The title of Rajiv Joseph’s intricate play comes from a diary entry by its most vivid character, the writer Isaac Babel. He was shot in 1940, a victim of Stalin’s Great Purge, and for Joseph serves as a cautionary example. As an artist with a gift for articulating the truth imaginatively, he was a threat to a state hell-bent on transmitting its own distorted version of reality.
The action begins in the Twenties as Babel meets Nikolai Yezhov. He will ultimately be one of Stalin’s trusted favourites, and Babel will have an affair with his wife Yevgenia. The focus then switches — to 2010 after the Polish president’s plane has crashed near Smolensk, Moscow in the Forties, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
All the characters are in some way touched by Babel’s curiosity and dynamism, and among them are KGB agent Vova (Steve John Shepherd), who becomes a sinister politician, and Wendy Kweh’s Mariya, a jobbing journalist who finds herself a long way out of her depth.
This three-hour blend of history and fantasy has grand ambition. Its zigzag plot is complicated, and the emphasis on the power of storytelling can seem too on-the-nose, while Joseph’s explicit debts to Tom Stoppard and Tony Kushner draw attention to his being a less nimble and witty writer than they are.
The best theatre to see in May
But this is still a timely vision of how fragile the public understanding of truth can be — and the hazards that face the people who try to sustain it. Lisa Spirling directs with clarity, and there are engaging performances from David Birrell as Yezhov and Ben Caplan as Babel, an intriguing mix of restrained observer and reckless poet.
Until June 9
