Captivating sense of the Soviet psyche
The Last Of The Soviets
Zoo Playground (Venue 186) until 27 August
Two Russian newsreaders, one male, one female, sit behind a desk, formal and businesslike, reading the events of the day in a dry monotone. Before them lies a spread of materials and foodstuffs arranged on plates, which they begin to arrange before the tablemounted camera in evermore eccentric and sinisterly destructive ways.
A plate decorated with caviar and a delicately sliced portion of the man’s tie is smashed with a hammer. A small toy soldier is stamped into the soil. Her face is pressed to the table and her hair brutally trailed in the muck and freshly-chewed animal bones, while he spits water over her. Meanwhile, the audience are offered caviar canapés and shots of vodka, while the pair keep returning to spoken excerpts which read less like news and more like harrowing firstperson reminiscences.
Inspired by the works of Belarusian dissident writer and Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich, the words performed with grim determination by Czech Republic-based Russian exiles Inga Mikshina-zotova and Roman Mikshin-zotov span the glory years of the Soviet Union as a pre-eminent global superpower, from the blood-lashed soil of the conflict with Nazi Germany to the dark and poorlyreported days of the Chernobyl disaster in what is now independent Ukraine.
Amid it all, a sense of the Russian psyche of the era – which apparently permeates to this day – wears through; a respect and approval for masculinity; the greyness of state propaganda versus a distrust for all leaders and official narratives which it engenders; the pitch-black sense of humour behind a litany of jokes about the Ukraine disaster.
The Spitfire Company’s previously acclaimed Fringe hits include Miss America and Antiwords. If it all sounds grim and harrowing, the stark and relentlessly uncompromising sense of humour permeates everything happening on stage, creating a striking, moody piece of work which is as captivating as a disaster happening in real time.