At play in Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm – now viewable in the flesh, following a mid-Covid video version – is the very fate of the United States in the run-up to the 2016 election. If some of us found the repercussions less than hilarious, that’s on us. Premise aside, this would-be “workplace comedy” (per its subtitle) is largely lacking in yuks.
The setting is off, to start. Everyone should have a workplace as nice as the one that set designer Alexander Dodge has afforded three dissimilar content-creators: uptight Egor (Haskell King), rambunctious Steve (John Lavelle), and wary newcomer Masha (Renata Friedman). Their large, neat, well-spaced desks would be the envy of many a back-office drone.
Director Darko Tresnjak keeps the action moving briskly, but it’s not a good sign when the outrageous lies that the team spews prove juicier than any of the interpersonal intrigues brewing onstage.
Gancher has assigned each of the three lower-tier trolls a personality type, the better to set them at odds. She also, according to her script notes, structured the scenes to segue through four dramatic styles, to wit: “workplace comedy … Kafka-esque nightmare … Shakespearean revenge play … love child of Brecht and Annie Baker.” You can’t fault her for lacking ambition. But does the schemata ultimately pay off, given that viewers don’t have the benefit of a roadmap?
In embodying (very much so) the office boor, Lavelle goes all in, Jack Black-style. Unfortunately he lacks Black’s subliminal twinkle and comes across as just plain menacing and gross. If that’s the playwright’s intent, well played.
Egor initially presents as asocial and avoidant (“Why don’t you take a Turing test?” Steve taunts), but the character is more complex, a bundle of contradictions: he empathizes with African-Americans, for instance. Still, Egor is at root a careerist. Should he decide to join ranks with his tormentor, watch out.
Masha proves a pivotal if slippery protagonist. She keeps insisting, bitterly, that she’s “not a journalist” – having foresworn the vocation after one too many editors “spiked” her stories. So what is she now, other than ambitious and amoral? One factoid is clear: Masha is not alone in feeling quite at home in a miasma of lies. Middle-manager Nikolai (Hadi Tabbal) steps in briefly to advance the plot. Giddily, Nikolai and Masha cook up the “Pizzagate” canard. Suffice to say, their budding office romance goes awry – for him.
The final segment is largely devoted to the inner life of the office supervisor, scary-harsh Ljuba (Christine Lahti). This portion of the play, framed as a self-addressed autobiographical monologue, comes closest to achieving emotional resonance – thanks in large part to Lahti’s delicately nuanced portrayal of a tough old apparatchik.
Now in her seventies (an enviably vigorous version, to be sure), Ljuba has spent her entire life toeing the party line, whichever way it pointed. Beyond the sadistic jollies she can now derive from reaming out her supervisees – and presumably scores of others in much messier other rooms, unseen? – she has nothing to show for her lifelong devotion to the politburo. Perhaps she has a secret “flaw”? You bet. This is perhaps where Brecht and Baker come in.
Russian Troll Farm opened February 8, 2024, at the Vineyard Theater and runs through March 3. Tickets and information: vineyardtheatre.org
