Vassa

by Maxim Gorky adapted by Mike Bartlett

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 8 November 2019

Tinuke Craig directs Siobhán Redmond as the matriarch Vassa with Amber James as her daughter Anna, Arthur Hughes and Danny Kirrane as her sons Pavel and Semyon, Michael Gould as her brother-in-law Prokhor and Cyil Nri as her manager Mikhail. Sophie Wu played Lyudmila, Pavel's wife, Kayla Meikle was Natalya, Semyon's wife, and Alexandra Dowling and Daniella Isaacs played the two servants Lipa and Dunya.

In a versatile set designed by Fly Davis, unusually making use of a curtain in this theatre, and allowing for multiple entrance points reminiscent of a farce, the fate of capitalism is played out in miniature as Vassa attepts to preserve the family fortunes from collapse in the face of her husband's imminent death, her brother-in-law's rapacity, and her sons' incompetence. Indeed the staging encourages a view that we are watching a farce, as people erupt on stage, having been eavesdropping at the doors, or else appearing totally unaware of the crisis into which they are plummeting. Vassa herself holds the stage (she is usually on stage) with imperious determination, and even in her absence most people are fearfully aware of her authority.

Pavel is self-pitying, his wife contemptuously sleeps around, Semyon is in a world of his own with a passive-aggressive wife, while Anna is reluctantly drawn back into the family circle and eventually finds herself no match for her mother. The tone is relatively light to begin with, but it becomes increasingly hard to sympathise with anyone on stage, and at the same time impossible to see only the funny side of the situation. Vassa's predominance comes to be quite simply monstrous.

 

The cast manage the tonal shifts extremely well, and Siobhán Redmond in particular gives a barnstorming performance as Vassa. Cyril Nri's Mikhail must be one of the most astonishingly obsequious characters I have seen portrayed on stage, a physical cringing and grimacing rendering him almost unable to utter the words he knows he must deliver to sty in Vassa's good books: quite mesmerising, and just safely this side of caricature.