DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Frankie Enos, left, who plays Anna, a Russian poet, and Peter Webb as Isaiah Berlin, rehearse for "Anna." Enos is wearing a necklace loaned to her by Natasha Owen, honorary Consultate General of Russia. The necklace once belonged to Anna, the Russian poet, whose story inspired the play.
Iolani School teacher Nancy Moss makes an auspicious debut with her play "Anna," being presented in its world premiere run by The Actors Group. "Anna" commemorates the victims and survivors of an extremely dark era in world history and, in doing so, reminds us to cherish the freedoms we enjoy in the United States. There are powerful messages here and Moss deftly enfolds them in a fascinating story. ‘Anna’ packs power and charm
Review by John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com"Anna" reminds us that mass murder wasn't invented by the Nazis, and that it didn't stop with Hitler's death in 1945. Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union twice as long as Hitler was in power in Germany, and was responsible for the deaths of millions of people, sending others to concentration camps like the infamous "Gulag Archipelago" documented by writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Fear of "the Gulag" permeated the communist empire for decades. Writers, poets, painters and playwrights were persecuted as relentlessly in Stalinist Russia as in Nazi Germany. Among the Russian victims was a gifted poet named Anna Akhmatova.
Akhmatova had achieved fame by writing and publicly presenting her poetry in a free-wheeling cultural milieu. But it was all downhill from there as she survived, in succession, the social upheaval of World War I, the overthrow of czarist rule, the carnage of the Russian Civil War, the bloody Stalinist purges and the horrendous bloodbath of World War II. During all that time, close friends of hers died mysterious deaths, her poetry was condemned by the communists, her published works burned and she was forbidden to write. Even her son was imprisoned for no reason other than the fact that he was Akhmatova's son.
Playwright Moss re-creates a life-changing encounter that took place shortly after the end of World War II between Akhmatova and a Russian-born English diplomat who admired her work and wanted to meet her. Akhmatova knew that she was under surveillance by the NKVD (the communist counterpart of Hitler's Gestapo) and knew that contact with any foreigner -- let alone a capitalist diplomat -- was dangerous.
"Anna": Presented by The Actors Group at Yellow Brick Studio, 625 Keawe St.
Repeats 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 4 p.m. Sundays, through Aug. 18. Tickets $10. Call 591-7999.
But the meeting is portrayed in an engaging and entertaining form, and director Brad Powell and an excellent cast make "Anna" must-see theater.
Frankie Enos, who has gone from one triumph to another since making her stage debut last year, surpasses all her previous roles with her portrayal of Akhmatova.
Peter Webb makes a superb debut on the TAG stage, and deftly negotiates most of the lighter moments, with his portrayal of Akhmatova's visitor, Isaiah Berlin.
Berlin had been born into a wealthy Jewish family in St. Petersburg (Leningrad for most of the 20th century). Since he was almost 20 years younger than Akhmatova, he only had a child's memories of czarist Russia and the first tentative beginnings of the revolution. His parents had gotten out of Russia, and he had grown to manhood in England and had become a professor at Oxford.
As written by Moss, Berlin's character is naive. At 36, he is apparently still a virgin, and envisions love as some kind of "great calm" feeling. Berlin is also naive about the brutality of the Stalinist dictatorship, and almost patronizing when he attempts to equate the bombing of London with the horrendous two-year siege of Leningrad.
"He does not recognize the real world," Akhmatova comments at one point.
She eventually sets the professor straight on both subjects. Berlin is shocked, then terrified, when he realizes that the NKVD may have bugged her apartment. But he eventually comes to appreciate Akhmatova's belief that love is not about passivity but about "the overwhelming feeling that, at this moment, there is no one else in the world."
Webb is hilarious when need be, but never overplays Berlin's obliviousness. His interplay with Enos is perfect, and helps make "Anna" one of those all-too-rare plays that leaves the audience wanting more after the final curtain.
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