Vladimir
Loosely based on the lives of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who stood up to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Erika Sheffer’s Vladimir, directed by Daniel Sullivan, questions the price of truth in the face of tyranny. Currently premiering at Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center Stage 1 until November 10, the two-act play’s importance and vitality for us today make it a must-see.
From the outset we understand journalist Raya’s (the fine Francesca Faridany), attitude toward Putin winning the 2004 election for the Russian presidency. When Kostya (an excellent Norbert Leo Butz) visits her after attending Putin’s opponent’s party, Raya questions why Kostya went. Her editor and boss says he attended the party to hear the concession speech and get drunk. Here Raya angrily confronts Kostya about Putin. “He ascends to the presidency like a fucking czar, and four years later he steals an election. This election is a joke. Why is everyone playing along?”
Kostya’s answer is telling: “You’re acting like it’s a surprise— Come on, look, Ivan the Terrible, pretty bad. Peter the Great, actually terrible. Lenin! He didn’t bother with an election either. Stalin, Andropov, another KGB guy…” To which Raya counters that just because it happened in the past doesn’t ever make it “OK.”
Doing Nothing
This reveals the play’s main theme: For evil to flourish, good people need only do nothing. It also reveals how Putin gained ground. Russia had tried democracy with Yeltsin but defaulted to past historical practice. Sheffer lays bare the anatomy of a dictatorship, with Putin as the example from which we can learn an object lesson for our own country.
After Putin took over the government, political corruption increased unchecked. As others ignore his illegal behavior, his abuses and human rights violations become systemically institutionalized. Too late, the media and officials, who can do something, give up in fear. Apathy and feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness increase. In a vicious cycle, no one holds Putin and his “loyalists” accountable, so it becomes harder and harder to fight back when the government sees resisters as enemies and justifies jailing and killing them to protect its smooth functioning.
In Vladimir Sheffer Shows Putin’s Media Censorship
Gradually during the play, events occur that reveal how Putin maintains his power by censoring the media. Raya attempts to use her position as a journalist to tell the truth about Putin’s injustices, assisted reluctantly and carefully by Kostya. First, she goes to Chechnya independently to report on its war against Russia, a war used to make Putin look “great.” When she leaves the infantry division she’s reporting on to speak to Chechens, she breaks the law. After she returns, she collapses from wounds she received and ends up in the hospital. There, police ask about her unusual wounds and her time in Chechnya.
Putin’s people monitor her because in her reporting she has made the Russian soldiers look like the war criminals they are. She also reveals the Chechens’ humanity when she interviews a young Chechen woman, Chovka (Erin Darke). This creates empathy and makes people question the war – an anti-Putin view. Nevertheless, Andrei (Erik Jensen), Kostya’s boss, notes her opposition and expresses his hatred for her as a loose cannon. Later in the play, he tells Kostya to fire her and send her out of the country. If she continues her truth-telling, she can make trouble for all of them. At first Kostya justifies keeping her because AP picks up her stories and increases their TV viewership. However, we sense she is in danger, whether she returns to cover the war in Chechnya or stays in Moscow.
Financial Impropriety
Kostya also encourages Raya to investigate how millions of rubles requested from the Tax Authority involving an American company vanished. When Raya questions company accountant Yevgeny (David Rosenberg), he says he can’t get involved. Forcefully, Raya tells him he must care because the stolen money would go to pay for schools, pensions and programs to help the Russian people. In later scenes Yevgeny’s American boss Jim (Jonathan Walker) suggests Yevgeny investigate and “follow the money.” Finally, Yevgney gains the courage to discover how far up the power ladder the theft goes. And he does this at great risk to himself.
Throughout, Sheffer depicts those courageous and willing to struggle against a force of evil that oppresses society for its own selfish agenda. And she criticizes those who know what is happening, know how they could confront the corruption but fearing retribution, don’t. Clear parallels remind us of bad actors in our own government, complicit with their candidate who would be “dictator for a day.” Sheffer’s exposé of Putin warns us about allowing a leader to rule with impunity and immunity as he covers up his criminal behaviors.
A Mother-Daughter Subplot
Adding to an already intricate story about Putin and his machinations, there is the human conflict between Raya and her daughter, Galina (Olivia Deren Nikkanen). Galina acts more like a mother keeping tabs on her wayward daughter than the reverse. She knows her mother’s activism endangers her, and she fears retribution from Putin’s lackeys. She also tries to prevent her mother returning to Chechnya to report on the war, a trip from which Galina fears her mother won’t return.
At the end of Act I, we see the consequences of Raya’s activism. Putin’s attempt to harm her ironically shows her how her reporting does make a difference – but at the risk of her life. In a touching scene between mother and daughter in Act II, Galina expresses that she wants her mother alive to be a grandmother for her children. Will Raya end her activism, the purpose that fuels her life?
In the second half of the play, when the threads are woven together, the results of Yevgeny’s investigation and Raya’s interviews of Chechens boil over. The last scenes include a stylized dialogue between Raya and Yevgeny from which we understand the danger for those who would expose Putin, the real enemy of the Russian people. With hope and faith both claim the necessity of their stand for the truth.
Kudos to the ensemble and director for the steady, engrossing production of an ambitious play. And praise goes to Mark Wendland (scenic design), Jess Goldstein (costume design), Japhy Weideman (lighting design), Lucy Mackinnon (projection design), and Dan Moses Schreier (original music and sound design).
Vladimir runs two hours 20 minutes with one intermission at New York City Center Stage 1 until November 10th.
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