Vanya is alive. His mother wants everyone to know this: to display his photo, to share the messages he sent her, to tell the world how proud she is of her soldier son. Written by Russian playwright Natalia Lizorkina, and presented by Russian actor Nikolay Mulakov (who’s currently living in exile), this strange and unsettling show is a brutally ironic commentary on state censorship, and the ease with which powerful forces can implant a lie.
It’s not much of a spoiler for me to reveal that Vanya is, in truth, dead. It soon grows clear that, for the narrative to make any kind of sense, you have to interpret certain words with their opposite meaning: there’s a woman who “isn’t begging” for her “well-nourished” children, and dissidents who “stay silent” and thus remain “absolutely free”. Once the initial confusion’s passed, it’s disturbingly easy to settle into this pattern of double-speak, and towards the end – when “nobody” in the crowd turns against Vanya’s mother – it’s a powerful metaphor for a population ensnared.
Perhaps more questionably, the script is literally read out – not in the sense that Mulakov has a book in his hand, but in the sense that he recites the stage directions and announces the name of each character every time they speak. With intentionally little delineation between the different roles, and no pauses between lines, it takes a lot of concentration and some mental agility to keep track of who is who. It’s a bold creative choice and it successfully evokes the erasure of individual voices, but it’s undeniably distancing at first.
Give it time, though. The rhythm is beguiling, and Mulakov’s dead-eyed, flat-voiced portrayal speaks louder than you know. Judiciously, every now and then, there’s a change in tone or a hint of expression or a telling physical pose; and right at the end there’s something very unexpected, made all the more haunting as the only moment of unashamed tenderness among the unremitting darkness of the plot.
There’s unspoken horror at the heart of Vanya Is Alive, for Vanya, for his mother, and – let’s not forget – for the people of Ukraine. Somehow, by declining to acknowledge it, Lizorkina’s script brings that reality all the more powerfully home. This is a challenging play to engage with, in a style that will divide opinion; but ultimately it’s a moving story and an important point well made.