Opus No 7

The Dome, Brighton

3/5

CELEBRATING the power of image and object to stir the spirit, this two-part production in the Brighton Festival is by Moscow-based director Dmitry Krymov whose work provides a distinctively Russian sense of physical and visual theatre.

A lyrical and starkly sung polyphonic requiem to the Jews of eastern Europe by the highly skilled young performers of his company sets a tone of thoughtful introspection in Genealogy, the first piece. 

The eyes are drawn to old photographs of Russian Jews, then a vintage pram rolls onstage, kicked by a man in uniform projected on the backdrop behind — a reference perhaps to Sergei Eisenstein’s classic film Battleship Potemkin.

Piles of children’s shoes evoke images, presumably of the Holocaust, but the cumulative effect of these scenes, though intriguing, fails to seduce the viewer into leaving conscious thought behind.

The second part, Shostakovich, explores the at times difficult life and career of the Soviet-era composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the piece is unmistakably critical of the political system in which he worked. 

Before a huge red grand-opera style velvet curtain, Shostakovich as a little boy is played with great skill and charm by Anna Sinyakina in an oversized brown suit and round glasses. 

A massive puppet — a giant and awe-inspiring matriarch with slowly blinking eyelids, enormous bosom and pointing finger — appears. This Mother Russia carries a pistol up her black-lace sleeve and shoots to kill and, after an execution of cardboard images of what appear to be the artistic friends of Shostakovitch, a comical cat-and-mouse chase ensues.

With original music by Alexander Bakshi, alongside Shostakovich’s harrowing Piano Trio No 2 and his epic Opus No 7, grand pianos are constructed, set on fire, violently swung and smashed into each other in a cacophony of rage, confusion and fear. 

Shostakovich runs, hides and climbs the chandeliers, while the composer’s recorded voice speaks of his gratitude and obligation to Soviet socialism.

It’s beautifully provocative imagery but, for anyone wishing to fill in the gaps in Wikipedia on the composer’s life and relationship with Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party, this doesn’t quite fit the bill.

Runs at the Barbican Centre in London from June 4-14. Box office: (020) 7638-8891.

Tanushka Marah