Review: Vanya Is Alive, Omnibus Theatre - a powerful play about propaganda, pain and loss
05/02/2025
Alya is the mother of a soldier. Her son is alive and free. This is what she is told. This is what we are told via performer Nikolay Mulakov.
We are not told it's set in modern-day Russia, but it clearly is. We are also not told that Vanya is, in fact, dead, but it quickly becomes clear that this is the case.
The story is a tangle of lies from which to unpick the truth; the easier path is to believe the lie. Is that how it happens? Is that how lies become the truth?
Nikolay Mulakov's performance is stripped back, quiet and mostly still. It draws you straight to the words, to imagining Alya's story. We hear about her encounters with her neighbour, a shop assistant and others in the unidentified town or city where she lives.
What she says, what they say. It's almost hypnotic, which is ironic, perhaps, given life living under a regime of propaganda. It's certainly magnetic.
But there is one emotion that somehow punches through: Grief. It's there in the subtext, in what isn't said.
'Vanya is alive' becomes a refrain. The line is delivered in the same matter-of-fact way, but you can imagine it being said through gritted teeth or screamed or said through tears.
This play has a strangeness where ideas are up-ended and reversed and yet it has a compelling familiarity. It is a powerful piece about propaganda, pain and loss, and it had its quiet hooks in me.
I'm giving it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Vanya Is Alive, Omnibus Theatre
Written by Natalia Lizorkina
Directed by Ivanka Polchenko
Performed by Nikolay Mulakov
Running time: 60 minutes
Booking until 8 Feb; for more information and to buy tickets, visit the Omnibus Theatre website.
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