Orphans for the Czar: if the people are hungry enough there will be a revolution. Or an insurrection
3 Apr 2022

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Dahlia Katz

My mother told me the world is beautiful.
She lied.

The small town outside of the city is starving. The Czar and the elites have all the money, land and, crucially, the fresh fruit. Vasley, an orphan, is reading to a blind girl Rayisha (Shayla Brown). But he's really more interested in firing off self-deprecating, nihilistic quips from the pen of George F Walker (Escape From Happiness). Vasley is a true anti-hero, he is proud to announce that his special people skill is eliciting pity, less a protagonist than a clueless Candide to whom things happen. His skills are demonstrated when the village's hunky hunter (Christopher Allen), after lugging an emaciated deer across the stage, threatens Vasley with another of what seem to be regular beatings. Vasley's reading and despairing quips drive Rayisha to the edge of despair and she flees crying, probably to be lost in the woods. Again. This enrages the town's blacksmith, if only anyone had a horse to be shod, and he sends Vasley to the city to somehow let the Czar know that his people are starving.

Vasley gets room and board in exchange for tending a bookstore that belongs to the blacksmith's half-brother or maybe cousin. His original mission becomes forgotten because there is an insurrection or a revolution exploding in the city. The bookstore appears to be the epicentre as a pair of women (though for some reason never explained or expounded upon, one is constantly mistaken for a man), Michelle Mohammed and Shauna Thompson, glean ideas from the books in order to build a better world: "They read, they learn, they revolt." But there is also a fedora-clad government agent Makarov, a commanding and slimy Marlowe-esque Patrick McManus, who is charged with quashing the insurrection or rebellion by any means necessary. He also has the remarkable ability of breaking the fourth wall and informs us that books are subversive, dangerous and frankly, far too long. He prefers pamphlets. He has a hapless sidekick Sasha, Kyle Gatehouse, who oozes supercilious duplicity and is prone to sadistic violence. From there the plot spins into pitch black satirical farce as the revolution, or insurrection, rages.

Walker wrings big laughs out of tragedy and horror. And the cast is expert at walking that razor thin line. Paolo Santalucia (Four Chords and a Gun, Bed and Breakfast, La Bete, Animal Farm, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, Mustard, The Taming of the Shrew) takes Vasley from downtrodden in rags to downtrodden in designer duds. With no aspirations beyond survival, and maybe a bit of food containing actual meat, he falls upwards, buffetted by the aspirations of others. Santalucia radiates guilelessness and wide-eyed innocence while remaining bitterly cynical. Never questioning his tragic fate but simmering dangerously. The empathy that Santalucia earns with his slumped shoulders and hang dog deameanor belies the number of laughs he gets in what should be the straight man role. The heavy comic lifting comes courtesy of Eric Peterson (The Father) who takes irascible and crotchety to a hilarious level. He mixes slapstick with expert timing with one sight gag (that is alas a spoiler if revealed) reducing the audience to helpless hilarity just by making an entrance.

The genius of Walker's writing and the direction by Tanja Jacobs (A Midsummer Night's Dream, La Bete, Love and Information) is revealed in the duality. Peterson's character is both a hero and despicably loathsome. Formenting revolution, or insurrection, but also indulging in the most disgusting of all vices. All of the characters have questionable motives and morals. There are double crosses and triple crosses and seductive speeches to dubious ends. Walker presents a world where up is down, and good is evil, and no-one is to be trusted. The parallel to our contemporary time is never belaboured but is painfully obvious. It is impossible to out-farce current US politics, with Canada's Conservative clowns hot in pursuit, and with Orphans for the Czar being set in Russia, the immediate crisis engulfing the world, the invasion or the special military operation, adds an inescapble bite. Orphans of the Czar is not advocating for revolution or insurrection, it is anti-ideology.

The stage, set design by Lorenzo Savoini, is towering blank walls and tables laden with scattered books. Here the duality sets in with ruthless subtextual finesse. The books, so powerful or dangerously subversive, become props. At first the movement of tables causing the books to tumble during set changes seems clumsy or an afterthought. Until one realizes that the ideas, the contents, are mere paper and no-one cares if the bindings break or the pages tear. All that matters is to keep moving forward. Ideas are fragile and disposable. The real key is when the characters cry from hunger. A basic need that no inspirational or evil influence can satisfy. If the people are hungry enough, they will revolt. Or do as they are bid.

While it is exquisitely exciting to see Santalicia and Peterson onstage again, it is also the first large ensemble that I have had the pleasure of experiencing in over two years. And they rise to the occasion. For a play that critiques propaganda, the cast commands the stage in a way that any dictator or cult leader would envy. The laughs are expertly timed as are the gasps when the barely disguised shiv slides in. Our attention remains tightly focussed, rapt, and daringly, I counted three times, the entire play depends on a changing expression moving across an actor's face. That is the power of theatre, that our eyes can be collectively drawn to just where they need to be. And to trust that the emotion will travel all the way to the cheap seats. Vasley never gets his message to the Czar but he shows us that this ugly world is, in its own perverse way, beautiful.