the future can be a strange, dark place.
This review was of a January performance in Moscow, as the Barbican run is too short to hit Time Out's print deadline