Theatre in Revue: Russian Transport (The New Group/Theatre Row)

	Morgan Spector and Sarah Steele Photo: Monique Carboni

Erika Sheffer is relatively new to the playwriting game, but already she has a nice way of faking out the audience. For the first half hour or so of Russian Transport, about a family of Russian emigrants living in New York (Brighton Beach, one assumes, although nobody ever says so), she appears to have written a sharp-eyed domestic comedy filled with local color. As it happens, she's armed with bombshells, but they'll be detonated on her schedule, not ours.

Sheffer's characters are familiar types, given extra bits of shading thanks to their unusual ethnicity; at first, Russian Transport seems to work betteras anthropology than as drama. Misha, the father, runs a car service and worries about money. Diana, the mother, bullies everyone, feeds then, and bullies them some more. Alex, their elder child, works part-time for Misha and part-time selling smartphones; he's just independent enough to sass his parents, yet is sufficiently cowed by them to turn over all of his earnings to Diana. Mira, their daughter, is a bright, bookish, and quietly rebellious adolescent; her current project involves convincing Diana to let her spend the summer in Florence, studying art. (Diana makes it all too clear that Mira, and her virginity, can stay at home.)

Sheffer amuses us with Diana and Mira's tartly unsentimental relationship. ("I hate you," says one. "You're a bitch," is a reply. Then they hug.) She only needs a line or two to make clear how displaced this tough-minded tribe feels in the touchy-feely New World. Lamenting the appearance of a liver spot on her right hand, Diana says, "In America, they've got a name for everything, so you can talk about how it makes you feel." The sneer with which Janeane Garofalo delivers this line is formidable. There are other revealing details, such as the family's irritation at Mira's refusal to down a few shots of vodka with her meal; at 14, she is considered more than ready to imbibe.

For all we know, the rest of Russian Transport will follow this clever, if slightly aimless, path. (In its opening passages, it puts one in mind of Rafta, Rafta, the comedy about squabbling Anglo-Indian families produced by the New Group a couple of seasons back; one of the many links between them is a highly evocative two-level set by Derek McLane.) Scott Elliott's direction is content to take a slowish pace, letting the characters reveal themselves in their own time, never tipping his hand about what's to come. Just when you're beginning to worry that Russian Transport has no fixed destination, the plot is set in motion by the appearance of Boris, Diana's younger brother, who has come to America in search of work. Boris is clearly another type of cat altogether, an outsized, powerfully sensual, masculine presence with charm to spare, when he cares to use it. From the get-go, he seems oddly at home in this new country, perhaps even more than his relatives who have been here for decades.

The first slightly unsettling note is struck when Mira flirts with Boris -- who is, after all, her uncle -- and he flirts back. (Boris has displaced Mira in her bedroom, a fact that necessarily adds a certain level of innuendo to their exchanges.) Then, in a moment of understated shock, Mira finds that Boris is keeping a shotgun in her dresser drawer; even more disturbing is the fact that Boris is thoroughly blasé about her discovery. Then Boris hires Alex to handle some simple transport jobs, promising to pay him on the side, out of Diana's view. When Alex realizes that his cargo consists of young Russian women who think they've come to the US to launch modeling careers, it's all too clear that something is wrong.

In scene after scene, new horrors are revealed in matter-of-fact fashion -- prostitution, grand theft, assault -- as Alex and Mira learn just how much corruption has seeped into their family tree. Sheffer's characters speak disparagingly about the Soviet past, but most of them have embraced a form of capitalism that is, effectively, nature red in tooth and claw. This could be the stuff of melodrama -- and, at the intermission, I imagined the indie crime drama (directed by, say, Quentin Tarantino with both guns blazing) that could be made from it. Instead, Sheffer goes about her business quietly, giving us the willies by keeping the violence and histrionics to a minimum.

That's not to say that Russian Transport is a fully realized drama. The comedy of the early scenes is sometimes flatter than it might be, and the structure is at times a little rickety. At first, it appears that Boris is the most important character, but he fades away after fulfilling his duty as a catalytic agent. There are very real -- and relevant -- cracks in the marriage of Misha and Diana, which are not fully explored. Misha, in particular, comes and goes, his narrative rather too thoroughly neglected by the playwright. And you have to wonder how Mira and (especially) Alex have failed to notice the evil that has apparently been in front of them all along.

Still, under Elliott's direction, the ugly truths pile up deliberately but relentlessly; the play ends with a scene of apparent domestic tranquility that seems light years from its lightly comic opening. The cast members inhabit their roles with deceptive ease. Garofalo's terrier-like determination to win even the smallest dispute makes her a matriarch to contend with; only too late do we realize what she hasn't been telling us. Daniel Oreskes brings a great deal of weight to the underwritten role of Misha; only a fool would underestimate him when, staring down his unsatisfactorily evasive son, he says, "This is almost like an answer, except it's nothing like an answer," giving the line an unmistakable note of menace. Morgan Spector is a scene-stealer, both seductive and lethal, as Boris, especially when, without warning, he erupts with controlled fury. Sarah Steele captures Mira's brash intelligence and lurking insecurity; as it happens, she has a secret or two up her sleeve as well. She also looks enough like Garofalo to really be her daughter. (Oddly, Steele also plays the various woman transported by Alex; she's perfectly fine, but one wonders why another actress wasn't engaged.) Raviv Ullman has a sneaky way of revealing the growing fear under Alex's tough exterior.

McLane's set is filled with telling details, including the internally lit china cabinet, filled with presumably cherished possessions, and the furnishings that don't quite match; it's backed by a photorealistic New York borough streetscape. Peter Kaczorowski's cheerless lighting strikes the right clinical tone. Ann Hould-Ward's costumes include the cheap prints favored by Diana and Boris' sleek, surprisingly fashionable suits. Bart Fasbender's sound design is dominated by a playlist of Russian pop tunes between scenes.

There are rough patches in Russian Transport, which are not entirely covered over by this production, but Sheffer is one to keep an eye on. She has a way of charming you, then turning on you, leaving you chilled to the bone.--David Barbour