PARIS.- Perhaps it was just a matter of time before Vladislav Y. Surkov became a stage character. Surkov, an influential ideologist who spent two decades in the orbit of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, once trained as a theater director; in 2011, novelist Eduard Limonov described Surkov as having refashioned Russia into a wonderful postmodernist theater, according to the London Review of Books.
The Wizard of the Kremlin, a new French production directed by Roland Auzet, makes a pointed case for Surkovs pivotal role in Russian, and international, politics. Staged through Nov. 3 at La Scala Paris, a fairly new Right Bank playhouse, it is an adaptation of a French novel that sold over half a million copies after Russia invaded Ukraine, in 2022.
The book, a fictionalized account of Surkovs life and career, was the work of a former political adviser to Italys government, Giuliano da Empoli. (An English translation was released by Other Press in 2023.) In France, the book was so popular that some worried it could shift national policy toward Russia.
Onstage, its easy to see why. Philippe Girard plays the lead role as an expressive, eccentric figure, often sympathetic. Vadim Baranov, as Surkovs fictional alter ego is called, loves rap music, Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock, we learn, and speaks in dark quips. (Whats a Soviet duo? A quartet who went abroad.)
Yet throughout, Baranov also sheds light on the ruthless rise of Putins party and the roots of the presidents power. The destiny of Russians is to be governed by descendants of Ivan the Terrible, Baranov says near the beginning.
The stage version of The Wizard of the Kremlin mirrors Surkovs perceived postmodernism in a somewhat superficial and literal sense. The cast wanders around boilerplate sets: a sleek, impersonal house of mirrors, with panels that reflect the audience members back to themselves. The furniture nondescript armchairs and couches, mostly makes the stage look like a 90s corporate waiting room.
The framing of Baranovs story also suffers in this adaptation. In the novel, he is introduced by a narrator, a French journalist who secures a rare interview after Baranovs departure from the Kremlin. (In real life, Putin fired Surkov in 2020.) The reporters voice soon gives way to Baranovs as he tells his life story, so that the journalist feels superfluous onstage: He has no real depth, and mostly appears to provoke Baranov into answers.
The Wizard of the Kremlin finds its feet instead when Baranov is in the company of politicians and power brokers, who are referred to by their real names. Auzet structured his adaptation into three parts. The lengthy middle one, set around 2000 and focused on Putins rise, is sandwiched between scenes that take place in the present, and refer to current events in Russia and Ukraine.
Opposite Girard as Baranov, Hervé Pierre, a former member of the Comédie-Française company, traces a tragic arc for Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch who helped plot Putins move into politics in the late 1990s. Entertainingly bullish at first, he returns later as an exile, begging to be allowed to return to the Motherland. (Its not Berezovskys first turn onstage: he was also recently a central character in Peter Morgans play Patriots, in the West End and on Broadway.)
Andranic Manet boasts a surprising likeness to Putin, and his take on the Russian president is coldblooded to the point of thuggish. Given the macho nature of Russias government, the female characters are less prominent, though Xenia, Baranovs fictional wife (played by Irène Ranson Terestchenko) does perform a spirited Russian-language version of the Coolio song Gangstas Paradise with another cast member, Claire Sermonne, injecting unexpected whimsy into the proceedings.
Some scenes of political sparring between Baranov and Berezovsky, or when Putin smears a bust of Josef Stalin with blood, jealous of the Soviet leaders enduring popularity are captivating. They dive into Russias history, sense of national pride and wary relationship with democracy, delineating the logic behind Baranovs vision for a sovereign democracy.
Yet given the complexity of Russian politics, The Wizard of the Kremlin could use a little breathing room here and there, especially when it comes to connecting the novel written before Russia invaded Ukraine with the events that have taken place since. The appearance of failed putschist Yevgeny Prigozhin (played by Jean Alibert) in a taped scene near the end in which Prigozhin says he didnt actually die in a plane crash last year is an odd postscript to da Empolis story, for instance.
Baranov wavers, near the end of The Wizard of the Kremlin, in ways that are intriguing to try and reconcile with his early political mercilessness. Does one of the most powerful men in recent Russian history really have regrets? The show like the novel does humanize its version of Surkov, but in the end, it only makes the political machine he built more chilling.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.