The President’s Holiday

Published Thursday 24 January 2008 at 16:50 by Evelyn Curlet

Drawing on the diaries of Raisa Gorbachev, Penny Gold attempts to bring to life the failed coup of 1991 that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Set in the Gorbachev’s summer house, it documents the three days that the family spent in isolation and under armed guard as the conservatives struggled to seize power. Sadly, this event, of such inherent drama, has not translated well here. Rather like the USSR itself in its final years, the play creaks along stolidly with little sense of direction or vitality until roused into some action in the second half.

Much of the fault must lie with the script, which seems somewhat cumbersome. Despite Julian Glover’s best efforts, Mikhail Gorbachev remains little more than a thinly sketched paterfamilias and Soviet hero, a genial idealist but little else. At one point Raisa claims “When your father and I were young, we used to lie out on the Steppe and look up at the sky and believe it went on forever. Forever and ever.”

One can’t help but feel this former harvester, who climbed to the top of the Communist party ladder and pushed for radical reforms, had more astute or at least more practical thoughts than the size of the sky. There are clear Chekhovian overtones but these characters lack his precision.

Patrick Sandford’s direction also seems uncomfortable, with movements stiff - maybe to evoke the claustrophobic atmosphere in the house - but the result is dramatically stilted. The setting is confused too, with a nod to The Tempest’s island that does little but create a general sense of water-logged clutter.

Despite a more rousing second half, which must be credited to the spirited interchanges between Glover and Robert Demeger’s Yuri Plekhanov, one leaves feeling that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a very dull affair.