BBC Russian Service broadcast transcript Review Gorky Enem

BBC Russian review of the section on Gorky`s Enemies,

"however, there is playing in London a production is running which can act as commentary ,and even visual textbook , on Lyubimov`s "The Possessed " a psychological illustration of what happens to people when the theatre of Peter VerkhovenskyS ideology is played out, namely Maxim Gorky`s "Enemies". The production is extremely modest , and with scrupulous attention to detail.... Gorky`s epic is one of the most popular , and most dull plays of the official Soviet repertoire. The director Ann Pennington, did not save the play and its heroes from being dramatically cloying , limp and predictable. However , in its English version, Gorky`s 'Enemies ' lost its fale [deceptive] pathos and pseudo-populism: the characters speak without distinctive accents , the mark of class distinction/conflict, and consequently , without populist sentiment. The production was intended in my view, primarily as an echo and commentary of Russia`s paston the British Government`s tactics concerning the Miners Strike which was led by Arthur Scragill. Everything seemed open :to the elemental acts of violence of the workers` masses, and the activist-socialists, and the dissention among the mine directors on whether or not to give way to the pressure of activists among the workers. However, in Ann Pennington`s English version, the image of the young niece of the factory owner is significantly changed. In the classic Soviet interpretation she is the revolutionary swallow flying before the storm of revolution, the first conscious/thinking generation of Bolsheviks enlisted from the intelligentsia. In Ann Pennington`s version, willingly or unwillingly , we are witnesses of the fixation by the revolutionary ideal; before our eyes a school-girl, at first moved simply by sympathy for the deprived , turns into a fanatic , who is prepared to offer all her relatives to the altar of revolution. That which Dostoyevsky saw only dimly in 'The Possessed' became the norm for Maxim Gorky and his "Enemies"