The journey to the stage of Lauren Yee’s new play, Mother Russia, has been a bit bumpy. Its original opening, planned for 2022, was thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then its world premiere production at Seattle Rep in March of this year was met with mixed reviews. 

Profile Theatre’s production — directed by Josh Hecht and continuing through June 22 at Artists Rep’s performance space — is the third for this play and, judging from the Portland audience’s reaction, it sparked delight and makes a solid case for the show. Like Yee’s other work, it has an undercurrent of humor that cushions a lot of deeper questions — and though I didn’t find those questions to be held with quite the complexity as in Yee’s Cambodian Rock Band and Samsara, I did leave with lots to think about.

The story involves three Russian characters who occupy contrasting social locations in 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Americans reflexively view such a time, when communism yielded to capitalism, as a liberation; that’s our default dominant culture view of capitalism. Among the aspects of that point of view that we don’t open to question is how capitalism here in the U.S. impacts capitalism everywhere else: Such questions might open further inquiry about how capitalism exists in the U.S.  Though Yee’s play is about three Russians, the influence of the U.S. is part of what the play reflects back to us.

We are first introduced to two young men, Dmitri and Evgeny, who have grown up together on opposite sides of privilege in Soviet Russia. As the son of a former KGB leader, Evgeny’s path was laid out before him under the Soviets. But the Soviet collapse has left him unemployed; his job of setting government-mandated prices hasn’t survived the introduction of supply and demand. As played with nervous energy by Bets Swadis, Evgeny is floundering; rather than an expansion of choices, his options for pleasing his prominent father have contracted. 

Meanwhile, Dmitri (a tightly-wound Orion Bradshaw) is casting about for his place in Russian society.  One senses that was true for him both before and after the Soviet dissolution, but he believes he was close to achieving his dream of working for the KGB before the police and surveillance apparatus ended with the Soviet collapse. 

At the play’s opening, Dmitri has taken what would seem to be the obvious move: He has opened a shop stocked with a random-seeming mixture of Western products. So far, though, no one seems to be buying — Dmitri wasn’t paid before and isn’t paid now. But unlike Evgeny, he is employed, and not only at shop-keeping: He has undertaken an assignment to surveil Katya, a beleaguered school teacher who was a dissident recording star under the Soviets. He enlists Evgeny to assist in the project, and soon, without a clear sense of what they are watching for, both are obsessing over Katya.

What follows is a swirling series of interactions as the men listen and watch and, unbeknownst to each other, pursue Katya. Of the three, she is at least earning a salary as a teacher, but it’s a job she hates: Her stint as a dissident pop star has faded now that she has to compete for fans with the likes of Whitney Houston. 

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As the three characters circle each other, we hear their disaffection, the difficulty of obtaining a toehold when all the rules have changed. Are they actually more free? Apart from access (via hours in line) to a McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwich and a seemingly endless array of couches to choose from, what have they gained?

Mother Russia herself points the way to these questions, a Russian stock character who intermittently appears to offer wry perspective and donuts and to prompt the musing that Yee hopes to spark in the audience. Bawdy and motherly and world-weary, Mother Russia places this period in Russian history in a larger context of Russian resilience and a parade of men whom she has bedded and found disappointing. In a way, she is modeling a stance for taking in the story: Laugh, and also pay attention.

For me, the two women characters are the best and somehow most convincing part of the play and this nimble production. If we’re honest, American audiences aren’t necessarily well-equipped to judge the accuracy of Yee’s depiction of how Russians may have experienced the Soviet collapse — but Diane Kondrat as Mother Russia comes closest to convincing that this story and the questions it raises contain useful illumination.  She functions as a sort of wry guide, helping us notice the gaps between the official story and the story that is lived. 

The former is more propaganda on either side of the Soviet divide(s); lived experience is full of disappointments and contradictions. Ashley Song as Katya (excellent as always) proves Mother Russia’s point; compared to the men, Katya is more curious, more genuine, more prepared for contradictions and disappointment. Not by accident, she also is less inclined to resort to violence. In an echo of Mother Russia’s observations, she finds both men disappointing, but finds reasons to engage with them — and to cut off that engagement.

Though Dmitri and Evgeny aren’t as consistently convincing, their contrasting versions of haplessness spark recognition. They struggle to adjust in part because their options under the Soviets seemed better — yet it doesn’t occur to either of them to question what they found satisfying and whether it actually is worth missing. They similarly fail to question their enthusiasm for the new — their enactment of excitement about that first Filet-o-Fish sandwich is among the clues they miss that their taste buds may not be reliable.

Through it all, the U.S. lurks as an inescapable influence. Perhaps the play’s most informed insight is that the U.S. isn’t the best judge of liberation and choices and what tastes good. Whatever this moment in history has to say about Russia, it also may have a few insights about us.

***

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Profile Theatre’s Mother Russia continues through June 22 at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 S.W. Morrison St. For schedule and ticket information, link here or call the box office at 503-242-0080.