February 18, 2011

"[Olga] Mukhina's modern myth of sex, drugs and celebrity in post-Soviet Russia has acquired its own life and reality right here in Austin." -Graham Schmidt, director of "Flying." I heard about this play a week ago and, recognizing the playwright and subject matter as (severely) Russian, resolved to see it. The play follows a group of twenty-something "golden youth" of Russia, who are invested solely in their own superficiality, mixed with an attempt to escape their own ugly realities and demons. Caught up in the mix is a young, impressionable Siberian girl, who becomes irreversibly intertwined with this romanticized reality, all the while making her own illuminating impression on the golden youths around her. The play was unsettling, exasperating, and difficult to follow at times, but it was also stimulating and unique, which makes for a great evening.