Summerhall
Five
stars
The
pink balaclava Maria Alyokhina wears at the start of this ferocious free
adaptation of the Russian activist and artist’s urgent memoir that has given
this show its title has become a potent totem of resistance that has changed
the face of anti-authoritarian activism, possibly forever. This followed
Alyokhina’s arrest and imprisonment in 2012 for ‘banal hooiganism’ alongside
two of her comrades following an anti-Putin ‘punk prayer’ in a Moscow orthodox
church.
Six
years on, Pussy Riot continue to invade public consciousness, as they did in
the recent World Cup final held in Moscow when members of the collective ran
onto the pitch. They continue to fight the power with this fifty-minute music-theatre
assault, which puts Alyokhina at the centre of a high-octane collage of electronica,
martial drumming and skronky sax. This provides the backdrop to a barrage of
archive footage, projected situationist style slogans and righteous declaiming
as the onstage quartet tell Alyokhina and Pussy Riot’s story, from protest to
prison and her eventual release after twenty months.
Performed
in Russian with English subtitles, and knitted together by Russian theatre director
Yury Muravitsky, Riot Days is no pose. Alyokhina defied a travel ban to be in Edinburgh, and
remains in the frontline of a movement that has captured the radical
imagination. The quartet Alyokhina leads onstage are as well-drilled in the
show’s agit-prop execution in a way that probably hasn’t been seen since
post-industrial 1980s auteurs Test Dept took a similar stance.
At
one point Alyokhina and co sport hoodies and shades, squaring up for something
resembling a rap battle as the rhythm pounds behind them. ‘Anybody can be Pussy
Riot’ a caption declares on the screen to cheers of solidarity responding to
the slogan’s call to arms. Now is probably as good a time as any. The
revolution starts here.
The Herald, August 14th 2018
ends
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