Collaborators review, Cottesloe

There are certain actors who often seem to be playing variations of themselves. Juliet Stephenson and Tamsin Greig have the same hairdo, accent and costumes on stage as they do in real life. Only the narratives change. Similarly, Simon Russell Beale invites flak because, brilliant as he is, he is always irrepressibly himself. In Collaborators, his Russell Bealeness is the X Factor: it adds bounce and a deliciously disingenuous lightness to his pleasantly peasanty Stalin.

War on peace

John Hodge's fantasy brings together Stalin and the dissident writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who to some extent he protected. Stalin is writing an autobiographical play under Bulgakov's name. The writer meanwhile, exercises power over the nation's production targets, enforcing penalties on behalf of the dictator. Bulgakov's fantastical novel about Soviet repression, The Master and Margarita, is testament to his feverish imagination. It is in his imagination that Collaborators is set.

Nicholas Hytner's production moves deftly from humour in the first act to paranoia in the second as the seeds of collaboration bear fruit. The Cottesloe has been reconfigured with a stepped, wristwatch-shaped set across the centre of the space. The changes in perspective and level as actors march around heighten the sense of claustrophobia and uncertainty, but become visually limiting.

In conclusion: Russell-Beale is terrific and Alex Jennings' transformation from a dissident Bulgakov to one who is distanced from his wife, friends and fellow writers, is seamless. Tickets available for live cinema broadcasts during the run.

References
Michael Coveney review in What's On Stage
National Theatre, tickets