Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 11 Number 3, December 2010
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LENIN'S EMBALMERS BY VERN THIESSEN
WJT 2010
on a balmy October night so rare in our town
we watch the decay of the Soviet Revolution
play out at the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre
two Jews attempt to live the life of apparatchiks
while coincidentally creating a new religion
by embalming Lenin for Stalin's benefit -
Stalin who as played by David Fox echoes
the German wolf - science and political poker
with a gulag pointed at their heads
they conquer the decay of Lenin's body
and ensure their own demise
in it's own way a typical pre-1948 Jewish story
it never did go well for Jews toying with power
in a country not their own. A good lesson to recall
written with insight and wit, deftness of touch
its production taught some lessons, too:
don't make a heavy subject heavier
(one already made lighter by the playwright!)
with a clunky lumber-covered set
don't keep the actors in the dark
with moody lighting and gobos galore
when no one could hide from Stalin’s glare
(nor should Fox’s radiant rendition
be secreted by shadows)
don't move from theatrical story-telling
with style to plodding naturalism
just to get a theatre body
into a vat of actual water
when we've just seen that it's possible
to serve vodka from empty bottles
and to drink from empty glasses
and that actors can play different roles
and that it only takes one female actor to play
all the Nadias in Russia
then why make this move at the end of act one
the process of embalming
may have been tedious, but must it be
for us. Neither moody music nor gobos
in an operating theatre alleviates a death
of dramatic action
dare to let go and let the actors
along/alone with the audience
when designers and directors run interference
a play is better left read
and now our October of old has returned