Pussy Riot Theatre: Riot Days review: a riotess subversiveness overwhelms Sydney

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Pussy Riot Theatre: Riot Days review: a riotess subversiveness overwhelms Sydney

By Reviewed by Kate Hennessy
Updated

Pussy Riot Theatre: Riot Days
Carriageworks
Saturday January 27
★★★★

Usually there is a moment in live art – certainly in dance and music shows – when you can relax your grip on the narrative and be swayed more impressionistically. When you can "let it wash over you", so to speak.

Determination to disrupt: Pussy Riot.

Determination to disrupt: Pussy Riot. Credit: Prudence Upton

There is no such moment in Riot Days, presented as part of the Sydney Festival, and featuring founding Pussy Riot member and formerly imprisoned activist, Maria "Masha" Alyokhina. The only thing washing over us is the water that's thrown from several bottles of chilled Mount Franklin while we try to stay straddled over a story that thrashes and bucks like a rodeo bull.

The anarchic air is made madder still by live saxophone (Nastya Awott), and drums and electronics (Max Awott). Alyokhina's fourth onstage collaborator is Kiryl Masheka, a lithe and intense performer from the London-based Belarus Free Theatre.

Pussy Riot Theatre perform in Sydney.

Pussy Riot Theatre perform in Sydney.Credit: Prudence Upton

For one relentless hour, the story of how the Moscow protest art collective came to global fame in 2012 is shouted at us in Russian and translated onscreen in English subtitles.

The subtitles appear over documentary footage you really want to watch. There is the duo of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, when they first decided to "swap" the roles of President and Prime Minister. Then there is Putin, po-faced, with influential clergymen of the Russian Orthodox Church. Oodles of footage of Pussy Riot, tromping around in boots and brightly coloured stockings; rocking out in Red Square in knitted balaclavas. Later, there are police vans, cells and gulag jails. Thigh-deep snow.

The text, too, you really want to read. It's an impactful mix of storyline, quotes and poetic statements. But the single flaw of this show is that it's not possible to either read or watch adequately. Sometimes the subtitles disappear so fast, it seems the impossibility is part of the show. You want to go home and get glued to YouTube. Or buy Alyokhina's book, also called Riot Days, for sale in the foyer.

Alyokhina's charisma is mighty but Masheka is the performer I watch most. When he dances, it's like he is offstage, not on. High, drunk or both and losing it to a punk rock band he loves.

When, unexpectedly, he begins throwing water on us, I think only of shielding my face, phone and notepad. I didn't envisage emerging from Bay 17 with mascara smeared down my face. As a critic, meanwhile, I think: "Why the stunt? Is this working?"

But I look again at his thin, muscular body as his wrenches the lid off another bottle, sprays it out at us again. One of the statements onscreen, earlier, had read: "This is what protest should be: desperate, sudden and joyous."

Kiryl Masheka in Pussy Riot Theatre.

Kiryl Masheka in Pussy Riot Theatre. Credit: Prudence Upton

It's not about breaking the fourth wall or even succeeding in wrenching us from our comfort zones. It's that he tried. It was chilled water on a hot night, quite pleasant really. Futile, for sure. But he used what he had at hand. In that moment, he embodied effort, aggression, bravery and, most of all, the Pussy Riot spirit: the determination to disrupt.

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