The pervasive grunge of Te Whaea Basement is the perfect setting for a play set in the lower depths of Soviet Russia and an ideal starting point for a tragi-comical satire. Stuck in a rooming house where a struggling couple is obliged to sleep and eat in a common thoroughfare, the only way is up – or down: six feet under.

Dying For It is Moira Buffini’s 2007 adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s 1928 play The Suicide which was banned by Stalin – or the powers that were in his Kremlin – before it had a chance to open. In the wake of its first production in the 1970s, a few years after Erdman’s death, The Suicide came to be regarded (Wikipedia tells us) as “one of the finest plays to have come out of Communist Russia.” Peter Tegel was the first to translate it into English, for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979, and it hit Broadway in 1980 with a cast of 17.

Buffini’s adaptation, as directed by John Bolton with Toi Whakaari 3^rd year acting students (in parallel with Hotel Europa), has a cast of 10 playing 12 roles. The tight box set, superbly designed by Brian King to look as if the building should be condemned, has enough entry-exit points to qualify as a six-door farce.

The downward pressure on the central characters generates the type of comedy that shocks us into laughter even as we empathise with their pain. We can comfort ourselves by calling it absurdist – a logical premise taken to an absurd conclusion – except what it reveals about human behaviour driven by self-interest when at the mercy of an oppressive regime is all too real. Likewise the farcical elements magnify readily recognised truths.

The emotional spectrum begins with total loss of self-esteem and climbs towards the promise of fame and glory, albeit posthumous. It starts in the dark with a profoundly trivial marital spat over a sausage: a desperately hungry unemployed husband (Semyon) upsets his desperately tired wife (Masha) who has to work long hours for a pittance so that they and her mother (Serafima) can subsist.

Given the titles of this play and the original, I can go so far as to say Semyon decides everyone, including himself, will be better off if he tops himself, which leads to various people buying in (literally) to the proposition in the hope of advancing their own agendas. The surprising twists and turns are such that I’ll say no more about the plot, and content myself with hinting at what’s on offer by reviewing the performances.

While the standard convention of using local accents in a play translated from a foreign language is more the rule than the exception here, some actors employ other accents, somewhat randomly it seems. My post-show enquiries reveal, however, that those who have gone this way are mostly drawing on their own cultural heritage to capture a tone they feel best serves their character. Fair enough, I guess. After all Buffini, whose family name originated in Italy I assume, was born in Carlisle to Irish parents, went to university in London and trained in Cardiff.

Jimmy O’Donovan’s plaintive, self-defeating and eventually ecstatic Irish accent suits the classically clownish dimensions of Semyon just fine. It contrasts well with the ordinary Kiwi tones of Georgia Pringle’s stressed and frustrated yet ever-devoted (except when she’s not) Masha, and with Batanai Mashingaidze’s more self-serving Serafima (the Russian version, I take it, of the strong female commedia dell’arte character, Serafina).

While everything swirls around Semyon, and Serafima’s pragmatic choices are entirely understandable under the circumstances, it is Masha’s plight that grounds the play and Pringle pitches her perfectly, without the slightest hint of attempting to be funny which therefore produces some of the best laughs.

Despite the lack of logic to it, Ana Scotney hits all the right comedic notes by playing Margarita – the owner of a local nightclub frequented by prostitutes, the mafia and the intelligentsia alike – with a strong Russian accent. I do find myself wondering if her tough yet emotionally vulnerable characteristics could not be articulated in Kiwi terms – and then she turns in a brilliant ultra-Kiwi cameo as a coffin courier from Eternity (the funeral home).

James Gordon plays Alexander, the dodgy (or is he?) Marxist upstairs and Margarita’s philandering (or is he?) boyfriend, very effectively as a self-assured, dependable Kiwi bloke. Selling people time-slots in which to convince Semyon to die for their cause seems to be at odds with his character until we see what the money is for.

The highly sensual Kleopatra, known as Kiki, has what we might call a Hedda Gabler complex, given the nature of her romantic desires. Valeria Mendoza-Davis draws strongly on her Spanish (or is it Latin American?) heritage to make her volatility irresistible.

The most staunchly loyal Party member is the conscientious Postie, Yalyena, commendably played with humourless (and therefore amusing) conviction by Grace Bently. Kalisha Wasasala calls on her Australian upbringing to comically characterise and vocalise the earnest People’s Poet, Viktoria.  

In representing the intelligentsia, Samuel Austin plays Aristarkh like an Edwardian Oxford fop – which is very valid but I’d prefer to see more character and less acting. As the gender-shifted Russian Orthodox priest, Sister Yelpidy, Ariadne Baltazar traverses an intriguing range of characteristics with a less-is-more comic sensibility.  

With Le Coq-trained director John Bolton at the helm, each actor claims their role as if born to it. It is tragic that in 2016 New Zealand’s underclass is closer than ever to the circumstances depicted in this play and ironic that this has arisen from a diametrically opposite political ideology. The upside, if we can call it that, is that the satirical insights in Dying For It are all too relevant. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer