Review: MOTHER RUSSIA at The Seattle Rep

If you’re at all familiar with the plays of Lauren Yee, Dear Readers, then you know of her delightfully odd situations, rich characters and scintillating dialog.  People are still talking about last season’s “Cambodian Rock Band” but my favorite was her “King of the Yees”.  Her work brings out the good and the bad in relationships and leaves you smiling or even giggling while tragedy strikes.  And her latest, “Mother Russia”, with its World Premiere at the Seattle Rep, falls right in line with those other gems.

This time she’s taking a look at the denizens of Russia around the time the wall and communism came crashing down and capitalism introduced western choices to the masses.  Specifically here we have Dimitry (Jesse Calixto), a struggling shop owner who longed to be part of the KGB when that was a possibility, and Evgeny (Billy Finn), a young grad student who also was on the path to a prominent future, just like his influential father, when the introduction of supply and demand eliminated his job of setting government mandated prices.  The two of them both seem lost at sea but find a possible lifeline surveilling a former radical singer, Katya (Andi Alhadeff), who’s come back to Russia, after a successful yet brief career in America, to be a schoolteacher.  But why are they monitoring her?  And what happens when they get a little too close to their subject?  And just what is in that McDonalds Filet-o-Fish that makes it so irresistible? 

Yee, with a tongue firmly in her cheek, is poking fun at the struggles of the people of Russia as their way of life is upended in the 1990’s when they were suddenly given choices.  And while many embraced the changes, some (like the folks in this play) find it difficult to move on and find a new way of living.  And that’s where the humor comes in.  Discovering ad jingles, or fast food, or even different brands of toothpaste for the first time throws our anti-heroes for a loop.  And to make matters worse, they keep lying to each other and when those secrets come out expect fireworks.

Director Nicholas C. Avila does a great job keeping us grounded in this world we may find absurd, and his pacing is outstanding.  It does take a minute to get used to this new form of crazy, but once we do you just need to hold on.  And I must give kudos to Misha Kachman, the scenic and Costume Designer, for a fantastic revolving set, easily giving multiple locales.  And a costume plot that shows some spot-on bits from the era.  I honestly think I had one of those shirts way back when.

The small ensemble cast is fantastic.  Calixto brings in a wonderful kind of drifter.  A guy who thinks he has it all together and really has nothing.  Finn brings in a loveable opposite side of the same coin as the guy with nothing together and desperately struggles for structure.  And the two together make for some insane chemistry.  And Alhadeff brings in the perfect straight-man (or straight-woman) who’s ensnared in this chaos. 

And then there’s Julie Briskman as the enigmatic older woman who repeatedly wanders in, drops some hilarious wisdom and toddles off.  From the moment she sets foot on stage, she owns the audience.  Could have been the donuts she offered but probably more due to the fact that she’s one of the best in town.  I don’t want to say too much about her, lest I give something away, but she mentions at one point that she’s not in the play enough and to that I would agree wholeheartedly.  Personally, I could go for an entire show of her and this character.

Yee does it again.  Brings the humor from the tragic, without ever lessening the tragedy.  And so, with my three-letter rating system, I give “Mother Russia” at the Seattle Rep a still giggling YAY.  We may remember the events of the Russian people in that era, but I doubt many of us had this perspective.