Review: In Seagull: True Story, an Antiwar Russian Director Flees to New York

It has been three years since Putin’s army attempted and failed to execute a takeover of Ukraine, but the war in that country is still ongoing. One silver lining for New York has been an influx of dissident Russian theater artists, and no stage has been more welcoming of their work than La MaMa. We’re lucky to have them, but are they lucky to have us?

You might be less inclined to think so after seeing Seagull: True Story, which is now making its world premiere at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, produced in association with MART Foundation and En Garde Arts. Based on creator-director Alexander Molochnikov’s real life (the script is by Eli Rarey), it offers a candid and bitterly funny look at the Siberian chill that has descended over the arts in Putin’s Russia, but also the more insidious forms of social control that pervade the cultural sector of the United States.

The play opens in February 2022 at the Moscow Art Theatre where young director Kon (Eric Tabach, exuding an attractive brand of youthful naivete) is helming a new production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. His famous mother, Olga (Zuzanna Szadkowski), is playing Arkadina. This is no museum piece. Kon has a radical vision for the 127-year-old play that includes men in skirts performing an uninhibited dance of freedom.

But when Russia invades Ukraine, fissures erupt within the cast over whether this is a war of aggression prompted by the revanchist delusions of an doddering KGB spy or a heroic special military operation to liberate Ukranians from an illegitimate Nazi regime. Executive producer Yuri (Andrey Burkovskiy) frets that Kon’s staging will run afoul of Russian laws against LGBT propaganda and insists he change it. He also asks Kon to make a statement of support for the war and the government, which heavily subsidizes institutions like the Moscow Art Theatre. None of this jibes with Kon’s sense of artistic liberty.

“You think you would have been hired to direct this if I wasn’t your mommy?,” Olga asks Kon during a dressing room reality check. Szadkowski, always a formidable presence, twists the knife here, sprinkling lemon into her son’s wounds so he won’t forget the lesson. The line between Olga and Arkadina dissolves in her acidic love.

But like the hapless Chekhovian nepo baby for whom he is named, Kon must forge his own path. He flees Russia on opening night, determined to start a new life in America, where he will finally be able to stage The Seagull as he wants. But it’s humbling to go from the most important stage in Russia to an abandoned warehouse in Bushwick, where he lives communally with his new lover Nico (Stella Baker) and a gaggle of neurotic hipsters. “He comes all the way from Russia to live with communists,” our MC wryly remarks.

Burkovskiy delivers a standout performance as the MC, a narrator who also steps into the roles of Yuri, an American producer named Barry, and the president of Russia himself. “Fantastic” is a word he exclaims no fewer than 15 times, capturing the transparently artificial enthusiasm of the type of people who produce theater because they are not convincing enough to appear onstage. One suspect that this highly realistic portrayal derives from years of up-close character study.

Elan Zafir gives the most moving performance of the evening as Anton, Kon’s dramaturg, who speaks out against the war but stays behind to face the consequences. “I wonder if they have put all the interesting people in prison now,” he writes to Kon from a gulag. “How dull the conversation in cafés must be these days.”

A dark yet generous sense of humor pervades Rarey’s script, which reserves its most effective barbs for the oppressive manners that have become such a drag on American theatermaking. “Here we used to have a Brechtian song about social issues,” the MC informs us after a fraught Bushwick rehearsal in which an actor calls Chekhov a dead white male author. “It was extremely offensive! So we had to cut it.” Maybe it’s just a device, but the fact that I’m still wondering if this is a real confession about the artistic process of this off-Broadway play is enough to prove we have a problem.

I couldn’t linger on that thought during the show, which moves at a lively clip under Molochnikov’s resourceful direction, which is reminiscent of the early work of Alex Timbers, Rachel Chavkin, and Dustin Wills.

Sheets of plastic, a cheap air mattress, and an old bathtub on castors are essential elements in Alexander Shishkin’s scenic design. The contrast between Kristina Kharlashkina’s first and second act costumes conveys the cultural gulf between Russian and American thespians (but also the similarities between the men who have the money).

Lighting designers Brian H. Scott and Sam Saliba deploy both theatrical and practical lighting (a small desk lamp plays an important role) to create a low-budget spectacle. And sound designer Diego Las Heras makes us feel the war in Ukraine rumbling beneath our seats.

All of it tells the story of a director undaunted by the prospect of a much smaller budget than he initially imagined—a quality that all successful stage directors must possess in the coming years as funding dries up for everyone but those willing to suck up to money and power.

This country is not immune to that dynamic, even though our federal government has always been quite stingy in its arts funding. Seagull: True Story unflinchingly presents the real dilemma facing Russian artists and all international dissidents privileged enough to obtain a US visa: Do you embrace the golden shackles afforded to the cultural elite of an authoritarian country, or do you cast them off in favor of obscurity and freedom in a country where nothing is ever free?