@ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 4 Apr 2015
The latest in the A Play, A Pie and A Pint season also sees the National Theatre of Scotland unveil the first of three plays from Russia and the Ukraine by writers of ‘Novii Drama’ (‘New Drama’).
We find ourselves in the parlour of a Ukrainian household, days after the death of the man of the house, the titular Sasha (Paul Cunningham), a soldier in the Ukrainian army. His sudden early death from heart failure has left the women in his life, wife Katya (Jill Riddiford) and step-daughter Oksana (Jenny Hulse), bereft. For pregnant Oksana, the absence of a grandfather for her baby is most keenly felt; for Katya, the years Sasha lost to drink and misery. He is with them though, in more than spirit, and the play is made up of three scenes in which they vocalise their frustrations to each other and to him.
Although the family dynamic is intriguing and the subject matter obviously topical – the play takes us right up to the destruction of Donetsk airport – the storyline is weak. There’s enough here to give us a flavour of their life, but that’s all. There’s no emotional journey for the audience, no sense of progression in the otherwise well-drawn characters. Maybe it’s the difference in theatrical style, Natalia Vorozhbyt‘s original script or Sasha Dugdale‘s translation, but the memory-sharing dialogue feels awkward and arbitrary. By the end, the geo-political context becomes the story, rather than the lives of these specific individuals.
In that context, the cast perform creditably. Riddiford adds a certain colour to Katya, injecting glimpses of passion into a sometimes drab, defeated character who often mirrors, in both attitude and delivery, Rodney Bewes‘ brow-beaten Bob in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? Direction, by Nicola McCartney, is effective and efficient too. Some lengthy movements of the set during scene changes are put to work as a series of flashbacks.
Take The Rubbish Out is interesting then, as a glimpse into present day Ukrainian life, but overall, not a wholly satisfying piece of work.