The Guardian, 27 July 1991, by Michael Billington.
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Patrick Garland clearly knows what Chichester wants. "Ooh," 
cried the lady behind me at 'Tovarich' rubbing her hands 
with glee, "A chaise lounge!" The combination of nice 
furniture, elegant people and a 40-carat star in the shape 
of Natalia Makarova obviously reassured the audience that 
God was in his Heaven and all was right with the world.

None of that can disguise the fact that "Tovarich," a French 
comedy written by Jacques Deval in 1934 and filmed with 
Colbert and Boyer in 1937, is a piece of old boulevard tosh. 
It deals with an emigre Russian Prince and Grand Duchess on 
their uppers in Thirties Paris. Bound by loyalty to the old 
regime not to touch the four billion francs-worth of Tsarist 
gold tucked away in a French bank, they go into service as 
butler and maid. All goes swimmingly until a swinish 
Commissar comes to dinner.

Politically, the play makes one interesting point: that, in 
the words of the Prince, neither Tsarism nor Communism 
represents the Russia of tomorrow. But it's hard to get 
worked up about the fate of a pair of imperial exiles at a 
time when the Soviet people were facing famine and 
destitution. Like many supposedly "well-made" plays, it is 
poorly plotted too.

The central couple are presented as symbols of perfection 
rather than the lunatic dreamers they really are. It is 
fascinating to note how boulevard comedy dilutes life's 
moral dilemmas. The real drama here is that Mikhail and 
Tatiana are confronted by the man who has, respectively, 
tortured and violated them: their response is one of frosty 
disdain and glacial good manners. Ariel Dorfman's "Death and 
Maiden" turns a parallel situation into an urgent debate on 
the ethics of revenge. My point is that introducing real 
tragedy into drawing-room comedy is like letting a herd of 
bulls loose in a small china-shop.

"Tovarich" is basically a vehicle for Natalia Makarova who 
acquits herself honourably. Her fractured English is 
charming though I have to admit that her opening 
announcement of "I'm looking for my testicles" threw me 
somewhat: her spectacles, maybe? Languidly draping her wrist 
over a chair-arm, she uses her prima ballerina poise to 
suggest the aristocratic mien of a Grand Duchess. Stooping 
to conquer in her maid's uniform, she also radiates an 
extraordinarily erotic charge.

Robert Powell as her proud Prince turns, with total 
conviction, into a stiff-backed Russian Jeeves and there is 
useful support from Rowland Davies as the bullfrog-banker 
who cannot believe his luck at finding two such employees. 
Patrick Garland also directs the whole charade with silky 
skill.

Chichester loved it, but it struck me as a mildewed romp 
playing on the audience's snobbish fantasies about the 
perfect solution to the servant problem.



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