Rajiv Joseph gives himself an audacious assignment: to write a Stoppard-esque epic play that travels through time periods and crisscrosses 20th century Russia. His story is both intimate and grand—traversing love, friendship, loyalty, betrayal, truth, lies, and storytelling. It also marks a journey of writing, expression, creativity, and imagination under increasingly restrictive regimes. Despite these welcome ambitions, the play and production fall short of that intended grandiosity and humanity. Flitting between authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and politics that bend reality and meaning, the play aims to cover a tome’s worth of material. But in nearly three hours it can only breeze by these heady ideas. Though Joseph’s writing can be humorous and lyrical, the overall experience lacks emotional punch.
Capturing everything from the rise of Stalin to the era of Putin, the play explores politics on a personal scale. Centered first around writer and journalist Isaac Babel (Danny Burstein) and his friendship with rising military leader Nikolai (Zach Grenier) and Nikolai’s wife Yevgenia (Tina Benko) then leaping forward to the Cold War, Berlin Wall, and Polish plane crash of 2010. The parade of interrelated characters allows for echoes of the past to reverberate into the near present.
But the play’s emotions never reach the lofty heights it hopes for. Instead, there are playfully funny scenes, carefully-shaded performances, and biting social commentary. But the connective tissue between these gets stretched too thin. Most vignettes are captivating but they do not cohere as a powerful, overarching work. Joseph dangles enough curious coincidences and historic tidbits to keep us intrigued. You sense the incredible potential in this scenario, but the pieces don’t come together in one of those gasping moments of interconnection that make our investment in the narrative resonant.
That said, Tina Benko dives deep into Yevgenia playing her from her sultry younger years to her elderly days and back again. Her joyful insouciance never leaves her. She moves through her character’s life with such a pronounced physical presence—either sashaying across the stage as a young woman, twirling in the snow, or hunched over with age. It’s an all-encompassing performance and one of the production’s highlights. Zach Grenier is saddled with an unfortunate accent and he attempts to bring some of Nikolai’s contradictory qualities to the surface but the character feels narrowly prescribed. There’s hardly any time at all for Rebecca Naomi Jones to develop her role of Urzula, a woman contemplating escaping East Germany, and a brief song she sings leaves more questions than answers.
As is often the case with characters who are artists, we are told over and over of their genius but sometimes it is hard to see it for ourselves. We hear fleeting bits of Babel’s writing which gives us a glimpse but his voice, as artist, gets buried in the play’s history-driven plot. Burstein is warm and gentle as the youthful Babel but as he ages and a more complex nature emerges Burstein is less effective to inhabit Babel’s darker, lothario side.
The set reflects a Soviet-era style file room (by designer Tim Mackabee) and is packed to the rafters with the words, facts, and subversive ideas redacted, withheld, or sanitized by the state. This locale manages to serve as a flexible platform as the story leaps from Poland to Dresden to Moscow to Smolensk. These locations are identified by projected titles with their attendant years and title themes as well: Silence, Asylum, Escape. Even when these were symbolic and not literal (too often they were the latter), they did not add much.
The play has two intermissions which are mandated by some dramatic stage business. But what could be startling, blow-out moments instead are sighs in Giovanna Sardelli’s loose production. Though I will admit to jumping in my seat with one unexpectedly loud booming knock on a door.
Describe the Night toys with dark humor in the face of totalitarian absurdity but the production is unsure how to handle it and what tone to strike. Frequently characters ask, “Is this real?” Their queries are a product of the shifting political universe under their feet or the fanciful, strangeness of Babel’s imagination. Yet for the audience the entire endeavor comes across as a little too firmly planted on the ground.