Russia Meddles in Another Country’s Politics, Only This Time It’s the 1930s

The term “disinformation” tends to get tossed around pretty freely these days, sometimes with a political agenda or bias attached. I still prefer the old-school label “propaganda,” which puts more emphasis on how context matters, and how facts can be selectively chosen and twisted in order to seduce and deceive.The playwright Jen Silverman was evidently pondering such matters when she sat down to write “Spain,” now making its premiere off-Broadway. While obviously crafted with very modern conundrums in mind, the play was inspired by a 1937 film, “The Spanish Earth,” conceived in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War to promote the cause of the loyalist Republicans who would eventually lose to the fascistic Nationalists.That movie was directed by a Dutch documentarian, Joris Ivens, and featured a screenplay by Ernest Hemingway, who covered the war as a journalist, and another noted, if far less iconic, author, John Dos Passos. All three men are prominent characters in “Spain,” though Ms. Silverman’s account, at once whimsical and unsettling, is a fictional one.Ivens, for instance, is presented here not as a socially conscious artist embarking on what many consider his masterwork, but as a longtime lackey of the KGB. That Soviet agency is portrayed as the real force behind an unnamed film in progress, with Joris commissioned to illustrate, as he puts it, how “The Noble Peasant” is “Crushed by The Rich Fascist” — these words are all capitalized in the script, to convey both the self-seriousness of Ivens’s masters and his bemused, rueful awareness of this — and “How Hard It Is For A Farmer To Till The Blood-Drenched Soil.”Danny Wolohan and Andrew Burnap in ‘Spain.’ Matthew MurphyIn fact, Soviet Russia was a major backer of the left-leaning but diverse coalition that made up the Republicans, and while the Nationalists were by no means the good guys — the latter were supported by the Nazis and their forces led by Francisco Franco, whose subsequent, dictatorial reign would last into the 1970s — Ms. Silverman’s focus, interestingly, is on the nefarious doings of the Russians. At the time, of course, Stalin was still our future ally, and many in the artistic community were fascinated by and sympathetic toward the communist movement.Ivens, though, regards the KGB with obvious ambivalence, a quality that Andrew Burnap — fresh from his turn as a very youthful King Arthur in last season’s Broadway revival of “Camelot” — juggles with boyish charisma. As his girlfriend and fellow KGB operative, Helen, tells him, “You’re likable, you’re deployed to be likable. I’m hot, I’m deployed to be hot.”Played by a typically witty and, yes, sexy Marin Ireland, Helen is also a filmmaker, but she has consigned herself for the time being to the less glamorous role of “strategist,” a position that draws heavily on her feminine wiles. If there’s a too-cute quality to some of Ivens and Helen’s dialogue in the early scenes (I had a similar problem with one of Ms. Silverman’s more noted previous plays, “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties”), the actors and director Tyne Rafaeli get meatier material as other characters enter the picture.Ivens’s screenwriters, happily, arrive soon, thickening the plot and fleshing out the intrigue. Danny Wolohan’s pompous, dissolute Hemingway can be a riot, but it’s the awkward, achingly decent Dos Passos who emerges as the play’s heart, and Erik Lochtefeld’s performance in the latter role is both engagingly droll and deeply poignant.There’s a contemporary feel to the proceedings, reinforced by Dane Laffrey’s stark, spinning set and Alejo Vietti’s often casual-chic costumes. Daniel Kluger’s original music provides folksy Latin flourishes, but his artfully strident sound design also keeps us in the present — reminding us that the kind of manipulation being traced here remains very much alive in today’s media, and still poses a threat to the ambitions and souls of artists, and to art itself. These points are made a bit too obviously in the last scene, a sort of epilogue in which an imposing, sinister figure who has loomed mostly in silence throughout the play, identified as Karl and played with subtle menace by a robust Zachary James, becomes more prominent. Yet there’s a lovely final touch, spotlighting Mr. James and yet again rewarding our patience, as this stylish and affecting production does repeatedly.

Russia Meddles in Another Country’s Politics, Only This Time It’s the 1930s

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