Unholy Russia

By T.E.K.

GORKY Book and Lyrics by STEVE TESICH Music by MEL MARVIN

Imagine a somewhat insecure Bertolt Brecht writing a kind of Man of La Mancha about Maxim Gorky, the Russian Revolution and its after math. Add to this some of the folk flavor of Fiddler on the Roof and you get a rough approximation of what a strange and ambitious amalgam is represented by this musical now at Manhattan's American Place Theater.

Playwright Steve Tesich, 33, has attempted to use one man, Maxim Gorky, as the mirror of a homeland, Russia, undergoing radical social change. But it is more complicated than that. First of all, there are three Gorkys simultaneously onstage, a romantic boy (John Gallogly), an idealistic young man (Douglas Clark) and an old and skeptical observer (Philip Baker Hall) who is still deeply moved by the plight of the Russian people.

Sweet Piety. The three Gorkys form a triptych of commentary upon each other observed at different ages. Without being didactic, Tesich manages to touch on several things worth thinking about. He says that survival is mandatory and compromise may be its price. Only the living can change a society, never the dead. He indicates, very subtly, that perhaps Russian society can never be changed, even by revolution, since tyranny is the only tradition the Russians know, have, and trust for getting things done.

Against this unholy aspect of Russia, Tesich pits the sweet piety of spirit that still resides in its people. This is brought forth in the music and the dances which suggest a community of soul -something that we can recognize in the life patterns of U.S. blacks.

The 28-person cast is exemplary. Tesich spent the first 14 years of his life in Titovo Uzice, Yugoslavia, and something certainly stirred his Slavic blood when he wrote this sometimes erratic, sometimes ironic, but always moving musical.

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