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Three adjoining flats are represented by a single space. It’s an apt image of invasion and ignorance for Aleksey Scherbak’s punchy, humane play about the tension between Latvians and Russians in modern Latvia.
On Legion Day (which commemorates those who fought as part of the Waffen SS against Soviet Russia), two veterans of Hitler’s army, Paulis (Sam Kelly) and Valdis (Ewan Hooper), celebrate with vodka and sausage. Misha lives two doors down, a tough Soviet army veteran with a rifle in his cupboard. Sasha and his family symbolically and literally inhabit the flat in between: their number includes the fanatical would-be medic Anya, who is determined to demonstrate against the Legionaries and who refuses to help Paulis when he collapses. When Sasha makes some mild impromptu comments on TV about the need to forgive, he is branded a Nazi.
Although it is hard for us to catch every political nuance in a 70 minute play, Scherbak illuminates an intractable situation and possibly plays down the less attractive features of the marching Latvians (some of these people are the Tories’ controversial hardline allies in Europe).
Hostilities should die with the old codgers, but Scherbak pessimistically shows how even when the old are willing to let go, there is a new generation, like Anya, fired up and longing for martyrdom.
Michael Longhurst’s production is first rate and, once again, Elyse Dodgson’s excellent international department persuades us to see the world from a different perspective.