A Dissident Russian Director Flies a Politically Charged ‘Seagull’ Over to the Public Theater

How does a nation that has produced titanic artists, whose very success is a testament to creative freedom, slide into authoritarianism? Alexander Molochnikov, a Russian director and writer, who relocated to New York several years ago, poses this question in “Seagull: True Story” — and he doesn’t have only his native country in mind.Mr. Molochnikov was a rising star in Moscow when a string of posts he made on social media in 2022, protesting the war in Ukraine, led to cancellations of his work and, by his account, personal threats from a leading military company. He drew on that experience in creating “True Story,” which features a script by Eli Rarey, an American filmmaker and playwright, and was introduced last year by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.Mr. Molochnikov has now brought the play to the Public Theater, with most of the same actors and designers aboard, and the result is a high-energy production that can be as whimsical as it is sobering. The story follows Kon, a young director who is about to stage Chekhov’s “The Seagull” at the Moscow Art Theatre when, while wandering through Red Square with his dramaturg, Anton, he makes a video complaining that the Kremlin has “murdered” his production — and then sends it to a few buddies.After a prologue featuring singing in Russian, “True Story” opens with a nod to a beloved musical, “Cabaret.” An emcee, listed as MC in the script and described as “charming and malevolent” and played by Andrey Burkovskiy, a Russian actor, breaks the fourth wall by welcoming the audience. “You all look fantastic,” he proclaims. “Except for you, you look fantastically fantastic.”The MC’s strained language and goofy behavior will grow looser and more profane; he also takes on other characters meant to suggest malevolence, and corruption, including a crass American producer and, in a nightmare sequence that’s the funniest thing in the show, Vladimir Putin, who rides in shirtless on a horse-like figure formed by other actors.Scrappy musical interludes are sprinkled throughout, with composer Fedor Zhuravlev playing guitar and drums as the performers sing and rap original songs by Noize MC, a noted Russian hip-hop artist. (Maestro Gorsky and Aydar Gaynullin are also credited with, respectively, original and additional music.) Cast member Ohad Mazor’s choreography matches the restless vitality of these numbers, keeping the company in motion as Alexander Skishkin’s lean, fanciful set design takes us from the Big Village, as Moscow is sometimes called, to the Big Apple and back.With the exception of Eric Tabach, the rather overzealous young actor cast as Kon—his incessant, raspy screaming at a recent preview left me hoping he’s got a good ENT specialist— the players manage their different roles with grace and grit. Zuzanna Szadzowski turns in a muscular performance as Kon’s mother, Olga, whom he casts to type as Arkadina, the glamorous but aging actress in Chekhov’s “Seagull.”Elan Zafir brings a wry wit and a moral sturdiness to Anton, who is also a poet, and serves as the play’s conscience. When Kon starts freaking out about the war, Anton reminds him that Konstantin Stanislavsky, the seminal theater maker, was directing at the same venue when their country collapsed into revolution in 1917: “There were crowds in the streets, marching, the czar was fleeing for his life…everything was changing. You know what Stanislavsky did? He rehearsed.”Anton’s courage and the capacity for sacrifice that he’ll demonstrate later make Kon seem smaller; the latter diminishes even further after fleeing to New York and moving in with a struggling actress named Nico, played by a pert Gus Birney. Nico invites some parallels to Nina, the harshly disillusioned ingénue in Chekhov’s “Seagull” — Ms. Birney also plays a Russian woman cast in that role in Kon’s Moscow staging — while Kon can evoke both that character and Treplev, the writer who pines for Nina in vain.Towards the end of “True Story,” it seems as if Kon may be headed for Treplev’s dark fate. But even as painstaking comparisons are drawn between oppression in Mr. Molochnikov’s birthplace and his adopted home — a nod is made to President Trump for good measure — the director sustains a sense of exuberance. His party runs a bit long, the two-act show could use a bit of editing, but it’s entertaining and thought-provoking throughout.

A Dissident Russian Director Flies a Politically Charged ‘Seagull’ Over to the Public Theater

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