Reviewed October 1993

War may be one of the least humorous things humans have contrived, but that doesn't mean it is ill-suited to comedy. Idiocy in any form is a comic artist's dream.

Take the new production of Yuly Kim's The Passions of Bumbarash at the Tabakov Theater. It is not only a powerful and sensitive story about the mindlessness of war, it is also very funny. To a point, of course. At any rate, it is the almost non-stop mirth that makes the underlying drama – and the tragic ending – hit like a leaded boxing glove.

Vladimir Mashkov staged the play as a maelstrom of wacky events that unfold in a whirl of movement (kudos to choreographer Alla Sigalova), spirited folk music (arranged by Roman Berchenko), deafening gunfire and billowing smoke. Several scenes are played out as circus interludes, replete with pratfalls and sleight-of-hand tricks. The mad action of the minuscule stage constantly threatens to spill into the front rows of spectators.

Bumbarash (Yevgeny Mironov) is a blithe country boy who does his duty and joins the Russian Army to fight the Germans during World War I. But he soon realizes that doing the right thing isn't always the right thing to do. After he "gets volunteered" to scout the enemy lines in a balloon and is nearly killed when shot down, he sneaks home to resume his peaceful life.

But the course of events has outstripped him. His brother Gavrila (Sergei Belyayev), thinking Bumbarash was killed, married his "widow", the fair Varya (played with touching innocence and inner strength by Anastasia Zavorotnyuk). Worse yet, Bumbarash learns that a revolution has taken place and now everyone is at war.

Gavrila joined an unaligned band of thieves. Another brother, Yasha (Aleksandr Mokhov), is fighting for the Bolsheviks. Bumbarash's former superior in the czarist army (Aleksei Neklyudov) is leading a regiment in the White Guard. Naturally, Bumbarash is trapped in the three-way crossfire.

Mironov centers the performance with a well-balanced mixture or irrepressible energy and poignant vulnerability. His fine voice and deft coordination easily allow him to make the numerous songs and dances seem a natural extension of his character's personality.

As Bumbarash's terrified Bolshevik brother, with permanently screwed-up eyes and a tight-lipped scowl, Mokhov gives us something rarely seen these days: a deeply sympathetic portrayal of a revolutionary. Outfitted with bottle-bottom glasses, flappy red pajamas and an ever-present bomb he doesn't know what to do with, he is the picture of benign helplessness.

The set by Aleksandr Borovsky – charred wood walls and a long table with benches attached to it – highlights the performance's darker side with pristine simplicity. The half-burned table symbolizes what happens to the home hearth in times of war. The roving bands of brigands, revolutionaries and soldiers each preempt it for their own use, while it also functions as a hide-out and a prison for the beleaguered Bumbarash.

Kim's play is a clever adaptation of some stories by Arkady Gaidar (that's right, grandfather of Economics Minister Yegor). He might have been a bit more ruthless when deciding what to cut. The scenes involving the leader of the bandits, Sofya (played with jarring voracity by Olga Blok-Mirimskaya), are rather repetitious. But on the whole, the brisk scene changes and snappy dialogue are on the mark.

The Passions of Bumbarash does for modern Russian audiences something like what M*A*S*H once did for Americans. It punctures the "heroic" myths of an old war to remind that the grand myths about new ones are just as silly.