STAY AWAY FROM MY JOURNAL, DUDE! Zach Grenier, left, and Danny Burstein in "Describe the Night," running through Sunday (Dec. 24) at the Linda Gross.
JESSE GREEN DIDN'T CARE much for "Describe the Night," Rajiv Joseph's new drama about 90 years of Soviet/Russian reaction to dissident writers. His review in The New York Times called it "frankly tiresome" and criticized the playwright for being in "self-indulgent mode." So I was not looking forward to seeing this unknown play.
And that was not the worst of the situation. A little insider info: Sometimes, when a production is expected to be particularly popular, many of us who are on press-nights invitation lists are offered only one ticket to a performance, rather than a pair. (Not the star critics. Or the members of the Drama Desk Awards nominating committee. But less crucial members of the press, shall we say?) So there I was in Chelsea, last Wednesday, with a single ticket for the matinee ("press afternoons") of "Describe the Night." When the usher announced the running time ("2 hours, 45 minutes, two intermissions"), I shuddered.
But lo and behold. Having read the Times review, I was prepared, primed, thoughtful and forgiving. No, not just forgiving: I now had context for the work, and I found a great deal to enjoy. Joseph's new work is a mix of fact and fiction, real people and unreal people, and the difficulties faced over almost a century by writers who tell the truth in Russia, during its Soviet Union years and beyond.
The central character is Isaac Babel (Danny Burstein), a real-life Russian-Jewish writer who was executed in 1940 as part of Stalin's purges. The central object is Babel's journal, which we first see him writing in near a Polish battlefield in 1920. (That's the play's first scene, in the photo above.) It passes through many hands. At one point, it's passed along to a reporter by a woman trapped in her airline seat, dying slowly inside a plane that has just crashed.
TEVYE AND MELANIA Burstein, foreground, with Tina Benko as lovers . Burstein, a multiple Tony nominee, has starred in "Fiddler on the Roof," "Cabaret" and "Follies." And where have we seen Benko before? She played Caesar's wife, with strong accents of Melania Trump, in last summer's "Julius Caesar" at the Delacorte Theater.
Jesse Green (along with, I imagine, more than a few other theatergoers) was particularly appalled by the leech-soup scene in Act II. Three characters sit down to steaming bowls of this dish, which contains live leeches. You put your fingers into the soup and let the leeches suck your blood. Eventually they've had so much that they explode. Then you pick up your soup spoon and eat their bloated corpses. The concept of feeding on them after they've fed on you (but you're also feeding on yourself, secondhand!) works as a brilliant metaphor if you get past the grossness.
When I read the Times review, I imagined this dinner taking place in an exclusive, high-priced restaurant and the diners as aristocrats savoring a secret delicacy, like Frenchmen covering their heads with table napkins to savor the taste of ortolan, the tiny songbird they've just brutally eaten, bones and all. Instead the "Describe the Night" scene takes place in a particularly humble apartment. It's possible that leeches are all they can afford.
I enjoyed Joseph's "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo" (2011) starring Robin Williams, And I was fascinated by his "Gruesome Playground Injuries," the story of a couple constantly brought together by injuries, which played Off Broadway at Second Stage the same year. I'll grant you that there's some strange, artificially heightened stuff in this new three-act saga -- and that Jesse Green may be right about Joseph's inferior command of tone, compared with Tony Kushner's for "Angels in America." But I'm Joseph's biggest fan; I reviewed his "Animals Out of Paper" (2008) for The Times, called it "alternately wrenching and funny" and made the production a Critic's Pick.
A BIT ABOUT YOU FOR OUR FILES Timothy R. Mackabee's set for "Describe the Night" is framed by rafters-high shelves of cardboard boxes, evoking the Soviet Union's vast archives.
In other reviews: Robert Hofler of The Wrap called "Describe the Night" a "rare must-see." Sara Holdren, writing in Vulture, praised it as "something grander than plain truth."
More important, let's keep in mind what reviews are (or can be) for. Not just amusement to accompany your morning latte or Lipton. Not just scrapbook material for the people whose names are mentioned. Not just a tool to help readers decide whether to buy tickets for a particular production. Reviews also serve to analyze the artist's intent, share it and open your mind to it, should you so choose. Joseph's work is about scars, and some of us can't take our eyes off them.
The Atlantic Theater Company production of "Describe the Night" runs through Sunday, Dec. 24, at the Linda Gross Theater, 336 West 20th Street. atlantictheater.org