... The high place that Russians claim for Pushkin as a theater poet, too, seemed amply justified in Declan Donnellan's production of Boris Godunov. First staged nine years ago for Moscow's Chekhov International Theatre Festival, Donnellan's rendering of a play better known in the much different form of Mussorgsky's opera still appeared fresh, taut, and forceful, though periodically marred by annoying gimmickry. Because Pushkin's play is so infrequently staged outside Russia, Donnellan's efforts to show its contemporary relevance only emphasized its classical heritage, above all Pushkin's debt to Shakespeare. The gimmicks were all of the kind commonly used to liven up contemporary Shakespeare productions: putting the characters in modern dress, giving the chronicler, Pimen, an old-fashioned typewriter, installing a TV set in the border tavern, turning the assemblage of Polish nobles into a political rally with handheld mikes, and so on.

Of course, Pushkin's play has contemporary relevance: every play that says politicians are ruthless, treacherous schemers has contemporary relevance. But not every such play has such striking similarities to Shakespeare, notably to Richard III, bursting out all over it. For an English-speaking audience, the evening's prime source of interest is the mental agility with which Pushkin transforms his models into something at once specifically Russian in meaning and universal in stature. No wonder Russians venerate him; his deep passion for Shakespeare liberated his imagination instead of enslaving it.

Mussorgsky's hero is the crowd. Neither guilt-racked Boris (Aleksandr Feklistov), a usurper who has attained the throne through murder, nor his con-artist rival, Grigory (Yevgeny Mironov), a runaway monk who claims to be the murdered Czarevich Dmitry, was heroic enough to suit the composer. To Pushkin, they represent contrasting versions of the crime-fueled hunger for power. Mussorgsky notoriously resisted composing the "Polish act," in which the fake Dmitry allies himself with a Polish leader's daughter, Marina Mnishek (Irina Grineva). Pushkin, in contrast, puts this scene at the core of his work: Marina extorts "Dmitry"'s true identity from him and then eggs him on to czardom anyway. Donnellan's production, loud and often crudely showy in its playing, coarsened the edges of this powerful work, but never diminished its grandeur.