Maxim Gorky’s play exists in two versions – one written in 1910, the other in 1935 –both of which feature a domineering female entrepreneur. Emily Juniper has come up with a new version for The Faction theatre company which transposes the action to Liverpool during a 1990s dock strike. It’s a fearful muddle, not helped by some sloppy diction and one of those background hums which, partly thanks to Ivo van Hove’s A View from the Bridge, are now all the rage.
The whole point about Gorky’s play, especially in its later version, is that it arouses a reluctant sympathy for a member of the doomed enemy class. It is hard, however, to feel anything much for Juniper’s Vassa. She may have started out poor, but she runs her shipping company with an iron hand, shows no regard for the striking workers, bullies and blackmails the press and police over revelations about her child-molesting husband, and browbeats her radical, ecologically passionate daughter-in-law. Gorky’s play is about a woman who has endured a lifelong struggle to reconcile family values and business success: Juniper’s version, which confusingly keeps the original Russian names, is simply a study of a murderously abrasive ship owner.
Compression of the action into 90 minutes heightens the story’s melodrama, and Rachel Valentine Smith’s production is initially hard to follow. But Sian Polhill-Thomas, although she occasionally swallows her words, conveys Vassa’s ruthless single-mindedness and there is decent support from Luke Shaw as her dissolute husband, Amelia Donkor as her fiery daughter-in-law and Joss Wyre as a disturbed child. Russian plays, however, work best when not uprooted from their historical context.
- At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 9 July. Box office: 020-7407 0234.
