My Chernobyl

As it turned out, I chose a suitably grey and dismal day to attend a play called My Chernobyl. I stepped in out of the dreary rain into the warm embrace of Persephone Theatre, and I was greeted by the sight of a cartoonish cooling tower and a mushroom cloud of cyrilic lettering above it. And I had to remind myself that I was about to watch a raucous comedy about an irradiated wasteland.

     My Chernobyl is a recent Canadian play which came out of Victoria five short years ago. It offers to provide a Canadian perspective on the nuclear disaster (sort of). Our main character is David, a nice guy Canadian who has been charged with delivering his own inheritance to a cousin in Belarus. And he's doing it, presumably because he's so nice. Soon, his nice nature gets him taken advantage of by a pair of scheming locals, and wrapped up with his old relation's comely daughter, who sees wedding bells when the rich Canadian comes knocking.

     It is a peculiar play. On one hand it is a tragedy of a country in shambles with its people forgotten (and the value they place on American culture is somewhat amusing given recent events). On the other hand it is a rollicking semi-Vaudevillian comedy with a little bit of fairy tale mixed in. Our setting is the edge of the "exclusion zone" - the 30km radius around Chernobyl deemed uninhabitable. People in this area are prone to cancer but unfortunately lacking in super powers. It's as hardscrabble a life as you can imagine. So when we watch the scheming supporting characters manoeuvre for more of David's money, we do so with the knowledge that they are clawing through the dirt for survival; a classic stock crook is underscored with a real sense of tragedy. All set to a soundscape of Bryan Adams music.

      Despite its basis in a real-world disaster (even more immediate now with the recent disaster in Japan), My Chernobyl maintains a whimsical feel. Scene transitions are accompanied by folk dancing interludes, where U of S acting alumna Alex Hartshorn puts her authentic Ukrainian dance skills to work keeping the stage vibrant with some beautiful choreography. When there is no dancing, we get these cartoonish scenes of "potato bandits" sneaking around the countryside. These transitions make the whole set feel alive, shifting from one place to another. And the way the actors themselves are involved in the set movement creates a cohesive feeling, like the flora and fauna of the play are all bound together in one large choreography.

     The plot unfolds in a storybook fashion. With the quick 90 minute runtime we don't have a lot of opportunity to digest the dramatic developments; we cling to them as they whisk us from one scene to another. We see a fairy tale romance unfold from the opposing perspective. David is thrust into this world and finds himself held up as a young damsel's saviour without really understanding what he is in for, and he seems oddly amenable to the idea. As the flaws in the fairy tale image begin to show, we want to caution David away, but he is too wrapped up by that point to make an escape.

     Elizabeth Nepjuk commands the stage as Natasha. I can see some of Puck in her, because she is a trickster character in her own way, albeit here her sly nature is tangled up with a truly tragic past. She provides the emotional centre of the play and some of its most spirited action. She has to ride the line of comedy and tragedy and seamlessly slips from one to the other. Every moment is filled with energy, and she keeps the action moving while playing off of Beaudry's comparatively subdued David.

     Blaine Hart and Pamela Haig Bartley both take on scene-stealing roles as the scheming locals Yuri and Katrina. Hart brings a lot of weight to his role and really delivers on the dark humour. He's great with the comic antics, but also slows for sombre moments. Haig Bartley is a bit more over-the-top, embodying her off-centre character with clumsy grace. Her comedic timing is impeccable, and she truly sinks in to Katrina's mismatched socks. I'm reminded of the question she often poses to her acting students: "to what end?" That piece of advice shows, as all of her choices are really followed through. Then Darren Zimmer shows up late in the show, countering the zanier characters with a drier sort of humour, in his personality-deprived government official.

     Josh Beaudry is often remembered for his colourful supporting characters, so it was a departure for me to see him in a low-key leading role. He succeeds at playing a very genuine character, and manages to add some small nuance to the general state of bewilderment that David always finds himself in. Then his final eruption right near the end is fun to watch.

     My Chernobyl is kind of directionless, and I mean that as both a compliment and a criticism. As a criticism, I mean that sections of this play that are entertaining on their own are strung together in a way that doesn't achieve much. Hart and Haig Bartley have a couple dialogues at different points in the play, largely divorced from the main action. The scenes are very funny and the actors showcase great chemistry, but ultimately gives off the sense of "meanwhile in a different play". And a lot of David's trajectory is disjointed. His actual personality is hard to pinpoint. As a compliment, I mean that there is an overall tone of directionlessness that ties the plot together. We have entered a hopeless world where David appears as this possible saviour, but people have been without hope for so long they don't know how to react.

     At its core, this is a very dark play for everyone involved. We see David being taken advantage of right at the beginning, but it's hard to get upset when we see the dreadful existence of the locals. They have been left behind to die by the rest of the world, and David will never know their suffering. But it's also frustrating to see them charging blindly forward in pursuit of money without considering what they will do with it. Katrina keeps talking about buying a new truck, but no amount of money she swindles appears to get her any closer to buying. Yuri articulates the problem clearly: "I always want more money. It's in my nature." They are the refuse of capitalist society, driven to desire money but far away from a place where it will do them any good.

     Before I started writing this review, I spoke about the play with my good friend Torien Cafferata, and he first put me on to the idea of a Russian fairytale. The more I think about that idea, the more it seems to tie the threads of this play together. The problem with reading Grimm fairy tales in their close-to-original form is that they are so incredibly frustrating. The main characters are typically stupid and bereft of personality, stumbling their way through events to some heroic or gruesome end; the stories take weird, inexplicable twists and have sometimes incomprehensible endings that reflect back on the values of a culture totally alien to us. Taking that perspective, the disjointed nature of this play makes more sense. David is a minimalist protagonist, who begins the play on a quest to carry out the wishes of his father against all human rationality (as fairy tale characters do) and he is swept from one scene to another, tacitly accepting his circumstance, until he finds his princess. Then the fairy tale begins to unravel (it has a meltdown, if you will allow me to be crass), that veneer, for whatever it was worth, is lifted, and we find ourselves staring into the heart of the troubled culture that created the tale in the first place.

     My Chernobyl has a lot of things going for it, with the talented cast and heavy themes. But it suffers from not entirely knowing what it's doing. There were ideas and commentaries in the script that could have been punched further, and character arcs that needed to be cleaned up. The direction could have darkened the comedy by a couple shades to make the grim ending less of a hairpin turn. Still, it's an entertaining, emotional ride that makes good viewing for a dreary evening.