Plasticine

Note: This is a review of the play text, not the production at the Royal Court Theatre.

The plot in Vassily Sigarev’s Plasticine revolves around the life of a teenage delinquent called Maksim. He lives with his grandmother in a dilapidated apartment block and moves from place to place in search of a fast buck, a quick fuck and the possibility of missing another day at school. Along with his friend Lyoka, the pair get involved in trouble deeper than they can handle. They follow a girl back to her flat, drawn in by the prospect of sex, but on arrival they are confronted by a much starker reality than they had bargained for. The occupants are three rancid middle-aged men who take sadistic pleasure in dominating and frightening the two youths before gang raping them. The overall sense you get from the play is that this is the boys’ fate; that sooner or later in the environment they live in, with the values they live by, they will be subject to some form of violence that outweighs that which they inflict on others. Call it twisted divine retribution.

Plasticine is a play that depicts a world where human energy and resources are channeled through violence and aggression; sometimes administered in groups, sometimes individually; and though the list of violent acts in the play is long, including beatings, rape, murder, verbal abuse, exploitation and humiliation, there is a redemptive, hopeful quality that comes across at key moments. Take Maksim’s emotional outburst towards his dying grandmother for example, or the girl known as ‘SHE’ who shows the world her pristine new shoes in a brief gesture of pride. These are moments when even in the bleakest of situations the characters find ways of rekindling compassion.

The short sharp shock tactics in Sigarev’s dramaturgy are by no means new, but the vibrancy he brings to the landscapes and its characters, his ability to breathe life into this hell hole and decay and retain its complexity makes for a compelling read. What I found striking from the very beginning was the enormous scope of the play, just in terms of its setting alone. From the opening scene with a crane that lowers a coffin from an apartment building onto a hearse, to derelict blocks of flats, a sports stadium, a meat market and a school, Sigarev tries hard to evade the single-room-anxiety syndrome endemic to other plays on a similar register. This is an unusually large-scale vision for the type of intimate, visceral theatre at play.

The weaknesses I picked out in the play were largely to do with a lack of clarity or underdeveloped themes. A clear example of this is the relationship between Maksim and his friend Lyoka. In a scene about half way through the play they turn up at the side door of a cinema trying to catch a glimpse of a porno film. Lyoka moves in close to Maksim and there is a moment of intimacy between the two young men, but before there is time to react the scene is over an the incident is left untouched, disconnected from the rest of the play. Another example is the recurring presence of a ‘Boy’, perhaps the ghost of the young boy who’s coffin being lifted from the apartment at the beginning. The boy tries to interact with Maksim on several occasions, but Maksim brushes him aside saying ‘not now, later’, but again the later never happens and we never know who the boy is. Not all loose ends in a story need to be tied up, but ends that fizzle with intrigue, like these do, need attention.