Friends in high places

From within his Russian apartment, lonely widower Ivan writes letters to both his dead friends and to significant historical figures - Lenin, Gagarin and Elizabeth I.

Rather unexpectedly, he receives replies in the most unlikely places: under the TV, tucked inside books on the shelf and under the bed. In fact, even the bedbugs start writing to him.

On his birthday, he invites these newfound friends to a party, fantasising that after his death they might be sufficiently devastated to fight over his will. Each will want the biggest share, of course, as a measure of how much they meant to him.

As a portrait of social alienation, Oleg Bogaev's witty little slice of Russian absurdism takes some beating. Not only is the concept a moving one but, since each character symbolises a history from which the elderly man feels disenfranchised, it also grapples with the psychological fallout of rapid social change in 20th-century Russia.

Ivan's anxiety about the legitimacy of his existence reflects the crisis of a country that borders on existentialist. Sputnik Theatre's imaginatively conceived production, played out on a paper-strewn set, deliberately blurs the boundaries between realism and madness.

But the real-life characters are over-caricatured, while Kevin McMonagle's Ivan doesn't find the pathos or force to give this production the charge it needs. A rewarding, post-Soviet curio, nonetheless.

Russian National Mail