A.I. may make it impossible for college grads (and many others) to get a good job in the near future. That impending economic catastrophe, however, is nothing compared to what young Russians endured when the Soviet Union collapsed and a violence-laden laissez-faire capitalism replaced communism.
Set in 1992, Lauren Yee’s new comedy “Mother Russia” captures that cataclysmic turn of events with real verve and a unique brand of anarchic humor. The play opened Monday at the Signature Theatre after its 2024 world premiere at the Seattle Repertory Theater.
The 20something Evgeny (Adam Chanler-Berat) watches as his future implodes under the new, unstable economy. The son of a high-placed Soviet apparatchik who is well on his way to becoming a super-wealthy oligarch, Evgeny proves himself to be really incompetent at following Dad’s orders to shake down little burgeoning capitalists like Dmitri (Steven Boyer), who runs a bodega. Evgeny’s attempts to extort protection money from Dmitri are wonderfully laughable, even though Dmitri isn’t much of a threat. If he had been born in the United States, Dmitri would be the high school jock who, after graduation, opened a car repair shop from his parents’ garage.
Hand in hand, Evgeny and Dmitri take one step into the capitalist future while keeping the other stuck in the old communist swamp. What pushes them into the arms of Western culture is a Filet-O-Fish from the newly opened McDonald’s. Yee knows full well that it’s the little things in life that can make all the difference, and this extended moment, as infectiously played by Chanler-Berat and Boyer, is the funniest eating scene since Albert Finney and Joyce Redman shared a dinner in 1964’s “Tom Jones.” Being only a little bit homoerotic, Evgeny and Dmitri’s dining out on one nearly microscopic fish sandwich is as lustful as Finney and Redman’s multi-course meal. If there is a more delectable scene on the New York stage right now, I haven’t seen it.
Of course, Dmitri’s shop itsn’t really a bodega or whatever such establishments are called in Russia. It’s real purpose (not to be disclosed here) brings Evgeny into contact with his romantic fantasy, a down-on-her-luck recording artist named Katya, who, as played by Rebecca Naomi Jones, is everything any man would want his romantic fantasy to be.
Yee’s anarchic wit is never more on-the-spot than telling Katya’s extremely complicated backstory. Even the long-awaited fall of the Berlin Wall can be bad news for some people.
Director Teddy Bergman keeps the many disparate elements of Yee’s comedy up in the air, juggling them with the inspired help of Dots, which designed the sublimely tacky set, and a narrator played by the crossdressing David Turner. She is called Mother Russia and comes decked out in a red outfit (by Sophia Choi) that only Josef Stalin could applaud.
“Mother Russia” is the first must-see play of 2026.
