TWO VIEWS OF
"ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE KURSKI STATION"
Beate Hein Bennett
Larry Litt
Beate Hein Bennett
The Pity of It All
"All Roads Lead to the Kurski Station"
 |
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Rivers Duggan, Elliott
Morse, Mia Vallet. |
October 9 – 21
HERE Arts Center, 145 Ave. of the Americas (enter on Dominick, 1
block south of Spring Str.)
Presented by Varda Studio. Part of the SubletSeries@HERE.
Tue – Sat @7 pm, Sundays @ 2pm
$25 general admission, for tickets: http://here.org/show/kurski,
or call 212-352-3101
Company website: www.vardastudio.org
Reviewed by Beate Hein Bennett October 9, 2018
There was post-war Odysseus roaming the seas for legendary
ten years until he came to his violated home and patient Penelope.
There was his comrade-in-arms, Philoctetes, banished all alone in
exile, ranting about the miserable injustice of the gods and his
festering wound. And there was Dante's journey through the Inferno,
mirroring war-torn corrupt Florence and his own exile—it was
only in Paradiso that he found his Beatrice!
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Rivers Duiggan, Elliott
Morse, Mia Vallet. |
And now at HERE, Vienya, a poet drunkard endures
a nightmare journey, soaked in vodka, from Moscow's Kurski Station
to Petushki, a real Moscow suburb and his hoped for paradise "where
the jasmine never stops blooming and the birds always sing"
and where he hopes to be saved by his love. He never makes it to
Petushki because he sleeps in a drunken stupor through the station
and ends where he started, in Kurski station. The 70 minute performance
takes us on a wild romp through the underbelly of Soviet-Russian
life with all its horror and absurdities—the laughter gets
stuck in our craw.
Emil Varda, the director, adapted the play from
a satirical prose poem "Moscow-Petushki" by Russian dissident
Venedikt Erofeev (1938-1990). Erofeev was born near Murmansk, in
the Arctic Circle, where his father was station master in a small
railroad station but having fallen afoul of Stalin, he spent his
life in the gulag, and his sons were placed in "state care."
Erofeev, talented and intelligent, careened through life, in continuous
trouble with the Soviet system. His wife Galia said in a BBC documentary
about him: "His wasn't a life, it was vagrancy. He went from
bench to bench, ditch to ditch, station to station." His semi-autobiographical
prose poem "Moscow-Petushki," (1969) first circulated
as samizdat, was published in Jerusalem (1973) and in Paris (1977),
and finally in Russia after perestroika in 1989, shortly before
his death from throat cancer in 1990.
Varda created a compact script that contains the
rich dark tapestry of Soviet life as Erofeev wove it from the tatters
of all-too human existence, Russian cultural and religious vestiges,
and his own sorrows and fears—all mixed with a keen sense
of absurd humor and irony. Varda's direction drew from his own Polish
experience with life under communism as well as his theatrical training
(Grotowski) and knowledge of modern Polish dramaturgy, notably Witkiewicz
and Gombrowicz whose wildly imaginative dramatic concoctions provided
models for metaphysical surrealistic richly gestural theatre.
The verbal and physical dexterity of the three
actors, Elliott Morse as Vienya, and the two Angel/Fury figures
played by Mia Vallet (Megaera) and Rivers Duggan (Tilphousia) brings
the dense text to life in the intimate downstairs theatre of HERE.
The space is left mostly empty, except for two chairs, and an array
of red wine and vodka bottles scattered in batches around the periphery.
On the black back wall vague Russian lettering in red can be deciphered
as CCP [Soviet Socialist Republic] with some red streaks below.
The lighting, designed by David Palmer, much of it from the side,
sculpts the stage action. The recurring musical motif, introduced
as a preset and marking the intervals between the segments, is a
solo trumpet rendering of the popular 20th century Russian song
"Ochi Chernye" (Dark Eyes)—emblematic of Russian
romantic sentimentality. The music credit belongs to Scott Griffin.
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Rivers Duggan, Mia Vallet. |
The two female Erinnyes/Eumenides/Angel figures,
Megaera and Tilphousia (aka Tisiphone), accompany, challenge, and
persecute Vienya on his journey. They are modeled after the Greek
mythical figures, alternately called "the Kindly Ones"
or "the Furies," who prod the conscience of mankind.
Tilphousia, in blue dress with a huge flowery
shawl in blue, and Megaera, in a red dress with an equally gorgeous
flowery shawl in red tones, invite him with a ritual baptism "to
get up and go" quoting the biblical "talitha cumi."
