Monday was Vladimir Putin’s 67th birthday, and the 13th anniversary of the unsolved murder of Anna Politkovskaya. Wednesday would have been Boris Nemtsov’s 60th birthday.
Seems an appropriate time to talk about this comedy!
(In advance, because there’s a LOT to chew on, this write-up is much too long and all over the place. Hey, that’s in keeping with the play! I decided not to trim down, just because (smug git that I am) I’m pretty chuffed with it, but in trying to place it both in a theatrical and political context there’s a lot that’s contentious, so apologies if it’s OTT)
At best, this gives Litvinenko not just justice after death, but a brief and beautiful second life. At worst, this laughs with, not just at, the men and monsters who committed this crime. A Very Expensive Poison is a tremendous mess – sometimes just tremendous, sometimes just messy. But how do you literalise a world like this? Like this? Prebble’s answer is to, well, adapt every part in every possible way. It’s amazing that one of our biggest most historic theatres plays host to this hearing of that verdict, and amazing that they actually put that man, at his worst, on stage. It’s a shame that the play around it is the mess it is. Overall I actually hugely enjoyed it. The problem is in tackling so explicitly such a terrifying moment of contemporary history, and putting THOSE real people on stage, Prebble and Crowley make us demand more than enjoyment: they make us demand answers, demand justice, demand closure, demand humanity. Fun though this is, they don’t quite succeed.
Aptly enough, this is at its best when focused on Litvinenko himself. I do think, after Enron, The Effect, this challenge, and great TV performances, Lucy Prebble is a form of a genius – and that’s on display in her political savvy here. She’s at her best when recreating more solid ground here. Young Russia – of old traditions, new ways of living, and Litvinenko’s secret service asking “to KGB or not to KGB” – gives her JUST ENOUGH to exaggerate: paranoia, betrayal, and patriotism but to what? She wisely sidesteps any Le Carre clichés (and I love Le Carre) for a paranoia that works, however exaggerated. Even when puppets invade Litvinenko’s flat, Soviet sing-songs occur, or we’re reminded of the truth of Soviet history, they stand for something – the TV and the state. There’s a lot of exposition (it’s indisputably overlong), but in initially portraying the Litvinenkos as ordinary emigrants, then extraordinary young Russians in young Russia, the tone – almost Gilliamesque – absolutely serves the story.
However, as it evolves to cover, well, everything, the play stops being, well, something. For swathes of Litvinenko’s life story, he’s ignored so the oligarchy can exposit, his killers can comically naff off, and minor compatriots entertain us more than he does. When Prebble and Crowley’s style can be comic, Kafka-esque, or Russophobic, it is – then style absolutely overtakes substance. The spider’s web this play weaves, with oligarchs and politicians and police all entangling this moralistic spy at the centre, unravels as it tries on a different style to serve each different character; the centre cannot hold, and our hero ends up ignored.
Nonetheless, this exaggerated bonkersness largely entertains, even if it detracts from the truth. At best it serves it – how better to literalise the flawed masculinity than a giant golden penis? – but often it feels like, as the true story grows outrageous, the play can’t keep up. I was reminded of Chimerica – an absurd political world beyond most of us, thearicalised as abstract and arch, steeped in traditions of Kafka, but also doing the reality of the system justice through clear delineation and real surprising heart. Chimerica’s bonkers stagecraft was unforgettable, but anchored by two rich lead characters who were never lost by Kirkwood’s plot. Here, Prebble serving every master individually and not our protagonist – the character who most needs serving – the play can’t be what it is at its best – a study of Litvinenko’s character, and how that character led to this mystery and this tragedy. The play can’t have a moment as moving as Benedict Wong fraught and alone. This overdid the abstraction, and left its characters at sea. Structurally, this is a mess, and I couldn’t help but feel it’s the characters who suffer.
This feels particularly unfortunate, as the play is (nominally) based around Marina Litvinenko. For hours of the second half, she’s barely there (instead we watch the assassins fart around for kicks), which strikes me as at best a structural issue and at worst a thematic mistake. By focusing on her, the politics of the play matter doubly. By thus ignoring her heart and soul for Inspector Clouseau muck-ups with the assassins – by giving them richer characters and home lives than she had – Prebble does both Alexander and Marina a disservice.
