Moscow, 1938. A dangerous to place to have a sense of humour; even more so a sense of freedom. Mikhail Bulgakov, living among dissidents, stalked by secret police, has both. And then he s offered a poisoned chalice: a commission to write a play about Stalin to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. Sponsored by Travelex £12 Tickets
Dates: Opens 01 November 2011. Feb6,7,8,9,10,11,14,15,16,17,18,20,21,22,23,24,25,27,28,29,Mar 1,16,17,19,20,21,22,28,29,30,21 at 19:30. Feb 19,11,29, Mar 17,20,29,31 Mats
Jacqueline Defferary (Yelena) & Alex Jennings (Bulgakov)
Date: 2 November 2011
John Hodge, who wrote the screenplays for Trainspotting, Shallow Grave and The Beach, among others, has written a new play about the relationship between Stalin and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, which premiered at the NT Cottesloe last night (1 November 2011, previews from 25 October).
Starring National Theatre stalwarts Simon Russell Beale and Alex Jennings, Collaborators is inspired by historical truth and sees Bulgakov put in an unenviable position when he's apporached by the Russian dictator to pen a play for his 60th birthday.
Directed by Nicholas Hytner, the cast also features Mark Addy, Sarah Annis, Marcus Cunningham, Jacqueline Defferary, Patrick Godfrey, Michael Jenn, Jess Murphy, William Postlethwaite, Pierce Reid, Nick Sampson, Maggie Service and Perri Snowdon.
"Nicholas Hytner’s fluent, entertaining production scores several bulls eyes: the creative resuscitation of a failed film project; the electric reunion of two of the NT’s signature stars, Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale; and a dreamscape setting by Bob Crowley … Jennings’ Bulgakov is a stylish, tortured figure, bending to the necessities of art and the loyalty of his wife (nicely done by Jacqueline Defferary), hypnotised even by Stalin’s bullish enthusiasm and sleight of mind; those characteristics are at the heart of Russell Beale’s vocally adroit performance, more casually callous than you’d expect and only scuppered by a wig that sticks out at the back like a china shell, revealing a hedge of real hair beneath … Hytner’s production is impeccable, with a third notably fine performance from Mark Addy ... William Postlethwaite makes a mark too.”
"John Hodge is an honest man. He admits his new play about the relationship between Josef Stalin and the writer Mikhail Bulgakov derives from a film which was never made. But, while the result has a quirky vitality and yields two outstanding performances, its satire does not strike its intended target ... While it is true that there are well-known accounts of the umbilical connection between the two, the play's practical result is to diminish Bulgakov; he becomes an emblem of the fatally compromised artist, whereas today he is remembered for the audacity of his attacks on the Soviet ethos, such as The Heart of a Dog, Molière, and The Master and Margarita … While I may question Hodge's arguments, his play has a nightmarish vivacity well captured in Nicholas Hytner's freewheeling production on Bob Crowley's zig-zagging traverse stage. And, if Bulgakov is seen as a reluctant victim of a brutal system, Alex Jennings memorably endows him with an extra-textual complexity."
Libby Purves The Times ★★★★
"Ought John Hodge, screenwriter of Trainspotting, to be encouraged to distort into an absurdist nightmare the historical fact that Mikhail Bulgakov, a liberal dissident terrified for his wife, was ordered to write an admiringly biographical play about Joe Stalin’s youth? Yes. Nicholas Hytner has commissioned, and directs, something odd, but rare and special ... The first act is almost criminally funny: we meet Bulgakov (Alex Jennings) … He is summoned to nocturnal meetings with Stalin himself, deep below the Kremlin … The rest of the play is a study in corruption interspersed with imaginary sections of the work-in-progress … This is about serious things: corruption, exploitation, the mutual fascination of the powerful and the artist. But it dares to be dryly funny. As when Mark Addy as Vladi the stage-struck KGB man, says, ‘I want a rich and fruitful creative relationship, and I appreciate that in my role as producer/director I may have overstepped the mark in threatening to shoot your wife.’”
"John Hodge’s gripping, disturbing and often blackly comic drama attempts to get inside the writer’s head … The piece breaks the surly bonds of realism, which is perhaps the only way to tackle the monstrous cruelty and terror of Stalin’s regime … Nicholas Hytner’s giddily disorienting production, with an ingenious in-the-round design by Bob Crowley … There is a fine supporting cast, with especially fine work from Jacqueline Defferary as Bulgakov’s loving anxious wife, and Mark Addy as a terrifyingly cheery secret policeman. But this production will be best remembered for its dream-casting of Alex Jennings as the harassed, haunted Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale as a Stalin … Jennings’ sweaty anxiety as Bulgakov finds himself traped by his tormentor’s devious wiles is superbly caught … This is a truly tremendous double act which thrills chills and makes you laugh out loud - even though you know you shouldn’t."
