Review: Anya and Masha and Katya and The Big Prick: FAIRYTALE LIVES OF RUSSIAN GIRLS

Playwright Meg Miroshnik's darkly comic The Fairy Tale Lives of Russian Girls is given a superb production by Nashville's Actors Bridge Ensemble - in their ninth annual collaboration with the Belmont University Department of Theatre and Dance - featuring a sextet of extraordinary actors who are having what appears to be the time of their lives under the direction of Leah Lowe, chair of the department of theater at Vanderbilt University.

Delving into the deeply complex culture of Russian life and history - and the fanciful, yet somehow disturbing, tales that have inspired and informed Russian literature for centuries - Miroshnik's equally complex play offers an intriguing and entertaining treatise on that literature, brought to life with contemporary twists and turns that make the stories more accessible to modern theater-goers, while inviting comparisons and contrasts of Russia in the 21st century with the ancient Tsarist era and the hardships of the Communist years of the last century.

It all sounds very deep and dour - and perhaps daunting to the theater-goer just out for a few hours' transportive entertainment - but what Miroshnik's script delivers, and which Lowe and company present, is something far less dogmatic and heavy-handed. Rather, it's something far more creative that is certain to set imaginations soaring.

In fact, Lowe's artful rendition of The Fairy Tales Lives of Russian Girls is richly told and captivatingly acted by her estimable ensemble of actors. With vibrant intensity, the six women immediately rivet the audience's attention to the imaginative tale delivered onstage. Armed with wit, warmth and a certain skewed sensibility, they present a work that might be described as frightening at moments, yet somehow they are able to create moments of almost unexpected lightheartedness that leaven the proceedings with laughter and a sense of whimsy.

The duality of the characters portrayed in Miroshnik's script ensures that attention will be paid: Lowe's vision is exhilaratingly brought to life by her cast (led by Actors Bridge veterans Rachel Agee and CJ Tucker and a quartet of younger Belmont University actors - Austin Williams, Madeline Marconi, Johnna McCarthy and Ashley Joye) that audiences are engaged for the one hour and 45 minutes of storytelling that transpires onstage before them.

Miroshnik offers a unique view of post-Cold War Russia in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR, told via Russian folktales from the equally repressive Tsarist era. Her play focuses on a summer spent abroad (ostensibly to study and to improve her Russian accent) by Anya - aka Annie, "like the orphan" - played with cold conviction and youthful ignorance by Austin Williams, who provides the play with an immensely likable protagonist as she commands the stage effortlessly. Anya, a Russian-born Jew who left as a child with her parents after the Communist regime was ousted, is sent "home" to reclaim her mother's legacy from an outwardly kind, but deeply sinister, woman known to her only as her "aunt" Yaroslava - while taking some summer classes in "Russian for Business." Williams' performance is at once exuberant and weirdly quirky, the perfect combination to create a character with which the audience can easily identify.

As Annie becomes acclimated to the world that she was save from thanks to détente and emigration, she meets Masha (Madeline Marconi), a young neighbor woman who lives with her boyfriend Mischa, who is unbearable, boorish and demanding. Masha introduces her to Katya (Johnna McCarthy), who longs for the stability she thinks her married lover, The Tsar, can give her; and through Katya, Annie meets Nastya (Ashley Joye), a prostitute whose frankly unvarnished view of life delivers perhaps the most pertinent lessons the American college student learns during her abbreviated stay in Russia.

Marconi, McCarthy and Joye are wonderfully cast in each of their roles and deliver focused and committed performances in the process. Marconi's sardonic and pragmatic Masha, McCarthy's ambitious and calculating Katya, and Joye's cynical and driven Nastya seem far more authentic and genuine than might be expected from a simple reading of their characters.

With enough skill, talent and experience between them to make even the most cynical theater-goer sit up and take notice, Agee and Tucker deliver performances that are staggering - watching each woman onstage is like taking part in a master class and you can't help but wonder how much the younger actresses have added to their own bags of theatrical tricks after working with the two for the rehearsal period. Tucker displays her wide range of skills by seamlessly playing four different characters in the piece, each one strikingly different from the other. Agee skillfully underplays her role of Yaroslava and Baba Yaga (the latter of the two is the legendary "wicked" sorceress of Russian fairytales who travels in a high-flying mortar to hunt down young girls to roast and eat, using a pestle to make them submit) in such a surprising way that she's almost unrecognizable and maintains that level of commitment to deliver the theatrical goods in the process.

Certainly, the cast is aided by the production's eye-popping design aesthetic, which is exemplified by Paul Gatrell's stunning scenic design, which evocatively captures the decay of the former USSR from a 21st century perspective. Richard Davis' beautiful lighting design provides the requisite illumination to ensure Gatrell's set be seen at its most awe-inspiring and is, quite possibly, among the best lighting design we've encountered in a local theater production. Jessica Mueller's costume design, which ideally captures each character's personality and gives a very real sense of contemporary morals and mores to be found among Moscow's jaded hipsters, and Taylor Thomas' sound design, which provides the necessary ambience for the tale, add much to the production's overall success in transporting audiences to an almost otherworldly setting.

For the past nine years, the collaboration between Actors Bridge and Belmont has resulted in some of Nashville's finest theater, and rest assured, The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls raises the bar for future projects still to come.

• The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls. By Meg Miroshnik. Directed by Leah Lowe. Produced by Vali Forrister and Paul Gatrell. Presented by Actors Bridge Ensemble and the Belmont University Department of Theatre and Dance. At Belmont's Black Box Theatre, Nashville. Through April 23. For details, go to www.actorsbridge.org. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes (with no intermission).

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