THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Natalia Lizorkina, Translated and Directed by Ivanka Polchenko
Omnibus Theatre, Clapham Common North Side, London SW4 0QW until February 8, 2025
Bare Stage. Bare flat stage. The black painted floorboards of the Omnibus Theatre.
In what promises to be a play about today's Russia, Natalia Lizorkina's Vanya is Alive is already conjuring connotations of the stereotypical sparseness of the imagined Russia of my '80s, late-late-Cold War era childhood.
A singular actor, Nikolay Mulakov, emerges imperceptibly from somewhere mid-audience and strolls nonchalantly into the center of the performance space. He makes eye contact with some of us in the crowd, speaks to us, exchanging a few light pleasantries and even a joke or two before checking if we are ready to begin.
So far, so stylistically subversive.
House lights dim and we do begin, but haltingly, with Mulakov moving back and forth what looks like a random and absent-minded way of forgetting or trying to get the right phrasing with which to begin this narrative, but having the effect of giving us some insight into the repetitive, cyclical, confining nature of being trapped in an everlasting loop of haze and misinformation even about those to whom we cling closest and dearest, as this singular player treads downstage and back to fore; downstage and back to fore, before finally making a start to this story.
An anguished mother, Alya, also played by Mulakov, fears what may happen to her soldier son, Vanya, who she is reassuringly told is stationed where 'peace is happening'. Not only does she hang in suspense as to the fate of her son, but she is held in agonizing uncertainty, unable to parse apart cryptic things told to her by the state about what has happened to Vanya, nor is she able to pay simple and beautifully poignant tribute to him by holding an icon in a public thoroughfare without it being turned into an accidental act of protest for which she is severely punished.
As Russia's war in Ukraine nears its third year, this limited run in the Omnibus takes on added significance against the backdrop of an imposingly totalitarian and brutally oppressive regime and its strict control of the truth to its citizens. It is a dark and tortuously Kafkaesque journey to the center of a shadowy regime, cloaked in fear and intimidation. Mulakov gives us a subtle, taut and disciplined performance, steadily and deftly bringing us deeper and deeper into this barely fictional, unsettlingly bleak story.
It feels as though we are being given a compelling and illicit glimpse at a truth that none of us wants to see and that all of us as global citizens must confront.