THE SUICIDE
Here’s the joke. Semyon Semyonovich Podsekalnikov (hereafter referred to as Semyon) wakes in the middle of the night with a craving for liverwurst. While he’s gone his wife Maria gets it into her head that he’s locked himself in the bathroom and is going to kill himself. You see, Semyon’s been depressed on account of being unemployed. It’s a silly misunderstanding, yet Semyon warms up to the grandeur of the notion of suicide. And suddenly his life becomes exciting. First, he’s given a tuba, to cheer him up. Then, all sorts of strangers begin dropping by–an intellectual, a femme fatale, a writer, a priest, and others–petitioning Semyon to kill himself in the name of their various causes. They even throw him a goodbye party. But Semyon can’t bring himself to pull the trigger, and everyone gets pissed off at him. Get it?
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Most of the other performances exhibit this same tendency. The cast is eager enough, and quick to take a pratfall, but they rarely match the slapstick with the deft caricature that this play begs for. David VanMatre (as Semyon) never plays the suicide threat beyond a shallow bluff. And whether he’s bluffing himself or the others, it’s all the same. A single moment of gravity–for instance, if the bluff had suddenly turned dangerous–would have lent his performance some crucial depth. And Steven Fedoruk (as Viktor, the writer) has a couple wonderfully absurd speeches, but their humor is blunted. because Fedoruk is so busy trying to appear pompous that he never is pompous.
