at the RSC Swan Theatre

I have tried something with this show that i hope will make sense to audiences.

Pushkin wrote the play in the 1820s and suffered extensive censorship from the then Tzar Nicholas I,  as despite the play’s  historical setting of the reign of Boris in the 1600s,  too many of the debates about the nature of  the Tsar’s rule were seen as coded critiques of Nicholas.We are doing an English translation by Adrian Mitchell and so there is a contemporary tone to the language and it is impossible in rehearsal to ignore what is going on in Russia now.So should we acknowledge these different periods in the design of the production?

Boris Godunov RSC swan, directed by Michael Boyd, designed by Tom Piper, Lighting by Vince Herbert. Joe Dixon Photo by Ellie Kurttz

During rehearsals we were lucky to have a seminar with Martin Sixsmith former BBC Moscow correspondent, whose recent book on Russian History had at its heart an assertion that the Russian nation cannot escape cycles of tyranny ,  there is a deep seated belief that the ruler has to wield an iron fist and subdue the people to his will or else chaos will reign. Indeed recent history would suggest that the hard won freedoms of perestroika are likely to be short lived as Putin exerts a stronger and stronger grip on the reigns of power, exactly as the dying Boris urges his son to do at the end of the play.

Ivan the Terrible, Boris, Nicholas, Stalin, Putin… Would it be possible to reflect these cycles of tyranny within the design without it feeling like a whistle stop tour through Russian History or just a  confusing mess !

Apart from the eponymous role of Boris the play focuses on the rise of a pretender Grigory , later the false Dimetry who ascends the throne at the end by killing off Boris’s son, he is supported by people and nobility alike  despite being known to be a pretender as change is seen as good even if the implication is that one tyranny will just be replaced by another.

Boris Godunov RSC swan, directed by Michael Boyd, designed by Tom Piper, Lighting by Vince Herbert. Gethin Anthony Photo by Ellie Kurttz

So how to stage the play and where to set it? There are frequent references within the script of the pretender wearing borrowed clothes ,while Boris has murdered the rightful heir to clear the route to the throne . So our main protagonists are both adopting roles and using stolen clothes to define their status. In movement sessions with Liz Rankin ,we explored a language of coats as the a skin of the character, to be pulled on and sometimes in abstract battle scenes to be ripped off almost as a symbolic death. The cast transformed themselves from peasants to nobles by adding ornate robes , picked from hanging hooks around them, and changing their physicality. It was great to see the whole cast transform as one in front of our eyes.

Boris Godunov RSC swan, directed by Michael Boyd, designed by Tom Piper, Lighting by Vince Herbert. Photo by Ellie Kurttz

Would it work to give all the cast a basic outfit that is supplemented by coats or simple costume gestures to tell us who they are and would this allow me to be more impressionistic with the how the range of influences of all the periods the play seems to talk too are expressed ? How much could we make these transitions happen in front of the audience?

So we have decided to move through time as the play progresses, beginning with the sumptuous grandeur of the Renaissance in Boris’s coronation, but over a contemporary suit, then moving into the 1820s for a section of the play which has strong echoes of War and Peace, handsome princes and beautiful princesses dancing in Polish castles before heading off into a confusion of civil war, while also attacking Nicholas’s refusal to deal with the serf laws which lead to the failed Decemberist revolt in 1825. Ther are moments when we feature Stalin and Boris’s death has a strong whiff of Yeltsin, while the Pretender when he ascends the throne is unashamedly an image of the modern Russia of Putin and the Oligarchs.

As the play is now in preview i can have a little distance from the idea and believe it serves the text well, but dont really know if the press will take to it!

Boris Godunov RSC swan, directed by Michael Boyd, designed by Tom Piper, Lighting by Vince Herbert. Photo by Elli Kurttz