Vladimir

Tweet

All dictators rule through a combination of fear and violence, with the latter often feeding the former until repression becomes self-imposed. As leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin clandestinely mastered this brutal calculus on an industrial scale, which the ruthless namesake of Erika Sheffer’s new play Vladimir has refined for a much different technological age, when everyone sees but fewer care. The change-minded Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev denounced the securely dead Stalin’s bloody cult of personality at the Twentieth Party Congress, but obviously Vladimir Putin never has felt morally chastened by the ghosts of his country’s past. Instead, the ex-KGB officer continues to relentlessly add to them through a “democratic” takeover of Russia that he began less than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In effect, it’s his persistent and smirking response to the second half of Marx’s observation that “men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.”

Putin isn’t a character in Vladimir, but his presence hangs over the entire play to such a menacing degree that the actual Putin might consider it a compliment. Based on other real people, too–or, more bluntly, victims–Sheffer starts with the briefest of prologues, showing a drunken Boris Yeltsin (Jonathan Walker) turning over power to an unelected Putin on live television. A momentous betrayal of popular government, it’s preceded by an off-air Yeltsin urinating into a vase, reinforcing the sense that Russian society was disastrously altered because of a W.C. Fields impression. Of course, history runs a bit deeper than that, just not for the dramatically inclined Sheffer, as a script note unambiguously states that Vladimir is “a work of fiction.” It’s a convenient distinction that lets Sheffer immediately skip to the fearful aftermath of Putin’s 2004 reelection without narratively sweating the intricacies of Yeltsin’s deal with Putin who, in his first official decree as Russian president, gave the bribe-taking Yeltsin lifelong immunity from prosecution.

With Putin in total control of Russia, Sheffer’s all-too-human protagonist Raisa Bobrinskaya (Francesca Faridany)–inspired by the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya–time shifts between war reporting in Chechnya and probing the curiously large tax refund received by an American company doing business in Russia, but Sheffer doesn’t anchor Vladimir in the exact details of Putin’s culpability for either story. That’s because Vladimir doesn’t aspire to be a Slavic All the President’s Men, with Russified versions of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein connecting the various investigative dots until there is no doubt about Putin’s greed, criminality, and vengefulness. Sheffer is certain from the beginning about that whole despicable lot, as well as acutely terrified that Putin cannot be stopped, which leaves one world-burning question: is there any hope for resistance?

Essentially a cri de coeur, Vladimir desperately wants to answer affirmatively; however, Sheffer forthrightly acknowledges that it’s a dangerously knotty road to yes, requiring Raisa (Raya in the diminutive form) to not only imperil herself but also possibly cause the deaths of others. In particular, passivity is the much safer choice for Yevgeny (David Rosenberg), a financial analyst who, despite having experienced virulent anti-Semitism while attempting to navigate the Russian educational system, helps Raya link that aforementioned suspicious tax refund to the upper echelons of Putin’s corrupt administration. Like Raya, Yevgeny is not purely plucked from Sheffer’s imagination, as he also possesses a non-fictional counterpart, Sergei Magnitsky, who, in a tragic similarity to Politkovskaya, savagely lost his life for having the courage to tell the truth about Putin’s misdeeds.

Chovka (Erin Darke), a forlorn Chechen woman Raya once interviewed in her devastated homeland, further muddies the righteous picture, haunting Raya’s conscience with the piercing accusation that the celebrated journalist thinks of people as “characters.” Raya might not have the same wealth as Anderson Cooper or Diane Sawyer, but she does enjoy a relatively privileged life in a decent Moscow apartment, one that, though shoehorned into Mark Wendland’s overloaded set, is still suggestively sketched. Her daughter Galina (Olivia Deren Nikkanen) and editor Kostya (Norbert Leo Butz) encourage Raya to disappear into that cold comfort, becoming more vocal about backing down after she nearly dies from being poisoned, a stealthy skill Putin’s lackeys fiendishly have perfected. Once idealistic himself, Kostya eventually leads by capitulating example, accepting a job offer as a mouthpiece for State media from his frenemy Andrei (Erik Jensen), a contentedly servile Kremlin press official.

Benefiting from the exceptional Faridany and Butz who poignantly personalize the struggle for and against apathy, director Daniel Sullivan wisely stays inconspicuous  during their scenes together. But, unfortunately, theatricality does at times get the best of him, most egregiously whenever Raya’s mind sheepishly summons Chovka for a fraught chat. Though there’s enough clarity in Sheffer’s words, Sullivan hits the audience over the head with visual banalities (yes, seeing a crow is bad) that insultingly doubt our ability to understand what’s happening. Thankfully, the playwright has more respect for us, even if, like a hard-charging journalist, we’re potential characters to her, too.

Vladimir (through November 10, 2024)

Manhattan Theatre Club

New York City Center Stage I, 131 West 55th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-581-1212 or visit http://www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Running time: two hours and 20 minutes including one intermission