“Everywhere they curse the name of Boris”
The instinctive reaction when one hears of a production of a lesser-known work
by a well-known writer tends to be one of healthy scepticism, as one waits to
find out whether there was a good reason for its relative obscurity. But
sometimes there are mitigating circumstances and Alexander Pushkin’s 1825 play
Boris Godunov – receiving its first ever professional production in English
here at the Swan Theatre – sufficiently provoked the ire of the state censors
so that it was 30 years after his death before it was first approved and even
then, continued political pressure ensured its limited impact.
The uncensored version was finally translated by Adrian Mitchell, premiered at
Princeton in 2007 and selected now by Michael Boyd to mark his swansong as AD at
the RSC, as part of the ensemble-led globetrotting A World Elsewhere season.
And one can see why the Russian authorities wouldn’t have taken too kindly to
Pushkin’s satire, indeed still to this day, as wrapped up in the tale of men
lying, cheating and murdering their way to become Tsar in the late 1590s is an
excoriating indictment of the Russian ruling elite. And what Boyd teases out in
this fast-moving version, is that such autocratic leadership is seemingly
endemic in this country and so its resonances play out right up to the current
day.
Lloyd Hutchinson is an exhilarating presence as the titular Boris, whose
increasingly wearied Ulster tones show the weight of a wrongfully seized crown
as rumours swell that he murdered the old Tsar’s young heir Dmitry to secure
his own place on the throne; Gethin Anthony has a striking energy as the monk
Grigory who later grasps the chance to imitate Dmitry and manipulate his way
into the hearts and mind of the people and thus grab power for himself, his
quicksilver shifts in mood revealing a thrilling emotional instability; and
there’s great work from Lucy Briggs-Owen’s pragmatically covetous Polish
princess and from James Tucker and Joe Dixon as key courtiers who never allow
anything as small as significant political differences to their leader to get
in the way of their own advancement.
Boyd keeps his staging to a minimum on the thrust stage of the Swan, which
highlighted his main conceit of the various costumes from different Russian
ages hanging at the back of the stage, the players slowly working their way
through the wardrobe to reach the Putin-inspired suits of the final scene. And
this motif of the changing clothes also allowed for the production’s most
striking moment in its evocation of battle-scenes through the beating of coats on
the floor, surprisingly effective in its stirring simplicity and indicative of
the extremely tight ensemble. John Woolf’s music has a similar unfussy quality
that keeps it hauntingly moving and fans of stage gore won’t be disappointed
with some grisly moments.
I was kindly invited as part of a bloggers’ event which meant I was lucky enough
to get a Q+A session at the end of the show which was lots of fun and highly
illuminating in a number of areas: the reality of the experience of actors in a
rep season, the relationship with the audience in the open space of the Swan
(which brought to mind something of the groundling experience at the Globe for
me), the Shakespearean connections that many others were able to draw with
Pushkin’s work, and the interesting note that this wasn’t intended to be a
comedy but rather that the black humour came naturally through the process of
putting it together. Boris Godunov is indeed funnier than one might expect but
it also contains two powerful studies of the corrosive effects of chasing power
which are superbly brought to life by Hutchinson and Anthony.
Running time: 2 hours (without interval)
Programme cost: £4
Booking until 30th March
Labels: Adam Burton, Gethin Anthony, Jake Fairbrother, James Tucker, Joe Dixon, Lloyd Hutchinson, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Martin Turner, Patrick Romer, Paul Hamilton, Philip Whitchurch, Pushkin, Youssef Kerkour