Review: Vladimir and the Forlorn Hope of a Liberal Russia

Raya is a pain in the ass. Tenacious in the pursuit of a story and uncompromising in her journalistic ethics, she is one of the best reporters working in Russia — and that makes her a threat to the unseen namesake of Erika Sheffer’s Vladimir, now making its world premiere off-Broadway with Manhattan Theatre Club. Ambitious but ultimately unsatisfying, it’s a tribute to the individuals who have worked tirelessly to bring about civil society in Russia as much as it is a eulogy for their efforts.

While the play opens with a farcical depiction of Boris Yeltsin’s New Year’s Eve address, which rung in the new millennium and the Putin era, the bulk of Vladimir takes place in 2004 following Putin’s reelection. Raya (Francesca Faridany) has been reporting from the front lines in Chechnya, cultivating sources that no other Russian journalists will touch and uncovering stories that the Kremlin would prefer to stay buried. Her editor, Kostya (Norbert Leo Butz), supports her. But he’s also taking drinks with Andrei (Erik Jensen deftly  embodying the contractions of the bespectacled thug), a Kremlin press officer, who knows that the independent press has a fast-approaching expiration date in Russia. He offers Kostya an exit ramp in the form of a job with state TV.

Meanwhile, Raya has discovered a major case of tax fraud tied to an investment firm run by an American businessman (Jonathan Walker). She suspects members of the regime are colluding to rip off the Russian taxpayer, but she needs the help of financial analyst Yevgeny (David Rosenberg) to get to the bottom of it. Will he expose this corruption, or will he opt (as almost all people would) for self-preservation?

Raya and Yevgeny seem to be loosely based on Anna Politkovskaya and Sergei Magnitsky, both hugely important figures in the story of post-Communist Russia and both now dead — cautionary tales for all those who would even consider crossing the siloviki mafia. More than a profile in courage, Vladimir is about the little acts of cowardice and careerism that undergird any authoritarian regime, behavior that is easily observable here in the West — as anyone working in the arts or media might tell you in an unguarded moment.

Sheffer offers a fascinating (if regularly painted) portrait of the kind of prickly personality who refuses to play along. Raya is a human salmon, swimming upstream in the vain hope that she will one day reach the liberal, democratic Russia that has never existed. Her addiction to her work strains her relationship with her daughter (Olivia Deren Nikkanen, playing a less fun version of Saffy from Ab Fab) and makes her a pariah in Russian society (a cocktail waitress refers to her as a “degenerate”).

“The only reason I’m still doing this,” she tells Kostya, “the only reason, is because no one else is.” This sense of a singular, quasi-messianic calling is what drives Raya, but it also makes her incredibly vulnerable, as we have seen from the tragic stories of Ján Kuciak and Daphne Caruana Galizia. This tale can only end one way.

Still, director Daniel Sullivan injects plenty of tension and suspense into his staging, making Vladimir feel more like a spy thriller than an inevitable tragedy. The performers lead the way, with Faridany exuding a dry kind of magnetism in every scoff and acerbic turn of phrase. You may not want her as a guest at your wedding, but you would absolutely subscribe to her Substack. Doubt begins to corrode her moral certainty in the form of Chovka (a quietly menacing Erin Darke), a Chechen woman who haunts her thoughts. And Butz is very convincing as Kostya, a middle-aged man with a lot to lose, but who cannot unsee everything that is wrong with this situation.

The production is expensive-looking yet slightly disappointing. Mark Wendland’s television studio set seems poised to say something about the manufactured reality of mass media and the disorientation of living in a culture in which nothing is true and everything is possible — but it doesn’t really. In fact, only a fraction of the expansive stage space is ever used, with Sullivan pushing most scenes downstage (Japhy Weideman’s lighting focuses our eyes, but the scenes still seem to be taking place in spotlights).

This forest of screens and black furniture does offer plenty of surfaces for Lucy Mackinnon’s projections, which transform every scene as necessary. Dan Moses Schreier underscores the tension with his cinematic sound design and original music. And Jess Goldstein’s costumes authentically convey the off-the-rack suits and puffy coats that dominate contemporary Russian fashion.

It’s all competently done, but underwhelming — and this may be a problem baked into the dramatic form. Like last season’s Patriots, Vladimir is a little too focused on personalities to really convey the web of corruption and kompromat that Putin uses to control the last European empire. Kremlinologists will be disappointed, but who could ever satisfyingly dramatize a story that is very much still ongoing? At very least, everyone will be able to appreciate the way Vladimir depicts the central role fear plays in the exercise of power — which is again, not a phenomenon exclusive to Russia.