Moscow Gold and Reassessing History

Moscow Gold and Reassessing History CARL CAULFIELD The Revolution has shifted the theatre of our criticaJ operations. We must review our tactics. I Moscow Gold is Howard Brenton and Tariq Ali's second theatrical collaboration , after their satirical, metaphorical response in 1989 to the Rushdie affair in Iranian Nights. Moscow Gold dramatizes what its authors see as a need for a reassessment of Soviet history and Communist ideologies, but the play can also be seen as revealing a state of crisis in Howard Brenton's overview of world history and his earlier views on historical progression. Prior to the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, Brenton believed that Western Europe was on the verge of a political renaissance, an inevitable historical movement towards a more "communistic" society. As he stated in 1986: "It began with the Paris Commune in 1871. The Russian Revolution, whether you regard it with hope, hope betrayed, or with horror, has changed world history forever.,,2 The "second Renaissance" -Brenton describes is a transmutation from mercantile capitalism to a "communistic world view."3 This "huge conviction" of Brenton's has been the source of his "utopian" plays, particularly Greenland (1989), and informs much of his work. In many ways, Brenton's development as a dramatist has been towards forging a drama that shows characters involved in a dialectical struggle with history, to show characters "trying to deal with history." His characters, he has said, "suddenly find themselves with a torch in their hands which they realize is world history.'" He often shows his characters (unaware that history is moving) struggling from the "micro" level of everyday living towards what he has described as a "macro-overview of history" or the "grand historical vision." To Brenton, this "historical vision" is the consciousness of a faith in a rational, communistic future. In many ways Brenton's work attempted to promote an historical enlightenment, in which individuals connect with Modern Drama, 36 (1993) 490 Moscow Gold and History 491 "history" and gain a vision of the future. As he has described his characters: "But millions do not have that vision, confidence and heroism, and some are traumatised by defeat. It is they whom I write about. [...J I try to dramatise them coming to life, gaining visions, confidence and courage in their own way. If the Left convinces and wins people like them, the British revolution will be unstoppable."s Throughout his career, Brenton has worked collaboratively with writers such as David Hare, Tunde Ikoli, and Tony Howard. Tariq Ali's role in Moscow Gold was to provide historical knowledge with Brenton as dramatist. In the play, there are traces of ideas from Ali's book on the USSR and the view that reform began as "a movement from above," a "revolution" within the Soviet elite.6 Moscow Gold took a year to research, including a visit to Moscow for Brenton. The play was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre on 20 September 1990, directed by Barry Kyle. It was an opportunity for Brenton to make use of a large space and to return to an epic form of drama, which he'd developed at the National Theatre with plays such as Weapons ofHappiness (1972), The Romans in Britain (1980), and Pravda (1985), the last co-written with David Hare. To deal with the massive scope of their subject - the changes in the former Soviet Union since glasnost and perestroika - Brenton and Ali decided that they must extend the non-naturalistic , panoramic approach used in Iranian Nights: "The only model we had was the work of the great Soviet theatrical genius Vsevelod Meyerhold. He attempted a theatre of great breadth, trenchant but nimble-footed, which was not documentary, but ' living history,' played out upon the stage at many levels of meaning with many techniques."7 The visual design of the play, according to Barry Kyle, was intended to emphasize that it was not "photographic realism," as reflected in the circus-like sets of Stefanos Lazaridis.s Inevitably, through evoking the memory of Meyerhold productions such as Mystery-Bouffe and The Magnanimous Cuckold, the authors foregrounded as !nany difficulties as similarities. Like Mystery-Bouffe...