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Today I ate authentic dim sum in Philadelphia.  Now, I consider myself an Asian food connoisseur.  My mother raised me on sushi and drunken noodles.  But dim sum was way outside my comfort zone.  There were chicken feet, fried fish with the eyes pleading Amy-eat-me, and dumplings filled with an amalgamation of unknown seafood and pork.  I desperately wanted to like this food and fit in with the dim sum culture that everyone else at the table seemed to love.  Instead, I was reminded of my American-ness and wondered what I could do to trade in my taste buds.

I had a similar experience at Single Carrot Theatre last week when I went to see Playing Dead by the Presnyakov Brothers and adapted by Juanita Rockwell.  I desperately wanted to like this play, but found it hard to connect with a Russian culture that I know so little about.

The characters of Playing Dead have the same experience at a Japanese restaurant when they taste sushi for the first time.  The play is set in mid-eighties Soviet Russia, where the infiltration of sushi was a tremendous culture shock.  This was true in the United States too.  I remember my parents telling me that when they were kids growing up on Long Island, there was one, maybe two Chinese restaurants.  Now Asian food is prolific, and it is not uncommon to grab a to-go package of sushi for lunch.    While Japanese cuisine plays a prominent role in this play, what lies at the heart of Playing Dead is something deeper.

In an attempt to avoid facing his own mortality, Valya (Nathan Fulton) plays dead – he works with the police to reconstruct crime scenes.  A thirty year old college drop-out, Valya would rather have a job in which he is a stand in for someone real, essentially a pawn, than be himself.  Instead of living truthfully, his job is to play the role of the dead person in order to help the police figure out how a crime was committed.  This play is in a sense a wakeup call or reminder to commit fully to something, anything.

In many ways, Playing Dead is a modern adaptation of Hamlet.  Like Hamlet, Valya is visited by the ghost of his dead father and a denigrating uncle who plans to elope with his mother.  It was a wise choice to cast actor Rich Espey as both the father and the uncle.  As the dead father, Epsey moves with a ninja-like swiftness.  This contrasts with the composure he displays as Uncle Peter, at least until Valya pushes him over the edge and he flings a pair of chopsticks across the stage.  The tension builds until a climatic death scene that parallels the ending of Hamlet.

In the eloquent words of Marcellus in Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” or in this case, Russia.  Valya is stuck in a state of inaction and so are the people around him.  His mother (Genevieve de Mahy) is so distant and removed from reality that when she walks in on Valya receiving a hand job from his somewhat apathetic girlfriend Olia (Giti Jabaily), she fails to notice anything out of the ordinary.

Scenic and Lighting Designer Joey Bromfield creates an atmosphere of powerful contradictions.  At once, the set is intimate enough to draw the audience in (during the last scene I could reach out and touch the actors), yet jarring enough to remind the audience of its role as observer.  This worked well with the various plays within a play that occur throughout Playing Dead – not only the crime scene enactments but also the final scene.  By the end, the audience realizes that the entire play is a reenactment of sorts.

I would love to sit down with Director Yury Urnov and chat about what attracted him to Playing Dead.  As I understand it, this play is part of a body of Russian plays that are all a reaction to Socialist Realism.  However, there is a lot more beneath the surface waiting to be uncovered.

Playing Dead
The Presnyakov Brothers
February 17th – March 14th, 2010

Single Carrot Theatre
120 W. North Ave.
Baltimore, MD
443.844.9253