THEATRE
The War Hasn't Started Yet
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
FIVE STARS
Russian troops are already in Ukraine, but, technically, the war hasn't started, has it? Don't be fooled: as the various episodes in Mikhail Durnenkov's eagle-eyed study of everyday lives makes clear, ordinary Russians already feel themselves under mental and emotional siege. For some, it's a ready excuse to escape reality through online shopping, mobile phone games, vodka by the bucket-load. This section is tagged Addicts. In director Davey Anderson's taut adaptation of the original text (from a literal translation by Alexandra Smith) each vignette is flagged up with a cardboard sign, like exhibits from a human zoo. We recognise them, of course. In similar circumstances, we would be the same. Losing the place in panic, taking it out on others, believing what we see on TV is true but convinced that our loved ones are deceiving us...
These frailties and fears are given convincing expression by a cast of only three - Lewis Howden, Anita Vettesse and Mark Wood - who don't just quick-change costuming but create distinct, in-depth characters in the process. They play along with the dark humour that goes hand-in-hand with the Russian bent for poetic intensity, but Durnenkov's collage of anxious humanity has ironic bite, brutality and anger in its make-up and they deal subtly, illuminatingly, with these. Howden's silence, in the face of his son's can-do generousity - he has bought his parents a swish summer cottage - is steeped in complex resentments, while Wood's self-absorption as he recounts how he stopped smoking has a de-humanising twist. Vettesse simply shines as every woman, from hard-nosed news reporter to bullied, battered wife whose home is her war zone. Fiercely compelling and achingly brought to life.
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