If this were simply an excuse to restate the verdict and restage the crime, this would still be an excellent play tackling the institutionalised cruelty of the Putin regime and demanding justice for Litvinenko – and a Nicholas Kent-esque trial would have been enough – and perhaps making it male-only would skewer the strange masculinity Putin plays into and Prebble superficially explores; therefore, perhaps Marina shouldn’t even be in the play at all. Better, instead, she should be in EVERY moment, to remind us of the human cost to these atrocities – thus her absence is a problem. Proving the Putin government is corrupt is important, and reading out that verdict on a West End stage is bold and brilliant – it’s also like hearing that the sh*tter in the woods was… that bear. Reminding us that this corruption hurts living innocent bystanders, tears apart families, causes daily pain – that is profound, and this is something only a playwright can do. The meta-fictional audience participation at the end, instead, even has Marina replaced on stage by MyAnna Buring (who is, incidentally, very good). Due to her inclusion it’s a celebration of everything she still stands for; due to her often exclusion it’s a messy play that’s often left ignored.
The murderers fit an easier stage trope. Prebble and Crowley (perhaps particularly Crowley) clearly enjoy playing them off as comic, as in the tradition of dumb double acts. Now, is that a bad thing: an irrelevant, irreverent take? I hope this isn’t an unfair thing to say, but (to get tin-foil-hatty) one of Putin’s tactics is to make his crimes seem absurd. For many (including most Russians), the sight of two assassins telling such blatant, absurd lies about snow in ‘beautiful’ Salisbury was morally outrageous. For those in Russia who bought into it, what could they do but enjoy the absurdity…
Is portraying these two as the NoviChockle Brothers, thus, in keeping with the strange (and sick) satire these events provoke? If so, it’s oddly brilliant, but needs A LOT more context. Is it, instead, to satirise them, and to make us see the violence of the Putin regime as nonsensical but cruel? If so, it’s a bit wishy-washy – neither assassin seems cruel, which seems a mistake, when they’re assassins murdering our play’s hero; the satire doesn’t skewer the system. Is it, oddly, to make them and the setting likeable? If so, it works – but to the play’s detriment, and to Litvinenko’s detriment. As farceurs, Prebble and Crowley make the point that the assassins were bungling, but they make this simple point early on; having so many scenes of them, they instead end up celebrated. Some of the satire works, but when it comes to satirising VVP himself it’s a wee bit aimless then a wee bit toothless, perhaps because his leadership is both beyond satire and too cruel to satirise, and when it comes to these two, it over-enjoys it.
The final embodiment of where this succeeds and fails is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. First things first – Lucy Prebble dramatises Putin, Crowley directs him, Shearsmith exquisitely performs him and Warchus let it happen. All of that is EXTRAORDINARY and they all deserve absolute admiration. However, the way in which he was re-enacted deserves very serious contemplation.
At first, I thought Shearsmith’s performance as Putin was exceptional. It was far, far, far from imitation – the KGB precision replaced with palpable, nervous uncertainty, not costumed up by any means – but by visualising this aspect of his governing something true is revealed. Putin was just a low-rung politician bought in to be uncontroversial, and largely DID make it up as he went along. He still does. Putin, a half-decent actor, plays the Soviet hardman, but arguably in actuality is more President Schwarzenegger than President Stierlitz. Literalising that aspect – a terrible imitation but an expert characterisation – seemed the best way to portray him.
