Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Four stars
Kaut-Howson charts Ruslan's story, from being unleashed into the world by his master, to ending up on the scrap-heap. Even when he's taken in by an equally displaced former prisoner known only as the Shabby Man, Ruslan believes he's still on guard. Max Keeble's Ruslan growls,snarls and snaps his way through Kaut-Howson's breathless and expansive co-production between the Citz, the Belgrade Theatre Coventry and KP Productions.
With movement overseen by the great co-founder of the Complicitie company, Marcello Magni, Keeble leads a pack of ferocious performances en route to Ruslan finding liberation. The fact that it comes without him realising it is a damning indictment of the collateral damage of the Stalinist regime and others like it. Kaut-Howson's critique of blind faith in charismatic dogmatists applies just as much to today as the era it evokes. It is also a thrilling piece of theatre.
Four stars
The sound of prison doors clanging shut
permeates throughout the auditorium from the start of Helena
Kaut-Howson's epic stage version of Russian dissident writer Georgi
Vladimov's allegorical novel, first translated into English by
Michael Glenny. A caption projected high at the back of Pawel
Dobrzycki's stark, steel-grey stage sets out the show's store. A
thirteen-strong troupe line up in military formation to be put
through their well-drilled paces as a fictitious set of modern day
prisoners in Siberia who frame the action. This is in preparation to
play-act inmates, guards and above all the dogs who roar through
Vladimov's story of what happens to the most devoted servants to the
cause once the prison camps are liberated following Stalin's death.
Kaut-Howson charts Ruslan's story, from being unleashed into the world by his master, to ending up on the scrap-heap. Even when he's taken in by an equally displaced former prisoner known only as the Shabby Man, Ruslan believes he's still on guard. Max Keeble's Ruslan growls,snarls and snaps his way through Kaut-Howson's breathless and expansive co-production between the Citz, the Belgrade Theatre Coventry and KP Productions.
With movement overseen by the great co-founder of the Complicitie company, Marcello Magni, Keeble leads a pack of ferocious performances en route to Ruslan finding liberation. The fact that it comes without him realising it is a damning indictment of the collateral damage of the Stalinist regime and others like it. Kaut-Howson's critique of blind faith in charismatic dogmatists applies just as much to today as the era it evokes. It is also a thrilling piece of theatre.
The Herald, September 25th 2017
ends
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