Jewish Chronicle, August 2, 1991, by David Sonin
-----------------------------------------------------------

In the 1930s, theatre and cinema on both sides of the 
Atlantic made a cottage industry out of poking fun at post-
revolutionary Russia. Greta Garbo's jack-booted commissar in 
"Ninotchka," and Jacques Deval's maid and butler in his 
comedy "Tovarich," conjured sympathy for the disinherited 
and a nostalgia for an imperial Russia, that, despite its 
feudal despotism, remained potently attractive.

But 60 years on and in the era of perestroika, can we be 
sure that the Ninotchkas and Tovariches have our sympathy 
and that we can laugh at, rather than with, them? Patrick 
Garland's sparkling production of "Tovarich" at the 
Chichester Festival Theatre is a gamble that we will. And 
furthermore, he bets that we will overlook the fact that the 
play creaks at the joints and its barbs no longer have the 
keenest of edges.

Garland's casting of Natalia Makarova, the former prima 
ballerina of the Kirov Ballet, is inspired, for she moves 
with the majesty and assurance of one whose place in the 
stratospheric regions of Soviet society was the equivalent 
of a Grand Duchess. It no doubt pleased Garland to overhear 
during a preview: "She moves beautifully; she must have had 
dancing lessons."

We meet Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich Ouratief (Robert 
Powell), a chamberlain to the late Tsar, and his imperial 
wife, the Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna (Natalia Makarova), 
when they are reduced to their last 100 francs, which she 
gives to the hungry. Despite his precarious circumstances, 
he refuses to touch a four-billion-franc fortune entrusted 
to him by the Tsar to fund counter-revolution.

After a life of service, they conclude that domestic 
servitude would suit them just as well. They join a stolid, 
yeoman banker (Rowland Davies) and his rather solid wife 
(Sarah Badell) as domestics and carry on a predictable and 
amusing charade until their identity is revealed.

If it then that Deval's comic writing limps to a premature 
close and events become serious, as Prince and Duchess 
confront a dinner guest, Oil Commissar Gorotchenko (Tony 
Britton), who tortured him in the Lubyanka and raped her 
somewhere between Kronstadt and Bratislava.

The Commissar, playing on their patriotism, tells them he 
has to sell Russia's oil for four billion francs to buy 
urgently-needed tractors to stave off famine.

Obviously, it would be better to have the Tsar's cash than 
barter Russian sovereignty.

Blood, we know, is thicker than oil or water and in true 
aristocratic and selfless style they hand over the Tsar's 
fortune. Noblesse oblige. And a nice, if predictable, note 
on which to finish.



-----------------------------------------------------------
                     Bentley's Bedlam
            http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html

This website is for information and entertainment purposes only 
and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.