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Crowd Pleaser Plays It Safe With Slapstick

city Vladimir Lupovskoy
Yevgeny Grishkovets is the apologist and champion of the modern Russian nerd. In an age when thugs, hoods, gangsters and brutes rule the roost, it is an understandable development.

Grishkovets' hero -- and no matter how many plays and how many characters he creates, it appears he will forever be a one-hero writer -- is the guy who suddenly begins to stutter before saying "I love you." He is the guy who spills coffee on his shirt and drips ice cream on his tie. He is the guy who trips on the crack in the sidewalk, doesn't realize the glass door is closed before trying to walk through it and sneezes after the conductor lifts his baton.

This is what has made Grishkovets more than a popular writer and actor who usually performs his own hit plays "How I Ate a Dog," "Dreadnoughts," "Planet" and others; it has made him a pop phenomenon. Klutzes everywhere have seen themselves in Grishkovets' reflection and have come to his shows to applaud their own living image on stage. As such, it probably was only a matter of time before he would come together with the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, a playhouse that in recent years has taken great pains to follow trends carefully.

The result is "The Siege," a play that, in at least one way, is unlike those that made Grishkovets famous. Rather than the one-man pieces he writes for himself or the occasional two- or three-actor plays that others sometimes perform, "The Siege" is Grishkovets' attempt to write a full-fledged, traditional play. It features seven actors, of which five have substantial roles, and a small musical ensemble that performs off to the side of the stage. According to the program, the author himself occasionally will take on one of the minor roles, but this work was created expressly to give him an opportunity to restrict his activities to writing and directing, letting others impersonate his characters.

The theme is one Grishkovets often develops to one degree or another -- that of the soldier and his job of war. This time we are treated to two stories that run simultaneously in vastly different time frames but which ultimately remind us how little things ever change.

Seated facing each other on the forestage are a modern veteran (Sergei Ugryumov) and a new recruit (Oleg Solovyov) whose tales of battles past are constantly interrupted by the acting out of a scene from the time of the Greeks. A trio of bumbling Greek sailors has imposed a blockade on an enemy's fortress and they bicker among themselves about how best to break the standoff. The First Warrior (Andrei Smolyakov, and, in another cast, Igor Zolotovitsky) is a tough superior with heart. The Second Warrior (Valery Troshin) is a militant type who is capable of writing a tender letter home to his girlfriend. The Third Warrior (Alexander Usov) is an articulate, nonviolent nonconformist with an Achilles heel -- literally. Whether he is Achilles himself or a reasonable facsimile thereof, he can only be wounded by a blow to his heel.

Wandering through in episodes of varying lengths are Icarus (Maxim Kakosov), who desperately wants to devise a way to fly but keeps falling flat on his face, and a goddess (Yekaterina Litovka), who oversees such tasks as the running up of the ship's flag and the movement of clouds across the sky.

Larisa Lomakina's set incorporates one of the key qualities of Grishkovets' work -- his affinity for things homespun and handmade. The Greek sailors' boat which stands at center stage looks a little like the kind boys make of balsa wood. The churning waves behind it are hand-painted and moved by hand-controlled machinery, as are the fluffy clouds overhead hanging from a rope and pulley system.

One of the charms of Grishkovets is the way he as an actor shades his own texts. He knows the contour of every syllable and the weight of every pause. He can wow a crowd with the twitch of an eyebrow and a hitch of his pants. The texts he writes are not dramatic texts, but shattered, circular inner monologues. His characters seldom finish their sentences, repeatedly contradict themselves and frequently give up trying to make themselves understood, their voices trailing off in moaning frustration. The problem for actors besides Grishkovets is that the intonations of his words and phrases are so personal, they usually are unconvincing unless he speaks them himself. By the same token, the further an actor distances himself from the standard Grishkovets persona, the more effect he is apt to have.

This is true especially of Usov and Smolyakov, who were at least partially able to escape the Grishkovets formula. Smolyakov brings to his sailor a tough and comic single-mindedness that occasionally breaks down in paradoxical ways. As belligerent and combative as any soldier ever was, he is capable of suddenly accepting the right of Usov's warrior-philosopher to dissent. Usov drips of irony and disgust at his comrades for failing to see that the best answer to war is to make friends and go home. His wrenching frustration, multiplied by his haughty sense of intellectual and moral superiority, is the standard of success in this show.

Thanks to this duo, the scenes of the Greek naval siege at times achieve genuine comedy through the clash of opposites and the revelation of contradiction and paradox.

Beyond them, however, is a calm sea of imitation and self-indulgence. The discussions of the veteran and new recruit can become excruciatingly silly. Ugryumov has studied Grishkovets' every move and inflection, and he reproduces them faithfully. Lacking the author's charisma, however, he is hard-pressed to make the halting, repetitive, interjection-laced monologues mean anything.

This, similar to the banal interludes of Icarus trying in vain to fly, is a moment of truth. For it is here that the fundamental insignificance of "The Siege" snaps into focus. This is a play, after all, about the death and destruction of war. And yet it lacks any bite at all, being built almost entirely on the shtick of cute jokes and frivolous stories of adorable, tongue-tied protagonists. A scene depicting one warrior's death -- the benevolent goddess hands him an arrow as he frowns -- is more amusing than moving, more reassuring than thought-provoking.

The plays of Grishkovets, "The Siege" perhaps more than most, have something in common with anesthesia. They appear on the surface to concern what ails us. But their ultimate purpose is not to get to the bottom of problems, but rather to induce us to forget their pain. They are plays in which style is everything and content is a minor detail to be manipulated for the comfort and viewing pleasure of the audience.

This is what has made Grishkovets famous and, presumably, it will continue to satisfy his army of fans. I can't deny that I would like to see this talented artist take a few risks rather than duplicating a well-worn model, no matter how successful.

"The Siege" (Osada) plays at 7 p.m. on Dec. 7 on the Small Stage of the Chekhov Art Theater, located at 3 Kamergersky Pereulok. Metro Okhotny Ryad. Tel. 229-8760.

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