‘Mother Russia’ is Intoxicatingly Enjoyable but Its Message is Sober

In the prologue of “Mother Russia,” Lauren Yee’s hilarious and piercing new play, we are introduced to the title character, who will pop up periodically throughout. Clad in traditional peasant’s garb — albeit in bright red, from babushka to toe — she confides that her life has been negatively defined by “one man after another,” inserting a profanity that rhymes with “pity.”Even those of us who cringe at terms like “toxic masculinity” would have to admit that history has been greatly influenced by the ambition and arrogance of such individuals, and not just in the country led by Vladimir Putin during this century.According to a press release, Ms. Yee sees “Mother Russia”, being staged at off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre, as “the third in an unofficial cycle of plays about communist regimes’ collisions with Western pop culture” — following the acclaimed musical “Cambodian Rock Band,” which followed a Khmer Rouge survivor from the 1970s into the 21st century, and “The Great Leap,” set in San Francisco and Beijing in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square uprising and massacre.“Mother Russia” unfolds in St. Petersburg in 1992, introducing us to Evgeny and Dmitri, old school friends, now in their mid-twenties, reunited by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evgeny’s dad held great power within the old system and is now using his considerable remaining resources and his wiles to profit from the new corruption taking hold as Russia shifts to more of a free-market system.In contrast, Evgeny describes himself as “meek and obsequious”; Dmitri, who had a rather less privileged upbringing and had dreamed of being a KGB agent when that was still a career option, appears far more eager to seize opportunities posed by social and economic disruption. The latter has set himself as a shop manager, selling “everything,” he tells Evgeny: “I got chicken, condoms, lead.”What Dmitri doesn’t have, alas, is any customers for those items; the store is essentially a front for a fledgling business in surveillance. His only client so far is seeking intel on one Katya M, the daughter of a radical poet who, after her father was imprisoned by the Soviets, stirred up controversy herself as a pop singer before defecting to the United States and finding stardom there, at least temporarily.Like the men in “Mother Russia,” Katya has, ironically, been unmoored by her native country’s progress; we meet her back home, where she is working as a teacher. “No one wanted to hear me sing ‘tear down that wall’ once there was no wall left to tear,” she explains.Dmitri enlists the seemingly hapless Evgeny to help track Katya down, and what follows is a deliriously entertaining goose chase that, under Teddy Bergman’s razor-sharp direction, erases the line between the farcical and the profound. As Evgeny pursues and, inevitably, falls in love with Katya, Ms. Yee manages to raise challenging questions about both historical folly and human fallibility, illustrating how inextricably they are linked.Mr. Bergman has recruited a company of comically facile actors whose names will be familiar to most theater fans: Rebecca Naomi Jones, who has brought an earthy wit to a range of musical theater roles, proves a perfect fit for Katya, who gets to sing in brief spurts; in between scenes and occasionally during them, there are also cleverly inserted bursts of music associated with Russia, from Tchaikovsky to “Lara’s Theme” from “Doctor Zhivago.”Steven Boyer, who reduced Broadway audiences to tears of laughter some years ago in “Hand to God,” is equally well cast as the brash, boisterous Dmitri, whom costume designer Sophia Choi has decked out in full bourgeois-gangster attire, down to his cheesy gold jewelry. Adam Chanler-Berat’s sweetly goofy Evgeny proves a perfect foil, though the character evolves chillingly towards the end.David Turner completes the ensemble impeccably as Mother Russia, who presents herself as a long-suffering trouper, offering world-weary commentary. When Evgeny and Dmitri lament at one point that they are living in “unprecedented times,” she responds with a mocking, lacerating monologue summing up their country’s tortured history.“My children forget this. They think they are special,” Mother Russia muses, adding, “I have seen it all before. It is all the same.” It is no small feat to drive such a sobering message home in a play as exuberantly enjoyable as this one.

‘Mother Russia’ is Intoxicatingly Enjoyable but Its Message is Sober

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