Black Milk

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A year ago Vassily Sigarev made a big impact with Plasticine: a dark, Dostoevskian study of a Urals urban hell. But, where that relied heavily on visceral shock, Sigarevs new play strikes me as an infinitely richer affair that blends a portrait of a marriage with a vivid picture of Russias unending contradictions.

‘Sigarevs setting is a railway station in a provincial hell-hole. And waiting for a non-arriving train are Levchik, a Moscow trader, and his heavily pregnant wife, Poppet, who have come to fleece the locals by selling them cheap Malaysian toasters. But Sigarev achieves an astonishing second act reversal by showing the young couple, 10 days later, still stuck in the same station: the key difference is that Poppet, having been delivered of her baby by a local midwife, wants to settle down in this rural backwater.

‘What makes the play so exciting is its effortless mix of personal and social detail. On one level, its an account of an abrasive modern marriage in which antagonism equal love and every endearment is spelt with four letters; and, just when you think Levchik is a total bastard, Sigarev upends all your assumptions by implying he may also be Poppets protector. Through his portrait of two city slickers descending on the provinces, Sigarev also demonstrates Russias perennial divisions: nothing is more moving than the sight of the locals come to protest about their useless toasters and being cowed by Levchiks brazen impudence.

‘But the moving thing about the play, in Sasha Dugdales translation, is that it feels both ancient and mode

— Chekhov and Gorki might have recognised its image of a rural Russia in which theres not even a local hospital, though as the station ticket clerk revealingly remarks there was a first aid post once. At the same time Sigarev offers a sardonic account of the new, post-communist Russia in which spivvery is rampant and in which, as Poppet claims: Its trendy to hate and look down on everyone.
‘Where Plasticine was dominated by its promenade style, here Simon Ushers Theatre Upstairs production captures exactly Sigarevs social nuances. Delia Peels railway station is a masterpiece of decay. Paul Ready also suggests that Levchiks bullying bravado and rat-like cunning conceals an unarticulated love while Sarah Cattles Poppet changes from metallic urban hard-heart to pallid rustic dreamer. Gary Oliver as an ineffectual hitman and Suzan Sylvester as the ticket clerk who is both exploiter and solicitous child carer confirm Sigarevs point that the contradictions in the Russian psyche remain eternal.
rn. (Four Stars) Michael Billington, THE GUARDIAN

The young Russian dramatists Vassily Sigarev, still only in his mid-twenties, arrived with a bang in Britain last year. His first play, Plasticine, a harrowing odyssey through the lower depths of contemporary Russia, received a stunning promenade production at the Royal Court and won Sigarev the evening Standards most promising playwright award.

Now he is back with a play that strikes me as even better. Plasticine was a great howl of despair about the brutality, injustice and corruption of contemporary Russia, and, though its nightmarish pessimism made for mesmerising theatre, it also seemed a touch facile. Black Milk, in contrast, explores a broader, subtler palette. It moves between harsh realism and flights of dramatic poetry, between gentle humour and thuggish violence. The characterisation is richer, and the play doesnt rule out the possibility of hope and redemption.

The action is set too deep in the heart – or is it the fundament? – of Russia, at a tiny rural station where only three trains stop each day. A narrator describes the cheerless run-down building, superbly realised in Delia Peels design, with something of the beauty of a genre painting. And then, into this becalmed, benighted backwater come too lippy young Muscovites on the make.

Levchik and Poppet stagger into the station waiting room carrying laundry bags filled with dodgy toasters that they are flogging to the local yokels. They regard their mug punters with contempt, sneer at everything and though Poppet – who is eight months pregnant but smokes like a Stakhanovite whenever she isnt sucking a lollipop like a mardy child – seems merely sour and bitchy, her husband reveals a touch of the psychopath beneath his glib sales banter.

The clash of values – slow rural stolidity and suspicion vs city slicker money-grubbing – is hilariously caught, never more so than when a group of cowed villagers arrive clutching their tacky toasters and try to pluck up the courage to demand a refund.

But the play goes deeper than a modern Russian version of a coney-catching Jacobean comedy. When a boozed up communist arrives with a shotgun, pandemonium breaks out and Poppy goes into labour, screaming hysterically as an express train roars through the station.

