Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Collaborators (2015)

Creativity and free speech have long been literary victims of tyranny and oppression. The theme has been classically explored by the likes of Kafka and Solzhenitsyn but this play breaks startling new ground in the realm of black comedy.

It also presents the sternest of challenges to a local theatre company and here we have the Loft at its scintillating best with a production that maximises dark humour in an environment of human mayhem.

‘It’s satire!’ booms a buffoon Stalin. The play he has opted to write about himself, with a real author sitting opposite him, will effectively glorify its subject through spurious fact-bending. Key sections of John Hodge’s award-winning play focus on duologues between Stalin and his captive chronicler Bulgakov and they are played with great zest and insight.

Craig Shelton’s Stalin is grossly, gloriously funny, savouring time out from the Politburo and an opportunity to delegate the signing of dreary documents about executions and quota demands. Phil Reynolds brilliantly tackles the passage of Bulgakov from initial writing integrity through the corruptive influence of acquired wealth to later self-recrimination. The performances contrast to perfection.

Director Gordon Vallins applies broad brush strokes, both with his cleverly threatening set and a show that constantly moves and catches the eye with nuances of colour and activity. The staging of parts of the play-within is delivered with style and slickness.

Among the company, giving a rich cross-section of bourgeois and proletariat, Tom O’Connor shines as an amiable secret policeman, Bryan Ferriman is a comically sleazy elderly doctor and Elizabeth Morris exudes quiet dignity as Bulgakov’s long-suffering wife.

More than anything, though, this fine production illustrates the degree to which an amateur company at its most powerful can stand its ground in terms of overall theatrical accomplishment.

Veteran local director Gordon Vallins says it will be his last production. This is sad news indeed for the local drama scene, but it has to be noted – what a stunning finale!

To return to the page from which you came, click the button below.

Peter McGarry is an experienced, independent professional theatre critic who has agreed to review Loft Theatre Company productions.

The agreement with the Loft is that Peter is free to express his opinions for good or ill. The Loft Theatre Company has no control whatsoever over the content of these reviews and will never comment publicly on what he writes.