"It is a striking vision of artistic compromise, personal sacrifice and political brutality, rendered in what is often a somewhat Blackadderish style. And Nicholas Hytner's agile production is illuminated by fine performances from two of the National Theatre's stalwarts, Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale. Hodge's writing is a tribute to Bulgakov's anarchic spirit. It is farcical and quirky, episodic and surreal. Yet it is more layered than it at first appears … While there are moments when the absurdity seems excessive, it is satisfyingly inventive … Russell Beale's Stalin, introduced in a zany Benny Hill sequence, is at times almost huggable … the performance darkens impressively. Mark Addy is robustly enjoyable as secret policeman Vladimir, and Patrick Godfrey and Nick Sampson provide strong support. There is also a memorable set by Bob Crowley and ingenious music by George Fenton. The production is knowingly cartoonish, albeit with touches of grim nightmare. Staging the play in the round does not seem ideal, as details of the physical comedy are now and then invisible. But while not all the satire hits the mark, Collaborators is fresh and energetic, with a thick, throbbing vein of grotesque humour."
"The show opens with a silent dream sequence in which Stalin, after much banging on doors and a burst of white-lit smoke, enters Bulgakov’s flat via the wardrobe and clubs the seditious scribe with a typewriter … Beale does this with a manic, cartoon gleam. He has the tweaked-up fringe of a provincial mayor. Bulgakov is done with amiable dreaminess by Alex Jennings. Jennings is always lovely to watch, even if he lacks some intensity. Look out; too, for Mark Addy as a secret policeman of the geezer variety … The production is dominated by Beale. He gives Stalin a strange accent which wobbles between Cockney and camp Gloucestershire. Pam Ayres meets Dr Strangelove by way of Benny Hill ... The performance is a bit of a mess but Beale is always compulsive viewing. Maybe crazy caricature is the only way of starting to capture Stalin in a two-and-a-half-hour tragi-comedy. We start to see Stalin’s evil genius when he compromises Bulgakov by giving him a taste of executive power."
There is a famous West End photograph of an impresario as puppet master called “Binkie pulls the strings,” an image replicated on the programme cover for John Hodge’s fascinating new play about Joe Stalin and Mikhail Bulgakov, the latter tangled up in his master’s typewriter.
While it’s true that the dissident playwright accepted a commission to write a celebratory play about Young Stalin while secretly sweating over his last great novel, The Master and Margarita, Hodge goes further and suggests a Faustian pact in which Bulgakov in effect becomes an instrument of the Great Terror.
This outrageous calumny is a small price to pay for the real theatrical point, which is that of any complicity between politician and artist, manager and worker, National Theatre boss and employee. In a series of underground meetings, Stalin takes over the writing himself while Bulgakov signs off the steel order ultimatums.
It’s a brilliant metaphor, and Nicholas Hytner’s fluent, entertaining production scores several bulls eyes: the creative resuscitation of a failed film project by the screenwriter of Trainspotting and Shallow Grave (Hodge pays full acknowledgement to Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin biography); the electric reunion of two of the NT’s signature stars, Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale; and a dreamscape setting by Bob Crowley in a reconfigured Cottesloe of a ziggurat-style pathway through the audience and Bulgakov’s apartment, littered with inserted and spiritedly performed extracts of his banned play about Moliѐre.
Jennings’ Bulgakov is a stylish, tortured figure, bending to the necessities of art and the loyalty of his wife (nicely done by Jacqueline Defferary), hypnotised even by Stalin’s bullish enthusiasm and sleight of mind; those characteristics are at the heart of Russell Beale’s vocally adroit performance, more casually callous than you’d expect and only scuppered by a wig that sticks out at the back like a china shell, revealing a hedge of real hair beneath.
This shocking lapse apart, Hytner’s production is impeccable, with a third notably fine performance from Mark Addy as a theatre-struck secret policeman, directing the new play with a gun at his belt. William Postlethwaite makes a mark, too, as a young writer whom Bulgakov can’t save, while Pierce Reid is a revolutionary worker consigned to the writer’s cupboard and Nick Sampson a scrofulous doctor transformed by everyday corruption and lust for an actress.
My time of intensive / obsessive theatregoing has coincided with Simon Russell Beale's self-described teddy bear period. I didn't see him as Iago or Macbeth so it came as something of a surprise to find him cast as Stalin. John Hodge's play about a collaboration between Stalin and the mildly dissident writer Bulgakov begins with a dream of Stalin bursting out of a cupboard and chasing Bulgakov around the stage. It's like a Benny Hill sketch and frankly things don't improve much from that point on. To be fair I can't stand absurdist humour but the conceit that Stalin would let Bulgakov have a taste of power and decision-making at the height of the reign of terror whilst he wrote his own hagiographic play is risible. Nick Hytner and Beale have decided to portray Stalin as almost avuncular with a Gloucestershire accent and only the slightest hint of the monster beneath. Alex Jennings is more convincing as Bulgakov, willing to sup with the devil in order to get his plays performed and there is good support from Mark Addy as an NKVD officer and especially Jacqueline Defferary as Bulgakov's devoted wife. Hodge and Hytner might argue that Collaborators is more about Bulgakov than Stalin and a satire on state control and censorship, but my view is that a comedy about one of the most evil men in history is totally inappropriate. - David Baxter
20 Jan 12
I think this production was brilliant, and one of the best non Shakespeare productions at the NT in a long time. The cast was simply superb.
