Stage : ‘Russian Teacher’ Fails to Make Grade for Social Satire

Farce is healthy, political farce healthier and political farce in repressive countries healthiest. Also dangerous. But political farce adapted to a culture other than the one it is designed to lampoon can be another kind of double whammy: politically neutered and artistically lethal.

Take Italian rebel playwright/actor Dario Fo’s “Accidental Death of an Anarchist,” a play about an impostor who makes mincemeat of Italian bureaucracy. It was adapted by no less skilled a writer than John Lahr and, in any number of English-language productions, has been virtually incapable of matching the flamboyant virulence of the original.

Now comes Soviet writer Alexander Buravsky’s “The Russian Teacher,” which opened Saturday at South Coast Repertory’s Second Stage in Costa Mesa in a labored adaptation by another talented writer: American playwright Keith Reddin. This broad slapstick satire of life and corruption in today’s Soviet Union is equally impotent at tickling the American funny bone by spoofing a raft of Soviet problems.

This is not for lack of effort by the actors, who work (too hard) to generate laughter, or the ever-willing audience hoping to deliver it. West simply doesn’t meet East in this tale of Anatoly, an intense and politically beleaguered teacher from Moscow, who comes to an overcrowded resort on the Black Sea and rents a hospital room from an orthopedic surgeon named Popov. Popov is a practical type who hates to see available beds go to waste and doesn’t mind the extra change that renting them provides.

Popov’s young nurse, Nina, a fast learner with a heart of gold and a body of platinum, decides to do her own good deed by renting vacant floor space in Anatoly’s room to an impoverished grandmother on a mission to “protect” her grandson. That helps everyone until (with a nod to Gogol?) word comes that government inspectors are nosing around. At this point matters get out of hand, doors get locked, hysteria sets in, grandmothers turn shady and bones get broken.

For the first and longer half of Buravsky’s play, the comedy feels forced. Anatoly’s perpetual panic is overblown, the grandmother’s stubborn pragmatism is too quaint, Popov’s high-strung neurosis is poorly motivated and Nina’s actions, benevolent or promiscuous, pick up on whatever the emotions of the moment dictate. In their exacerbating way, these characters bear a distinct resemblance to those in Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw,” but their eccentricities and satirical jabs are more literal and clumsy.

The physical comedy can be quite menacing, but the spoken one is overwritten. It’s a matter of style. One understands the humor of a timorous teacher terrified at having twice flunked the son of the country’s president, glasnost or no glasnost , but lines like “You’re just another Russian who finds a thousand reasons why he doesn’t need freedom” elicit smiles, not laughs.

It helps to feel the pain of a social situation in order to respond to it. When one character says, “Locked up against our will, do you know what that’s called?” and the other answers “Socialism,” we smile without feeling the sting. It’s not in our bones, though bones ultimately play a wrenching role in Buravsky’s piece. They are the totems around which his most subliminal and powerful point is made.

The ending is dark and strong, but the actors show telltale signs of the wear and tear required to get there. Ron Boussom, a normally flawless comedian, imparts little dimension to Anatoly and Don Took flails at Popov like a Don Quixote stumped by too many windmills. Jennifer Flackett’s Nina is neither seductive enough nor sufficiently moored by her actions. Only Patricia Fraser’s outspoken grandma comes across as rock solid, helped by the clarity of character as written. Director David Emmes might have helped focus the actors better, though it’s unlikely he could have leavened the script.

Production values by Cliff Faulkner (set), Dwight Richard Odle (costumes), Brenda Berry (lights) and Michael Roth (sound and music) are adequate if unremarkable. We admire the comic instrumentation of Buravsky’s play, but we don’t plug in.

‘The Russian Teacher’

Ron Boussom: Anatoly

Don Took: Popov

Patricia Fraser: Kozitskaya

Jennifer Flackett: Nina

A play by Alexander Buravsky. English adaptation Keith Reddin. Director David Emmes. Set Cliff Faulkner. Lights Brenda Berry. Costumes Dwight Richard Odle. Music/Sound Michael Roth. Production manager Edward Lapine. Stage manager Andy Tighe. Assistant stage manager Randall K. Lum.