Part history, part imagination, and awash in clever verbal interplay, “Describe the Night” captures the spirit of Russian author and war correspondent Isaac Babe, following his romantic attachments to his tense interaction with Soviet intelligence.
Sally Murphy, Glenn Davis and Charence Higgins in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s Chicago premiere of “Describe The Night” by ensemble member Rajiv Joseph, directed by ensemble member Austin Pendleton, running now through April 9, 2023.
Joseph’s play, which unfolds in 1920, 1937, 1940, 1989 and 2010, is by no means a documentary. Part history, part imagination, and awash in clever verbal interplay, it captures Babel’s spirit and follows certain aspects of his life and times — from his romantic attachments to his tense interaction with Soviet intelligence.
Yasen Peyankov clearly has a strong sense of the world in which these characters lived, and he brings the ideal tone to the role of Nikolai, a captain in the Russian Red Cavalry who later works as an intelligence officer. And then there is Glenn Davis as Vova , who captures the self-doubt of a man who, much like Putin, worked as an intelligence officer but, in time, becomes the man known as Putin, president of Russia.
Joseph’s play received its world premiere at Houston’s Alley Theatre in 2017, and now, five years later, it in many ways chillingly echoes some of the events that have been unfolding throughout the world since then. And while the distant past becomes prologue in many ways, an eerily prescient quality in the work maps the road from the Russian Revolution era through the Stalinist years and on to the Putin regime, while also suggesting the fierce contradictions in current day democracies.
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