Its a production that kept you at the edge of your seat the whole way through, but it balanced out comedy and tragedy really well. I loved that instead of making one scene purely comic and another tragic and depressing they mixed it and that they never forgot to exclude the general atmosphere-this is Soviet Russia after all, where there is no free will or freedom and fear was an underlying emotion and feeling in every scene.
Simon Russell Beale was brilliant. When Stalin came in he had this type of joking schoolboy air around him, and you just think-hold on...is this supposed to be STALIN??? But SRB wove so much emotion and depth into the character, and you didn't even realise how much the character changed over the scene, that's how suble and brilliant it was. The joking and humourous side worked really well, but there was that dark side to him, that never let you let down your guard. SRB made the audience SYMPATHISE with Stalin, something I really didn't think possible, but in the end it was just manipulation. Manipulation or not Stalin was brilliant!
Alex Jennings was a brilliant Bulgakov, with warmth of character, wit, (sometimes) sarcastic humour and so very human-a talented playwright, opressed by the state he lives in, but persistent, always standing his ground. The way you can see Bulgakov change over the play is really amazing, and I think Alex jennings portayed his dilemma brilliantly. The character is in such an impossible situation, a situation which challenges every belief and promise you've ever thought of or you've ever made to yourself and to others and the stress is great. Alex jennings showed that really well.
The supporting cast was superb, and the set brilliant. i think staging it in the Cottesloe was a great idea I felt like I was in the play (And I was watching this on NT LIVE).
The ending was also brilliant, something I would never have imagined. Stalin didn't just mess with Bulgakovs mind, he messed with ours, and although I hate being manipulated, SRB did it brilliantly. :)
Once again, a stunning production, and a must see for who ever lives in London. - Laura H.
02 Dec 11
There are no greater actors working at the moment than Simon Russell Beale and Alex Jennings, and this wonderful new play gives them both the ideal vehicle. The rapport between them (as actors) is palpable, because their contrasting styles (Jennings all buttoned up and angst-ridden, SRB relaxed and at ease with himself) so wonderfully suit the characters they play. The play itself is a tour de force, and one is tempted to think that it is exactly the sort of play that Bulgakov would have written himself - a mixture of satire, high comedy and serious political comment. It is a miracle of compression, with scenes overlapping and flashbacks playing while the main action is still going on, but it is never obscure or confusing. It is good to see that it is to be transferred to the Oliver, for it richly deserves both a larger audience and a bigger stage. The best new play at the NT for many a year. - sc
26 Nov 11
When they first read the play, I would imagine the reaction was ‘how are we going to stage this?’, such is the cinematic quality of the writing – not surprising given the playwright seems to have only ever done screenplays before. Well, I suppose if anyone was going to pull it off, it would be Nicholas Hytner (with help from Bob Crowley’s clever set with four entrances – and what seems like a lot of dangerous angles).
The starting point is of course true. Stalin liked Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard (brilliantly staged at the National just last year) which led to him being asked (?) to write something about Stalin. Beyond this, much is speculation and fantasy in John Hodge’s play. Stalin ends up writing most of the play about his early life while Bulgakov runs the country, benefiting from Stalin’s patronage to a point where it is almost Faustain.
This is all surprisingly entertaining and often funny (though it gets darker in the second half) with lots of short scenes interrupted by flash forward rehearsal scenes of the play what they are writing. Of course, when you have Alex Jennings as Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale as Stalin, two of our best actors at the height of their powers, you’ve got a head start and both deliver the goods bigtime. Mark Addy is also outstanding as a secret service officer / intermediary and there’s excellent support from Nick Sampson as a doctor, William Postlethwaite (the late great Peter’s son) as idealistic young writer Grigory and Pierce Reid as Sergei, who inhabits the Bulgakov’s kitchen cupboard in true Bulgakov fashion!
It’s a fascinating picture of the mechanics of a tyranny and in particular Stalin’s. He only has to think of something and its done. There are acts of extraordinary generosity as well as vile deeds – everything, of course, for a reason. There is much depth to the characterisations of Bulgakov and Stalin and their mutually dependent relationship is intriguing.
At last a new play at the National worthy of the venue’s stature. - Gareth James
23 Nov 11
"A wig that sticks out at the back like a china shell." Sorry to contradict your scathing rhetoric, but Mr Russel Beale isn't wearing a wig in this production. I don't know who shopuld be more offended, the department in question or poor Mr Russel Beale himself. Please look a little closely next time before being so vitriolic. - Ms Casey
03 Nov 11
Great play on integrity of artists with an satirical twist. At times it felt like the actors were going to burst into song due to the domiant score but then are thrown back into the bleak reality of an oppressive system. Beale and Jennings are giving masterclasses and Addy as the "opponent" to Jennings´Bulgakov who is inevidably "eaten by the revolution" is a great asset to the play. The set is a major factor in the make or break of the production as it limits the actors movements and could have proved prone to interrupt the speedy flow of the action. It´s a great approach to the subject. Love to see it again. - Elisabeth
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