STAGE REVIEW : ‘Dear Yelena’: Soviet Menace

The most important fact to remember about Ludmila Rasumovskaya’s “Dear Yelena Sergievna” is that it was written in 1980, when Brezhnev was in power and Afghanistan was becoming the Soviet Vietnam.

This is crucial information. Bear it in mind while watching Moscow’s Theatre on Spartacus Square production of this Soviet play during its all-too-brief sojourn at Cal State Dominguez Hills. The context single-handedly lifts the events from the realm of social to political speculation. Or, rather, it combines the two.

It also explains why this play was banned in the U.S.S.R. for nearly 10 years. The piece--which is performed in Russian, assisted by a clear synopsis and low-key (sometimes too low-key), simultaneous translation conveyed over earphones--is about an impromptu birthday party.

Four students arrive one evening at the apartment of their math teacher, Yelena Sergievna (Oksana Moysina). They bring champagne, a cake and a gift of expensive wineglasses.

Imagine her surprise.

These are warm, energetic, enthusiastic young people. They sing songs, play music, dance and draw the teacher into their merriment, making her feel valued and important.

But while Sergievna is in the kitchen for a moment, we begin to discover that things might not be quite what they seem. The student Vitya (Sergei Pinegin) reveals that he stole the wineglasses from his parents’ home. And there’s a still more troubling hidden agenda for the visit. Vitya and his companions--including Lilya (Irina Manulova), her fiance, Pasha (Viktor Mosienko) and the blond, enigmatic Volodya (Oleg Horitonov)--are really there to get the key to a safe that holds the results of their math tests.

A case of prankishness? Guess again. The students turn out to be a selfish, privileged bunch who need the grades to get into university (and avoid Afghanistan?). They’ll stop at nothing to persuade Sergievna to hand them the fateful key. When the teacher demurs, the evening degenerates first into drunken debauchery, later into full-blown hooliganism. The more she resists and they fail, the more they perversely redirect the by-now senseless violence upon themselves.

It is a gripping, exhausting, at times breathtaking piece, written in five arias: Sergievna’s eloquent speech of resistance and morality, pitting her own idealism in the front lines of World War II against the students’ self-serving vandalism--and the arias of each of the four students, who reveal themselves chillingly more like fascist than communist youth.

Volodya emerges as the demonic leader of the pack, who, in his mounting frustration, eventually gives in to that bankrupt masculine last resort: rape.

The Spartacus production of “Dear Yelena” is not for the squeamish. Nor is it the first since the ban on the play was lifted. In May 1989, Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre imported a well-acted but much tamer theatre verite version of this play, produced by Moscow’s Mossoviet Theatre. The Spartacus actors, with director Svetlana Vragova and designer Nikita Tkachuk, are into a far more stylized theater of menace.

Pinteresque might have been the word for this production, except that it is excessively verbal, even strident at points in the second act, and that the make-up and action become more and more ritualized as events get more and more out of hand. The rancor and bile bring it closer to Albee in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

There are items that remain open to question. Is it logical that at the height of the violence, Sergievna, who has staunchly resisted all along, would suddenly give the arrogant Volodya the key? It is a curiously unmotivated gesture--a Pyrrhic victory as well, since by then the game has been lost by pretty much everyone.

Rasumovskaya’s rationale for these developments is murky at best, as if the frenzied symbolism has by then run away with the play--it stops more than it ends. But a lot up to then is intoxicating stuff, and director Vragova’s sizzling production at the hands of this vigorous four-year-old company packs one heckuva wallop.

“Dear Yelena Sergievna” is being presented at the University Theatre on campus by the spunky Pacific Theatre Ensemble, Cal State Dominguez Hills and the city of Carson. On its own, as part of a cultural exchange, the ensemble hopes to send “Aliens,” Steven Morris’ new contemporary adaptation of Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin,” to Moscow. (A reading of “Aliens” will be held on campus Saturday and Sunday to help raise funds for the trip; for information, call 213-516-3588.)

In the meantime, and with no lack of gratitude for what we got, the only regrettable aspect of all this is the brevity of “Dear Yelena Sergievna’s “ run. It is being performed only three more times but deserves a much longer run, preferably in a more centrally located venue. Theater anyone . . . ?

At Cal State Dominguez Hills, Victoria and Tamcliff in Carson. Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m., with a final performance Sunday, 7 p.m. $12.50-$17.50; (213) 516-3588.