MTC’s “Vladimir” Digs Into a Strong Story but Gets Lost in the Cool Maze of Studio Equipment and Inserted Complications – front mezz junkies, Theater News

The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Vladimir

By Ross

Starting at the dawning of a new millennium, Vladimir, the new play by Erika Sheffer (Russian Transport; Netflix’s “The Beast in Me“), sets forth a fascinating landscape in front of a complicated maze of lights and cameras as history marches forward in Moscow, from the New Year’s Eve opening to Election Night 2004 in Moscow. “This election is a joke,” says firecracker writer and independent reporter Raya, dynamically portrayed by Francesca Faridany (Audible Theater’s The Half-Life of Marie Curie), and we lean into her spark and her fire as she attempts convalescence in her apartment, drinking some sort of liquor on pain meds and feeling a certain kind of angry about the political world she is living through. A framing that sounds pretty familiar, except for the arm cast that keeps her out of the office and the time frame this play is based within, as the world and America anxiously watch what will happen over the next few months.

This is the world premiere of this detailed and interesting examination of a woman watching her country; a country she obviously cares for deeply, veer dangerously towards internal disaster and totalitarianism. Putin is on the rise, starting in scene one, and with each step forward through this play and its history, we feel the danger mounting all around her. Her daughter, Galina (& others), portrayed strongly by Olivia Deren Nikkanen (MTC’s The Little Foxes), fears it as well; for her mother and the risks she is willing to take for a story.

I almost wrote ‘just a story’, but that would have wound up the already tightly wound Raya, who dives into danger like an adrenaline addict. All against the better wishes of her friend and newspaper boss, Kostya, played solidly by Norbert Leo Butz (Broadway’s My Fair Lady, Signature’s The Whirligig). Raya insists she must travel into dangerous landscapes so she can take on the propaganda being handed out by Putin and his government. There’s a beautiful in this determination, particularly evident in the engaging scene between Faridany’s Raya and a young woman waiting for a bus in Chechnya during the Second Russian-Chechen War, a conflict that seems to be all but forgotten these days with the current more newsworthy war with Ukraine. The woman, Chovka (& others), played captivatingly well by Erin Darke (TNG’s The Spoils), becomes a touchstone or haunting spirit that follows the reporter around, finding and delivering meaning within Raya’s soul and community.

Raya also finds herself digging into an even more dangerous road mine when she starts to investigate a refund payment of twenty million rubles that is historic in its own illegal kind of way. It’s clear this story is explosive and complex, but as scripted by Sheffer it remains a symbolic structuring rather than a fully realized and laid out moment. But it does introduce us to one of the more compelling characters of this complex play, Yevgeny, played dynamically by David Rosenberg (Broadway’s Death of a Salesman), who is pushed and poked into helping Raya, even though it’s clear she is pulling him into danger as she goes looking for trouble. His engagement brings us into the story in an everyman kind of way, forging an honest construct in a somewhat less authentic landscape.

As directed with unclear intent by Daniel Sullivan (MTC’s Summer, 1976), Vladimir struggles to hold our emotional heart inside a complex but fascinating story about standing up to immorality and authoritarianism. It doesn’t help that the set is a complex maze of backdrops, furniture, boxes, and chairs, that become obstacles to action rather than pulling us inside the framing and the studio. As designed by Mark Wendland (Broadway’s Heisenberg), with serviceable costumes by Jess Goldstein (Public’s Plenty), clever but overly complex lighting by Japhy Weideman (Broadway’s The Piano Lesson), music and sound design by Dan Moses Schreier (Broadway’s Gary. A Sequel), and needed but wasted projections by Lucy MacKinnon (Broadway’s A Christmas Carol), the crowded space becomes clumsy and overwrought, limiting movement when a more bare space with scenes rolled in and rolled out might have served the intimate energy that the play is hoping to elicit. Too often, moments felt blocked and movement limited as the actors worked hard to draw us in while not bumping into the furniture.

The side story, played out by Butz’s Kostya and his political cohorts, played by Erik Jensen (MTC’s The Collaboration) and Jonathan Walker (MTC’s The Assembled Parties), shines a television spotlight into a state-run news outlet that peddles misinformation as much as Fox News does in America. It’s a battle between the ideals of truth and morality and the propaganda agenda being handed down from the controlling office of Putin. There’s a seed of something great and Network-like that slides into view here, crawling in like a story that needs to be told but is soon buried underneath other stories and lost in the mess of that set. That is a true shame within as Butz’s character loses his impact and his function in this fumble.

It’s hard to stay tuned in to Vladimir with so much structural distraction and broad sweeping ideas that don’t hold us in its grip. We follow Putin’s first term and feel the fear that grows with all that surrounds the stories that need to be told, knowing full well what can happen when people speak out against such a man as Putin. Let’s hope we never find out for ourselves in America. Just saying, as we stand on the brink of that very possibly of having a leader who follows the same handbook for powerful ruling. That kind of tea I don’t want to drink. Four years with that Orange Monster was enough, and I hope we never have to deal with what he is bringing along with him if he ever gets back into the White House. That’s the fear I was left with in my soul as I left the New York City Center Stage I theatre, not really the sound of crows flapping their wings that is at the core of MTC‘s Vladimir. The play has a great premise and a starry solid cast that tries their best to deliver the cold hard goods as clearly as this clumsy production allows, but it left me more troubled with America than anything else.