Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Stas Levshin.
One Russian magazine called The Kholops the “rare instance where the public and the professional community converged,” declaring it the best in Russia.

I seem to be gravitating to theatrical stories at the moment, and I’m wondering if they are somehow comforting to other people, too. I noticed that blogger/historian Robin liked the post about Miss Piggy (“porcine Muppet diva”) and shared it on the site formerly known as twitter.

Today I’m pondering a theatrical conundrum from Russia: to wit, why a popular show that’s obviously critical of Putin has been hands-off to government censors.

Ivan Nechepurenko, reporting from St Petersburg for the New York Times, writes, “When an obscure play called The Kholops opened in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2024, many Russians raced to see it, fearful that the authorities would quickly shut down the production. The play’s exploration of a censored and repressive society resonated deeply with those living in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, and the production seemed ripe for a crackdown.

“But nearly two years later, the doors remain wide open and the seats packed for The Kholops, written in 1907 by the Russian playwright Pyotr Gnedich.

“Critics have fallen in love with the play. One magazine said the production’s director, a leading light in contemporary Russian theater named Andrei Moguchiy, had transformed ‘a half-forgotten chamber play into a sweeping and tragic symphony.’ Another said The Kholops was a ‘rare instance where the public and the professional community converged.’ …

“On a recent evening, limousines lined the curb out front. Chauffeurs ushered out government officials, business leaders and other members of the country’s upper crust, all arriving to spend more than four hours taking in a production that attacks, slyly but patently, the system of which they are beneficiaries.

“The Kholops (the title means The Serfs) is performed only a few times every other month, a standard timetable in Russia. … The typically zealous Russian authorities, who have forced the closure of many productions critical of modern Russia, have kept their hands off the play. The reasons are most likely manifold.

“The Kholops became a hit so immediately that officials seemed to recognize that closing it would incite a scandal, and they appear to have taken comfort in the fact that tickets are not only expensive but also scarce, so far limiting how many everyday citizens can actually see it. … At the same time, many critics and theatergoers in Russia have posited that The Kholops has avoided intense scrutiny because, as scathing as the play is toward Russian society under Putin, its judgments arrive largely indirectly.

“The Kholops tells the story of a noble family living in the dark period of early-19th-century Russia, when the country was briefly ruled by the mercurial Czar Paul I, a paranoid tyrant who so bewildered his court that its members murdered him with the help of his own son. …

“Moguchiy worked as the Bolshoi Drama Theater’s artistic director until 2023, when the country’s Ministry of Culture apparently deemed him insufficiently loyal to the Kremlin and decided not to renew his contract.

“But he is still permitted to produce plays at the theater, and The Kholops highlights themes deeply familiar here: widespread tyranny, oppression and corruption; a perpetual longing to abandon the country for a freer, less provincial place (while knowing that its emotional hold is inexorable); a self-defeating loyalty to authority. …

“One of the play’s central tenets is what many Russians see as a nearly eternal feature of their society: Everyone, from the poor and powerless to the wealthy and connected, is owned by someone. When the czar banishes an influential prince for taking more than a few days to procure new army uniforms, the prince delivers a speech that certainly strikes a chord with Russia’s privileged class.

“ ‘Why do I, a rich and independent man, find myself in the position of the last serf?’ he asks. ‘Why have I been a lackey all my life?’ …

“The success of The Kholops is all the more notable because contemporary theater has become an especially perilous business since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022. In July 2024, the playwright Svetlana Petriychuk and the director Zhenya Berkovich were each sentenced to six years in prison for ‘justifying terrorism’ through Petriychuk’s play Finist the Brave Falcon, which interweaves a Russian fairy tale with the story of a woman falling in love with a radical extremist online.”

More at the Times, here.