Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 8. April 27 1981

Play — Freedom to Conform

page 7

Play

Freedom to Conform

The Suicide

"The truth, and not a bloody bit of paper anywhere to write it on," mutters Semyon Podgsekainikov, the hero of Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide. Nor a stage to act it on. The play was banned when first produced in 1932 and has never been performed in Russia.

It's not really surprising that Stalin had reservations about The Suicide. After all Semyon is hardly your identikit prole hero - tripling production targets or powering past effete Westerners at the Olympics. Rather he is that staple of farce, the disenchanted little fellow. Unemployed and unimpressed with Stalin's ideal society he decides to end it all. "Life is wonderful," cries one of the characters, attempting to dissuade him, but it soon becomes apparent that this regulation ridden, authoritarian world is far from the best possible.

Erdman slyly points to the dismal reality not reported in Izvestia when he lifts Gogol's exultant passage in Dead Souls about a troika like Russia hurtling along to meet its destiny and gives it to one of his characters - who is promptly warned against speeding: "I suggest you adapt your metaphors to the regulations."

Individuals are also expected to conform within certain limits. Semyon complains, "I wanted to be a genius, but my parents were against it." Irregular components might cause society to malfunction. And an individual has no importance as such - only in so far as s/he relates to society.

Art, accordingly, exults not individuals but their input to society. The Marxist postman Egor, played with opportunistic relish by Colin McColl, delivers the official line: "I must stress once again that I am a postman, and what I want to read about is postmen."

Egor has no difficulty adapting Hamlet's decadent self-absorption into something more socially relevant: "We have just this moment received information from Comrade Marcellus that all is not well in the state of Denmark the rottenness of capitalism cannot but reveal itself."

Small Subversion

Naughty, naughty, Stalin might well have thought. But he didn't really have anything to worry about. The play's subversive impact is minimal because Erdman does not suggest how society can be improved The reformers who beseige Semyon when they hear of his intention, urging him to martyr himself for their cause, are all more foolish and knavish than the society they oppose.

The self serving member of the intelligentsia played acutely as an authoritative confidence trickster by Peter Vere-Jones. Louise Dunne as the jilted lover who thinks that Semyon's death could add to her allure. Ray Henwood as the coldly theorising writer ("The dead man, as such, is not important. What matters is the way we serve him up.")

They all have even less regard for Semyon as an individual than the authorities - in fact they want to eliminate his personality entirely. Once dead they can control him absolutely.

Semyon, however, in the end decides not to kill himself. "The idea of suicide made my life beautiful," he explains. The thought of extinction forces upon him an awareness of his uniqueness and separateness. "My self without me. Me without Podgsekalnikov. Think what a human being is," he muses. Erdman sets up a Christ parallel complete with resurrection on the third day to emphasise Semyon's new feeling of self worth.

No Alternative

Semyon has seen the light but he is no proselytiser. Ironically his new awareness of life's possibilities makes him reluctant to attempt to bring everyone into the congregation. His life is now too precious to him to risk losing. He explains to the disgruntled reformers, "I do not want to die, comrades. Not for you, not for them, not for the class struggle, not for humanity... I want a quiet life and a living wage."

And who can blame him. But I think that Erdman can be blamed for not putting up a cause which he could credibly die for. Of course Semyon isn't going to kill himself for the self serving reforms of those who are so keen to martyr him. Is Erdman suggesting that all reformers, like the rulers they aspire to replace, are corrupt? The view that revolutions never change society for the better is a reasonable enough one, indeed verging on orthodoxy. But it's not particularly strongly argued in this play. Erdman needs to do more than knock down a few straw figures, however adroitly, to make his point.

Paul Gittins as Semyon.

Paul Gittins as Semyon.

That Semyon's desire for self preservation, natural in one who has just discovered his own value, is not tested against an ideal worth fighting for is a dramatic as well as a logical failing. Semyon does not have to struggle to reach his decision to renounce society and therefore the play lacks the necessary tension which could have made it more than just an entertaining and penetrating insight into totalitarian society.

Brilliant Setting

The Downstage production captures the spirit of Erdman's madcap indictment. Tolis Papazoglou has devised a set containing about (I didn't think to count) 15 doors. Besides being metaphysically appropriate - Semyon's uncertainty as to what his exit from the world will entail - this superfluity of entrance ways opens the door (ha-ha) to all sorts of dramatic possibilities. The most dramatic of these perhaps being the stunning simultaneous delivery of funeral wreaths.

This ensemble playing is the highlight of the production. Phil Mann directs with hectic purpose scenes such as Semyon's debauched Last Supper, and his funeral where the reformers compete to bury him.

There is however too long a calm before the storm. The early scenes, dealing with Semyon's domestic circumstances, are extended and hackneyed. Paul Gittin's performance in the lead role, alternately melancholic and frenetic, relieves the tedium but Katy Platt and Helen Moulder struggle in their stereotyped roles as wife and mother-in-law. There are bright respites such as the hilarious episode where Semyon's pipe - or rather tuba - dreams of fame and fortune as a horn player are shattered but the play doesn't really take off until, well into it, the cast are sent rioting about the stage. These scenes however are worth waiting for.

The season will be almost over by the time you read this. I suggest you make haste to avail yourself of an opportunity which Erdman's contempories lacked and get to see this forceful interpretation of his witty and irreverent play.

David Beach