As the history chugged on, however, and Putin developed from nervous middleman to killer head of state, the show didn’t know what to do with him, except have him heckle in the balcony like a sinister Statler and Waldorf. Exaggerate this uncertainty? Replace it with faux-exactitude? Make us fear him? Laugh at him? Ridicule him? Even like him? All of these. Called Vladimir Vladimirovich in the play and The President in the programme and occupying Putin’s place in history, but the word ‘Putin’ deliberately avoided, this was having its cake and eating it. Not being ‘Putin’ per se, the show didn’t need to portray Putin himself, so avoided trying to juggle his strangely contradictory public persona – which is a shame, as (as Shearsmith showed) exaggerating characteristics can be more revealing than attempting an imitation. The man he is today is a fascinating gift to an actor – a spy, then a nervous amateur in a flawed government, then an accidental leader to a young country, then the most powerful man in the world; initially too boring to go out in public with Yeltsin, then too careful with his public persona for satire, then so broad with his persona his ridiculousness often overpowers the reality. These characteristics, more than the position of the president, indisputably played into this poisoning. We don’t want or need a humanised Putin (although that would be fascinating), but we need a human face on the Putin government and specifically on Putin (a human face on the real man would be nice too, stop with the plastics Vlad!). The underdeveloped ‘character’ we’re lumped with this, I felt, let Putin off the hook. Again, theatre has the power to portray – why not REALLY portray, exaggerate, criticise the leader he’s become?
The show seems thus to prefer decontextualising Putin – ‘The President’ – whilst only marginally contextalising the individual accused of ordering this crime head on – ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich’. Is it truly ever Putin? And what is lost by that? It’s a shame that the character of ‘The President’/Vladimir Vladimirovich thus avoids exaggerating or explaining the man he actually is. Shearsmith’s performance never lost its nervous scariness – I think it’s one of the performances of the year (and imagine the Olivier going to HIM!) – but the role itself is what lets him and the show down. Overall, Putin and the Putin regime remain oddly unsatirised, oddly unchallenged, oddly unscathed. Therefore the Litvinenko verdict loses its sting.
After the play ends – after about twenty false endings, a major structural flaw as it tries to read out a verdict a la Nicholas Kent, give its fictionalised characters what for, reveal the real contemporary history, and wrap up the Litvinenkos’ life stories – its problem become absolutely clear. There are lots of plots, lots of genres, lots of targets this goes for – but it’s therefore inconsistent, messy, and misses several targets. As a farce it mocks two bungling assassins apolitically; as a satire it’s messy with its targets; as an exposé it somewhat works, but the comic tone detracts. Laughing at Putin’s assassins makes the fact that Putin uses assassins on foreign soil almost charming. Simply, it lacks bite as a political play – but worse, there’s not one unified play. We as theatregoers get a good but mixed bag.
Worse than that, because of this, Litvinenko – and especially Marina Litvinenko – come out at a loss. Yes, finally, that verdict is given the huge platform it deserves, but getting there pushes him to the sidelines in his own story. It makes his verdict not justice earned, but the happy end of a sick entry into the Goes Wrong series.
Despite all the madness going on around it, one moment that touched me really deeply was when, after the puppetry was done, Alexander and Marina were left alone dancing on stage to Fleetwood Mac. After having gone through all the mess and madness of the crime and its theatricalisation (some of which serves the mystery and the corruption, some of which doesn’t), the couple were given one final little moment to be exactly that: a couple. It’s what his legacy and her life deserve. It’s a shame the balance between retelling his story and re-interpreting the history wasn’t even: stylistically, the genre twists, moments of humour, moments of horror, metatheatrical Putin, mystery plot, fourth-wall breaking and final verdict verbatim theatre all serve Litvinenko’s death to various degrees – but the love story serves Marina and Sasha’s lives.
P.S. I saw this on its first preview, and simply haven’t had the time to express my thoughts. I dread to think how many changes there’ve been, so if any of this is irrelevant bear that in mind – I’d also love to know what they changed. I hope they’ve settled on fewer endings. My least favourite ending was the slow audience participation. My favourite ending was the rush to the doors as we all missed our last train home.
P.P.S. These are pickets held across Moscow, and town to town across Russia, this Monday, not for Putin’s birthday, but demanding justice for Anna Politkovskaya. Where it should have been Nemtsov’s birthday, this was the scene at the site of his assassination. I’m sure that if Alexander Litvinenko, or even Dawn Sturgess, had larger profiles in Russia, there’d be similar memorials to them. That’s something else I felt this play touched upon, but didn’t delve into, and a reason its mess matters more than just theatrically. Russia isn’t “Russia”; Putin isn’t Russia. Marina Litvinenko, those still fighting for memory and justice today – this is Russia.
