DRAMA REVIEW: Kurbas Theater's 'Games for Faust'

by Julie-Anne Franko

NEW YORK - In both Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and Goethe's "Faust," the theme of transgression - of crossing over the boundaries of traditional mores - tests the limits and limitations of a man's route to finding happiness and satisfaction.

In the Lviv-based Les Kurbas Theater's production of "Games for Faust" on February 23 at Columbia University's Katherine Bache Miller Theater, director Volodymyr Kuchynsky insightfully fused the two works' themes. Accordingly, his production crossed over a number of theatrical and international boundaries, and struck upon a multitude of universal chords.

The text for "Games for Faust," which was presented in Ukrainian with an English synopsis and ran for two uninterrupted hours to a diverse audience, was directly taken from scenes of a Ukrainian translation of "Crime and Punishment." This production mostly hinged upon the meeting between the student Raskolnikov (Andriy Vodychev), who is living with the murders of his landlady and her sister on his conscience, and Svidrigaylov (Oleh Drach), who knows of and plays upon Raskolnikov's guilt.

Through a series of games and dreamlike fantasies, the dynamic of Raskolnikov's struggle between good and evil established Mr. Vodychev's Raskolnikov as both an intellectual landloper and a truth-seeker against Mr. Drach's Svidrigaylov, who took on the qualities of Goethe's devil Mephistopheles.

In his portrayal of the parallels between Svidrigaylov and Mephistopheles, Mr. Drach's performance was impeccable. In the context of the latter's whimsical personal, Mr. Drach beguiled his captive audience with a variety of flamboyant traits that ranged from a devil-may-care donning of a live mouse, to his pushing characters over the boundaries of the stage and into the nether-world of the audience, or to conjuring up Hellenic-type women. Through all these escapades, Mr. Drach's timing, precision, focus and physical dexterity created a cunning, crafty and biting devil whose evil was vested with a wickedly delightful sense of humor.

In complement to Mr. Drach's largeness of presence, Mr. Vodychev's Raskolnikov was an able target and penitent whose talents lay in externalizing the intricacies of his struggles: his range included the subtleties of a sideward glance to release a moment's wit to the violent full-body contortions emblematic of Raskolnikov's tormented soul.

Adding to the confluence of these performances were two other talented presences - those of Natalka Polovynka (Dunya), who shared the closing scene with Mr. Drach, and Tetyana Kaspruk (Mother). Both of these actors functioned on and off stage as characters and muse-like entities. In this latter capacity, they seemed to preside over the theater as their floating white gowns moved with them in song (their voices are quite alluring), dance or observance of the action on stage.

In the program notes that accompanied this performance, it is stated that "since its inception in 1988, the Les Kurbas Theater has pursued the practice of 'Theater of Playfulness,' in which it is the actor and his acting that is the driving force behind each production." Without reservation, the presence of this driving force clearly existed in "Games for Faust." But behind this driving force is Mr. Kuchynsky's unnoted steering force, which should be held up for its due acclaim.

In "Games for Faust," Mr. Kuchynsky has taken two of the world's densest pieces of literature - neither of which are native to Ukraine - and extracted from them a work that was admirably told through a Ukrainian voice to an audience in an American theater.

In going past all the boundaries that the orchestration of such a work demands, Mr. Kuchynsky, along with his theater, has successfully crossed over to a new world. Not an act of transgression, but, in the form of a fine piece of theater, an act of transcendence.

Julie-Anne Franko is an M.F.A. candidate at Yale University's department of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 17, 1996, No. 11, Vol. LXIV

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