Collaborators

A rich and fascinating experience indeed, Collaborators represented quite an artistic gamble for the Stirling Players, but director Megan Dansie has once again lived up to her reputation of staging high-quality theatre, gracing Adelaide with a national premiere production to be proud of.

Writer Mikhail Bulgakov lives in Moscow, and the year is 1938. His wife Yelena is supportive and loving, and he has just about managed to reconcile the joy he gets from his chosen profession with the restrictions placed on life in the Soviet Union. His health takes a bleak turn, and his unsettling dreams of Dictator Joseph Stalin take an unexpected turn - propelling Bulgakov into realms of power and reversal he never would have thought possible...

Being a play about a playwright (who at one point writes a play about a playwright) is enough to give multiple layers of intrigue to the proceedings; plotting the story around real people - some more famous than others - makes the experience resonate satisfyingly (if sadly) as you leave the theatre.

In truth, the story takes its time throughout the first act to get its hooks into you, in a manner that is rather more gradual than some of director Dansie's recent successes – but ultimately, it becomes a deeply impressive and well-told tale. The script twists and turns in a quite ingenious manner, utilising smart black comedy mixed with understated drama which never gets either overheated or too intellectual.

The staging presents slight difficulty on occasion, with the same area being utilised for different locations in a way that has the potential to confuse, but Dansie is also shrewd in using this tactic for deliberate, specific contrast and contemplation. Overall, the less-than-enormous space provided by the theatre is both adequate and, ultimately, appropriate for a story that features more than one character forced to occupy no more than the barest possible space in their society.

The acting ensemble is first-rate across the board. Gary George is both rock-solid and appealingly vulnerable as the central character, while Sharon Malujlo evokes strong sympathy as Yelena. Peter Davies' Stalin puts a strikingly unusual and risky spin on this notorious figure from history; at times broadly comic in the manner of Alexi Sayle's Mussolini impersonation, at others you are struck with fear and revulsion at what Stalin shows a human being can become.

Steve Marvanek's amiable features mask the insidious cruelty and ruthlessness of his character, yet his Vladimir is as nuanced and complex as the two central roles. Other colourful contributions are made around the margins by David Lockwood as a less-than-trustworthy medical professional, plus Samuel Rogers and Joshua Coldwell as two actors providing a great deal of the humour that helps give this play such texture.

Collaborators will grip you and involve you; it will make you chuckle and make you think. It is a happy instance of risk-taking in community theatre, one deserving to be rewarded.

Anthony Vawser