BORIS GODUNOV (LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL)

Matt Windman
07.2009
weblogs.amny.com

It's a shame that no contemporary playwright has penned an English adaptation of Boris Godunov, Pushkin's 1825 epic political thriller. Though Mussorgsky's opera adaptation is a favorite at the Met, the play itself is hardly ever performed.

As the grand finale of this summer's Lincoln Center Festival, an immensely satisfying smorgasbord of international theatergoing, Declan Donnellan's acclaimed Russian-language production of the play is being performed for a single week at the cavernous Park Avenue Armory.

In what feels like a twist on Shakespeare's Richard III and its themes of public manipulation and corruption of power, Grigory, a young monk, plots to succeed Boris Godunov as Russia's Czar by pretending to be Ivan the Terrible's long-lost son, who was presumed to have been assassinated by Godunov.

Staged on a long and narrow catwalk, Donnellan uses little scenery and a strange mixture of period and modern-dress costumes, which helps focus your attention squarely on the plot. It runs for just over two hours without an intermission.

Unfortunately, the text itself hasn't aged too well. The first half of the play is overburdened and overloaded with much exposition and random bits of plot that fail to materialize or draw too much interest.

Luckily, the pace intensifies once Grigory meets Irina, a stunning Polish gal who provokes him to confess that he is merely an imposter. After being rebuked and rejected by Irina, he becomes more motivated and power-hungry than ever before. It is the most dramatically compelling and satisfying scene of the entire play.

But even of the bulk of the play feels dry, Donnellan's production is extremely sharp and benefits from nuanced performances from Aleksandr Feklistov as Godunov and Yevgeny Mironov as Grigory, who highlight their characters' guilt and doubts.