“Vladimir” at New York City Center Stage I (Photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Many Russian journalists have been murdered during Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s reign, but the (probably state-sponsored, certainly state-sanctioned) execution of Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 managed to make international news–probably because of the esteem in which Politkovskaya was held and the brazenness of the act. Vladimir, a new play from Manhattan Theatre Club, fictionalizes a fateful year near the end of that journalist’s life. Maybe.

Raya, the hard-hitting journalist serving as Politskovskaya’s avatar, played with grit and verve by Francesca Faridany, has just returned from Chechnya and is investigating government corruption.  When the Russian government pressures her boss, Kostya (Norbert Leo Butz), he folds and takes a job with a state-run media company, leaving Raya even more exposed. Despite his pleas and those of Raya’s daughter, Galina (Olivia Deren Nikkanen), Raya continues investigating, recruiting reluctant accountant Yevgeny (David Rosenberg), who provides proof that the corruption goes all the way to the top. But in Putin’s Russia, there is no reward for truth-tellers, and it is apparent that Raya’s end will not be a happy one.

I suspect Sheffer fictionalizes the events she’s chosen to dramatize because this allows her to combine the stories of Politkovskaya and Sergei Magnitsky, the whistle-blowing lawyer jailed and killed by prison guards in 2009, here renamed Yevgeny. I don’t believe the real-life counterparts ever crossed paths, but in Vladimir their fates are tightly entwined.

On the one hand, straying from the truth allows Sheffer to pack more drama and history into her allotted time. On the other hand, the mix of fact and fiction gives the action a feeling of “fake news.” Yes, plays fictionalize all the time, but here there’s an uncanny valley effect; it’s too close to the truth to feel fictional, but too far to feel real. And it runs contrary to the play’s theme. Raya, who prioritizes the truth above all else, boils it down when she says, “I didn’t know I wasn’t real until I saw something that was.” So what’s an audience to think when they see something that isn’t real?

Sheffer does manage to communicate a lot about living under a dictatorship. She certainly elucidates how oppressive the omnipresent threat of violence can be. When Kostya folds under pressure and shifts from news to propaganda, the playwright could easily write him off as a sell-out, but he remains sympathetic; his decision is a hard one. And I feel like I understand Raya’s choice to return to Russia and face certain death (like Alexey Navalny would over a decade later); for her, there isn’t really a choice.

Despite the play’s clear take on Putin and the difficulty of carving out space for oneself in modern Russia, the action lacks focus. A Boris Yeltsin prologue feels like an unnecessary appendage. First act action pings back and forth between Raya, Kostya and Yevgeny, each given equal dramatic weight, and the play drags. The second act coalesces around Raya and Yevgeny’s investigation and works a lot better.

Performances are strong all around. In addition to Faridany’s fine work, Butz creates a character who contains multitudes, at times weaselly and at times sympathetic. Rosenberg communicates Yevgeny’s subtle transition from not wanting to get involved (“Don’t go looking for trouble, because it’s never good when you find it,”) to having no choice (“You have to decide what you believe and fight for it… Whatever the cost,”) seamlessly. The four actors playing multiple parts are all terrific chameleons, from Erin Darke who switches from a disaffected Chechyan ghost to a hapless bookstore clerk, to Olivia Deren Nikkanen who devastates as Raya’s daughter Galina, to Erik Jensen’s sinister government functionary Andrei and Jonathan Walker’s morally ambiguous Jim.  Jess Goldstein’s costumes, Charles G. LaPointe wigs, and Ashley Ryan’s makeup help maintain the illusion of a much bigger cast.

While director Daniel Sullivan gets fine performances out of his actors, the tone is drab–even the jokes don’t land–and the play’s visual landscape is a letdown. Mark Wendland’s set feels cluttered, a collection of black and chrome that doesn’t impede, but does little to illuminate. The sound design, by Dan Moses Schreier, is heavy-handed at times.

There are of course hair-raising parallels to our current situation as the United States flirts with autocracy. Putin’s violence and intimidation eliminated true journalism and has left only mouthpieces toeing the government line. Crucially, this has created a disaffected public that knows the media has abandoned its truth-telling role. Now, no one is left to hold the government to account. In 2024, the U.S. has taken a different path to discrediting professional journalists (via disregulated social media and news organizations putting profit and agenda over accountability), but the destination will be the same if the general public no longer has journalistic voices they can trust.