SLAVS!
At the start of Angels in America: Perestroika, the second half of Tony Kushner’s two-part drama, the world’s oldest living Bolshevik addresses the Kremlin to protest the tidal wave of democratic reform sweeping over the Soviet Union.
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Prelapsarianov turns up in Slavs!, Kushner’s one-act, 90-minute coda to the epic-length Angels. So does his warning–both in words (reiterated pretty much verbatim from Angels) and through example. Set in two parts–just before the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev and just after Gorbachev’s deposement and the breakup of the USSR–Slavs! is a sketch of Russia in decay: first stumbling under failing communism and later succumbing to political instability and a disastrous nuclear policy of which the Chernobyl cover-up was only the most dramatically deadly example. The grimness of this depressing subject matter is reinforced by daily headlines, as Russia and her onetime satellites descend ever deeper into chaos.
Eric Simonson’s emotionally detailed staging–evocatively designed by Scott Bradley (sets), Kevin Rigdon (lights), Karin Kopischke (costumes), and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen (sound and music)–is for the most part skillfully played by some of Chicago’s best actors, the only drawback being their inconsistent Russian accents. Nathan Davis (as Prelapsarianov), William J. Norris, Bradley Mott, Bernie Landis, and Jim Mohr are a convincing cabal of aging apparatchiks, bewildered and humiliated by their wrenchingly reordered world; the jiggle-jowled Landis is especially amusing in the early scenes, and Norris shines later as he tries to hide his naturally grim nature to charm a silent child (the touching Heather Marie Johnson) into speaking. She can’t; she’s a mutant rendered speechless by radiation poisoning–a spiritual cousin of the prophetic AIDS-patient hero of Angels. Amy Morton and Mariann Mayberry, both reliable performers, team up in a marvelous scene about a punk lesbian (Mayberry) and her conservative, older lover (Morton), who’s torn between her feeling for the younger woman and her belief that homosexuality is a product of decadent capitalist imperialism. They’re later joined in the play’s gripping climax by Martha Lavey as the mutant child’s mother: an unforgettable, stripped-down figure, robbed not only of her daughter but of her faith.
