are on stage at BAM’s Harvey Theater in St. Petersburg’s Maly Theater Group’s production of Schiller’s Love and Intrigue.
Not that they’re doing star turns. Ensemble fellowship rules the day–without, let me qualify again, any loss of untrammeled flamboyance.
There’s superb acting all around, as director Lev Dodin tilts the production against the text at angles alternately refractive and neatly dovetailed. Sometimes he nearly parodies it, but then swoops in close to make its tale of abuse of power (written on the eve of the French Revolution) by the ethicless powerful, and its tragic consequences all the more unflinching.
It’s performed in Russian translation, and for those whose Russian is less exemplary (I’m totally kidding) than mine, there are English supertitles.