NIE made its kooky, affable, international name taking seemingly untellable true stories to the stage. Here, armed mainly with Soviet-era sunglasses and an array of retro rock-ballads, the six-strong ensemble sink their teeth into the tale of Ivan Mishukov, a six-year-old boy captured by Russian police in 1998, who spent two years living with a pack of wild dogs on the streets of Reutova.
The yawn of moral and material decay in post-Soviet Russia is magically conjured. Snow falls courtesy of torn up tabloids, blizzarded on stage by an Argos fan; but under the hypnotic swing of an enormous orange light, the vast desolation of a winter park homes effortlessly into view. So too do the horrors of Mishukov’s alcoholic mother, beating his radio with her hanky for a bitterly comic age in an effort to silence his demands. And when the ensemble leave off embodying radio and TV shows, delivered through the atmospheric crackle of a much loved megaphone, their clownish transformation into the dogs has a deeply eerie ring of truth to it.
Under the enchanting buffoonery is a difficult and deftly made point: that the line dividing man from beast is far from clear. What NIE doesn’t quite manage to unearth is the promise of their title. Ivan finds the dogs, learns to pant, and the wheel of time spins instantly, disappointingly forward to his capture, two years later. Running at just under an hour, this former scratch night of a play subsequently feels in need of more penetrating digging to find its heart. At the moment, it circles with deliciously imaginative, diverting skill around a stupendous possibility.
