Stalin meets George III in London

If you want a reliable reading of the zeitgeist, check out what's playing on the London stage at any given time. At least, that's been my practice.

Based on the five shows I saw there last week, the fact that three of them deal with heads of state says something about what's on our collective mind— namely, a concern over the kinds of people leading us in these uncertain times. And what better way than to delve deep into history, as these plays do, with the hopes of learning its hard lessons?

What's especially surprising (and unnerving in its coincidence) is that two of these three shows deal with the reign of Joseph Stalin.

Putting tyrants on stage is difficult to begin with. Shakespeare did it definitively with Richard III— and a little help (this season) from a wickedly playful Kevin Spacey. Brecht did it effectively with The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a parable of Hitler's meteoric rise to power (recently performed by Al Pacino in New York). The emerging American playwright Rajiv Joseph did it wittily with the savagely comic portrayal of Saddam Hussein, in his 2011 black comedy Bengal Tiger At The Baghdad Zoo.

So why Stalin, and why now (twice in one season)? Maybe because the full measure of Uncle Joe's tyranny over three destructive decades of Soviet Russian rule hasn't yet been taken, and we need the dreaded reminder of it.

Dictator as playwright

That's what John Hodge has done— and more— in his brilliant black comedy, Collaborators, now on the boards at the Royal National Theatre. Hodge's is a one-joke play— but it's a joke that's strong enough to carry us through a whole evening and beyond. Hodge takes a true event— the commissioning of playwright/novelist Mikhail Bulgakov by the Soviets to write a laudatory play about the life of Stalin for his 60th birthday— and turns it into a phantasmagoric black comedy about art and power.

Bulgakov, alternately praised and persecuted by Stalin (who had allegedly seen his play The White Guard 15 times), sits alone before his typewriter in his miserable little flat, suffering from writer's block. He is frozen with fear and ambivalence, blackmailed by the onerous assignment he must complete in order to save his other plays from being banned.

Suddenly, the closet door springs open, and out jumps Stalin himself. This surprise visitor (is he real, or a fever-dream?) makes the dramatist an offer he can't refuse— to collaborate on the writing of the play that Bulgakov is calling Young Stalin.

"Leave the slave labor to me," Stalin quips cheerfully, as he takes his seat at Bulgakov's typewriter. One of Stalin's secret police guards is assigned the task of directing the play, and proceeds to rehearse a company of actors in scenes from the romanticized autobiographical play that Stalin himself is now composing.

Perks of power

As the story progresses, Stalin finds that he loves playwriting. He offers Bulgakov a deal: "If I'm doing your job, why don't you do mine?" Stalin will finish the play, while Bulgakov will run the country and sign all the governmental orders.

This "trading places" has a hilarious and harrowing payoff. Bulgakov finds that his life has improved— suddenly he has coffee and heat in his apartment. He starts thinking like the people in power, instituting a "quota system" for increased industrial output and achieving unprecedented success.

As a result, his lifestyle grows increasingly lavish. He's given a car and driver, his cupboards are stocked with delicacies, he acquires a gramophone, and he starts entertaining extravagantly (champagne, flowers, etc.). Meanwhile, Stalin pecks away, as the pages of the play pour from the typewriter and "Young Joseph" grows more Christ-like in character.

Reign of Terror

Then comes the crucible in the collaboration. Overcome by increasing paranoia, Stalin wants his day job back. He wrests control, institutes a Reign of Terror, and people start disappearing at an alarming rate, including Bulgakov's fellow writers and friends.

Now Stalin offers the terrified playwright another Faustian bargain: Bulgakov must finish the play the way Stalin wants him to. In return, Stalin will spare his best friend and his wife.

"I thought I could find a way to give them what they wanted and still be myself," agonizes Bulgakov as his world disintegrates around him.

"It's man vs. monster, and the monster always wins," responds Stalin. And the rest is history.

This brilliantly imagined relationship between Stalin (a riotous, menacing Simon Russell Beale) and Bulgakov (an elegant, sensitive Alex Jennings) reminds us of the delicate balance between art and political power, and the perilous position of the writer.

Writing in secret

To cross the Thames River to the Barbican and attend a stage adaptation of Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita is an unexpected bonus, like watching a sequel to Collaborators (albeit one unplanned by the producing theaters). Bulgakov was writing his masterpiece subversive novel in complete secrecy at the very time he was commissioned to write the play about Stalin.

As adapted by the Theatre de Complicité under Simon McBurney's inspired direction, The Master and Margarita is a sprawling, epic, autobiographical work about a writer living in Moscow in the 1930s, struggling to write a novel under the crushing Soviet regime. (It's almost the mirror image of Collaborators).

A Chagall nightmare

Bulgakov's genre is called magic realism, offering a tangle of tales and collage of vivid visual images (including Christ, Julius Caesar, the Devil, a human-size puppet of a black cat, decapitations, crucifixions, a masked ball attended by Bulgakov's lover, clad only in a tiara)— like a Chagall painting turned into a nightmare. This rich and complex three-hour tour de force is delivered in the signature Complicité style, with a company of 16 on an empty stage utilizing dialogue, movement and dazzling visual projections.

As for Stalin, he appears only once, in a huge projection. And yet his Reign of Terror casts a deep, dark shadow over the entire story, which dramatizes the struggle of the artist to preserve his identity, dignity and sanity in the face of totalitarian tyranny.

"Manuscripts don't burn" is the line that both plays repeat constantly. The power and resilience of Bulgakov's novel— as brought to life in this vividly theatrical production— is living proof of the ability of art to endure and transcend political regimes.

Pray for the king's health

"We understand ourselves so much better, now that we've rid ourselves of the illusions of the past," says a character in Bulgakov's play, giving us good reason also to attend The Madness of George III on the West End. Just because Alan Bennett's amiable play about a king's struggle with a mysterious ailment is such good entertainment (in contrast to the aforementioned, intellectually challenging Stalin plays) doesn't mean that it can't also offer insights into our complex relationships with our rulers.

King George (you remember, the one who lost "the colonies") suffers from porphyria, and as he becomes raving, incontinent and irrational, his kingdom falls into chaos and disarray, eliciting the worst behavior from his family and supporters alike. Only when his health improves is order restored to his realm.

"The state of monarchy and the state of lunacy share a frontier," says the King's doctor. That should be a sober historical reminder for us all.