Reviews

Mariupol Drama at HOME Manchester – review

Ukrainian artist Yevhen Tyshchuk’s production runs until 18 January

Matt Barton

Matt Barton

| Manchester |

15 January 2025

Four actors onstage portraying a family gathered around a radio, listening intently
Matvii Kytrysh, Vira Lebedynska, Olena Bila and Ihor Kytrysh in Mariupol Drama, © Tiberi Shiutiv

A troupe of theatremakers, so used to telling other people’s stories, now slowly assembles on stage to tell their own. They are four survivors of the Russian airstrike of Ukraine’s Mariupol Theatre in March 2022: head of music and drama Vira Lebedynska, actors Olena Bila and Ihor Kytrysh and their young son, Matvii. Approximately 1,000 people joined them sheltering inside the theatre when the bomb hit; a still unknown but far smaller number escaped the wreckage with them.

It’s that theatre that gives this production its name. Otherwise, this is Mariupol documentary. There is no fiction. No contrivance. No theatrical special effects.

The story is simply told: the actors enter a perimeter marked by hazard tape, like ghosts returning to a disaster zone, then take it in turns to come forward and share memories (with English surtitles). Aided by occasional projected images and video, they take us from pre-invasion to the day of the airstrike, becoming more frantic as we approach the day itself.

That event colours everything. Their recollections aren’t so much happy and dreamy but mournful and grief-stricken, their stoic faces always a dam about to burst. But there is also innocent quotidian familiarity. Kytrysh gently teases Bila with the grudge he’s held over her overcooked pork, as any couple might. Matvii reminisces about the buses’ impressive WiFi and his collection of plasticine superheroes. A clothesline sways above them.

If there’s no stylistic concept to the piece, what’s haunting instead are the eerie parallels between the setting and our own: groups of people huddled inside a theatre. We hear how their seats slowly vanished as their theatre was gutted by its refugees for soft furnishings and kindling. Coat check tags are repurposed to identify helpers. They ask us to get out our phone torches, as they did, to illuminate a blackout.

Two silhouetted actors onstage under a dim red light
Olena Bila and Ihor Kytrysh in Mariupol Drama, © Tiberi Shiutiv

The explosion itself is heart-stopping. A blast of red light as the clothes plummet to smother them like the collapsed ceiling. Other moments are moving too. Matvii chalks the word for “children” on the floor, as it was outside the Mariupol Theatre in a desperate appeal to the Russian air force pilots. Kytrysh gives his son his meagre share of a chocolate bar that’s cut up for four people.

Bila powerfully conveys the panic of a mother who realised her husband can’t protect their family, told hopelessly to go to sleep and not listen to the city’s daily unnerving soundscape. And Kytrysh has a numbness that suggests he’s disturbed by the same realisation. Lebedynska talks about taking a fur coat to the shelter because she wanted to die like a lady.

Only an hour long, it feels like a capsule of a story. But its fragmentation reminds us of the lives and stories lost. And of the way memory becomes splintered when shellshocked.

At the curtain call, we are told our applause gives them strength, so Mariupol’s “theatrical heart is still beating”. They mouth “thank you” silently, no longer actors, just devastated human beings.

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