The faces of both actresses are in white make-up—they sing,
they dance, they taunt him and drape their shawls to become huge
wings, as they hover over him, at times kindly, at times threatening.
They change shape, at times being seductive young sirens and then
suddenly turning into hags, their vocal registers ranging from sweet
singsong to harsh cackle.
Elliott Morse as Vienya avoids all possible histrionics
of a drunkard; with tremendous physical stamina and precision he
presents us a character that embodies the entire range of human
depredation caused by political repression, social dysfunction,
poverty, and a lifetime of alcohol—a compendium of the Soviet
anti-hero. However, there are segments that go beyond the depression
of the Soviet man and ring true of any time and any place when and
where politics have utterly undermined human dignity, including
our present state. Mr. Morse with his sweet face and expressive
eyes, his beautiful young tortured body elicits our empathy ("sorrow
and fear"—the classic cathartic effect) while undercutting
any sentimentality by a mischievous sharp sense of the ironic. The
three actors together are a well tuned ensemble.
 |
Standing: interesting figure.
Below: Elliott Morse. Behind: Rivers Duggan. |
An interesting figure makes repeat appearances
during Vienya's via dolorosa: he is like an escaped inmate from
an asylum, in a hospital gown (open in the back), white clown make-up
with huge black eyes ("ochi chernya" [black eyes!]) carrying
a trumpet, meandering across the stage, mumbling unintelligible
words (in Russian?); no actor is mentioned in the program. Is there
a point to the anonymity? I think so—but we'll leave it for
the individual spectator to figure it out. [Bennett]
Larry Litt
All Roads Lead to the Kurski
Station
Loosely based on: "Moscow Circles"
by Vienya Erofeev
Adapted and Directed by Varda
HERE 155 Sixth Ave., NYC
Reviewed by Larry Littany Litt on October 16, 2018
Good poets live and die by the chance and randomness
of life's unpredictable games of personal chaos. Awakening with
a hangover, our poet-hero Vienya begins the day in a nude baptismal
shower with water drawn and poured over him by beautiful winged
angels. He has lived through another drunken revel seeking love
in all its mysterious and elusive places. This time in the dangerous
drunken alcohol besotted Moscow. Thus begins the poetic journey
of the Russian surrealist play "All Roads Lead to the Kurski
Station."
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Mia Vallet, Elliott Morse,
Rivers Duiggan. |
It's common wisdom in artistic circles that poets
and drunks have curious angels watching over them. But these angels
can turn into the most horrendous harpies if a hangover isn't tended
to. Actresses Rivers Duggan and Mia Vallet are a peasant pair, no,
more a sorrowful duet of guardians aiding Vienya's desire to appear
in Petushki via train from Moscow. He must abandon and dissolve
the omniscient mystical mirage of the regime's Holy of Holies: Kremlin.
Meandering in Russian trains while musing on the absurd state of
Stalinist politics, unrequited love, his own dissolute life and
inevitable early death makes for unique poetical experimental drama
reminiscent of Hamlet's soliloquy. And always drinking as much as
any proper poet can. Elliot Morse plays Vienya as a universal conscientious
objector. He seeks the love of his life as we all must. He gives
up to fall in love with alcohol, his angels and demons.
When Furies invade a poet's mind and wrack his
head with thoughts of mass murder of authoritarian powers or even
worse a dramatic public suicide it's better to stay drunk and sleep
it off Vienya reasons. But no poet worth his scribbles would fail
to comment on the pleasure of oblivion. Drink, sleep, dream until
the poems flow like moles digging tunnels in the garden that aerate
the fertile soil. Upset the status quo, the military, the apathetic,
greedy, ignorant populace. Let the world know poetry is dominant,
eternal, and spiritually enlightening. Even if one's fate is obscurity.
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Elliott Morse. |
This absorbing play is a throwback to the great
days of Communist era unofficial theater. For generations Grotowski
and Kantor productions have lived in the mind of Varda, Kurski Station's
adapter and director. I loved the weirdness, I felt transported
to a blackbox theater in Russia or Poland. I liked being there for
70 minutes. There's also a masterful comic impression of our contemporary
populist leader that flows like satiric acid through the mouth of
Elliot Morse. He stuns in his flexibility as an actor as does his
chorus. This is a dramatic dark comedy I won't easily forget. [Litt]