The second half takes place 10 days later. Poppet is now the mother of a baby daughter, and we realise that this shallow, spiteful young woman has been transformed by motherhood, the kindness of the local community and a vision of God. The Russians have always been less nervous of writing about the life of the soul than we buttoned-up Brits, and though Poppets spiritual experience may seem over-the-top to some, I found it both plausible and profoundly affecting. Unfortunately the odious Levchik is still on hand, determined to reclaim Poppets soul for his own, and the play turns into a harrowing battle of wills.

Simon Usher directs a marvellously resonant and atmospheric production, as alert to the plays humour as he is to its deeper themes. Though largely naturalistic, the piece also comes over as a paradigm of the great divide between old and new Russia in the post-communist world, and the acting is outstanding.

Sarah Cattle beautifully captures Poppets transformation, Paul Ready brings an edge of real terror to the stage as Levchik, and there is outstanding support from Suzan Sylvester as the garrulous ticket-office clerk, Sheila Reid as a dignified pensioner, Di Botcher as Poppets delightful midwife and Gary Oliver, doubling as narrator and trigger happy drunk.

The Royal Court has discovered a tremendous new talent in Sigarev, and done him proud.

— Charles Spencer, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

She to him: Youre a real git, you are. He to her: I know. She, looking down at her midriff: And Im the one about to give birth to another one.

The scene is a railway station somewhere in provincial Russia. Levchik, a wheeler-dealer spiv, and his pregnant Poppet are waiting for a train, and they might almost as well be waiting for Godot. While they wait, things happen that make this Nowheresville now more frightening than we might have imagined, now more heartening. This is where shell have to give birth. Isnt she just another git like Levchik? In fact, shes harder, less compassionate.

Until Act Two. The same place, 10 days later. Poppet, Levchik and their new baby are waiting for the train to take them back home. A local woman called Auntie Pasha is with them; she has helped Poppet to give birth and in the first arts of motherhood. Her simple kindness and generosity light up the play.

They light up Poppet, too. For her, this Nowheresville is no longer a hellhole, its a Somewheresville, and it has brought some instinct for moral values back into her grim life. Because she smoked through her pregnancy, her child wont suckle from her, but she has hopes that, if she never smokes again, that will change.

Shes wan, vulnerable, and she wants to stay here; she wants Levchik to invest their lives and money here. He is scornful. In the past 10 days, a man at this station has died of poisoned vodka; the ticket clerk has taken the blame and has attempted suicide. Whether Levchik or Poppet will depart is a battle that runs until the end of the play.

Different forms of pollution keep striking us to the end of the play, too, and add to its ambiguities and ambivalence. Levchik and Poppet, the predatory urban filth who corrupt the provinces; the locals who lie to the urban visitors and scare them with guns; the homemade vodka that kills; Poppets own milk that her child wont drink.

Pollution is implicit in the plays title, Black Milk. The author, Vassily Sigarev, is also the author of Plasticine, the Royal Court production of which impressed many last year. Sigarev was born in 1977, and Black Milk would be compelling just as reportage on contemporary Russia by a new voice. Its remarkable for other reasons too. Both its acts work up to nightmare climaxes, and beyond the idea of pollution is also the possibility of redemption. Levchik can show charity to a poor widow. Poppet can become a good mother. Even milk that flows black can reflect the darkness and the light of the sky at night.

Sigarev is not a great playwright, and at times hes not a good one. The beginning and end of the play – both as written, and, differently, as performed – are too fancy. Act One in particular has creaky passages. There is an irritating loose end: whose vodka was poisonous? Sasha Dugdale, translating, and Simon Usher, directing, sometimes add to the creakiness. Yet mainly I want to congratulate Sigarev, Dugdale, Usher, and most of their actors, Di Botcher transforms the play as Auntie Pasha; and Sarah Cattle (Poppet) and, especially, Paul Ready (Levchik) rivetingly and accurately bring out the plays contrasts: hard/soft, kind/cruel. Corrupt/redeemable. Its so good to encounter a bright new voice from Russia that its tempting to over-rate Sigarev, but already I applaud him with excitement.

— Alastair Macaulay, FINANCIAL TIMES

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