In Old Town, A Red Orchid Theatre’s production of Dianne Nora’s Six Men Dressed Like Joseph Stalin is stunning. Six Men actually follows just two men: the older Koba (John Judd) and the younger Soso (Esteban Andres Cruz), as the former trains the latter in the basement of the Kremlin for the role of a lifetime. Soso is to be a body double for Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin when Stalin meets with Winston Churchill and FDR at the 1945 Yalta Conference. (The play is only somewhat historically accurate.) Little more background is given as to who these two men are or what brought them together; the point is that each must suddenly trust the other in a society where they’ve never been able to trust anyone.
At 100 uninterrupted minutes, Six Men is a slow burn, but when it finally catches fire, it is glorious. Such is the result of Nora’s strong, smart script, Dado’s imaginative direction, and Judd and Cruz’s brilliant, deep performances as Koba and Soso.
Judd, in particular, delivers spectacularly as the grizzled, softhearted yet hardened actor’s actor. He quotes Anton Chekov and reminisces about time spent with Konstantin Stanislavski. He shuffles around the stage with a slight hunch, speaks carefully but not slowly, and is prone to bouts of terrifying anger and sadness. His mustache, bright white and immaculately combed, seems to almost swallow up his mouth. Cruz, with a similarly Stalin-esque mustache, brings great joy and childlike curiosity to Soso. He overacts at the beginning of the play but does so intentionally. It is therefore a great joy to see Cruz adapt his acting style as his character gains experience working as a body double.
Indeed, much of this play is metatheatrical in such a way. Its enormous humor is often either self-referential or pointed at theater; one joke, for instance, involves the difficulty of adapting to the personalities in an ensemble. Monologues from Chekov’s The Seagull and Shakespeare’s Macbeth are recited or performed, often multiple times. The production’s stage managers and lighting technicians become actors themselves at times, all caught up in a play that expresses deep, sincere affection for the task of theater-making.
That such an intellectual script is handled with joy rather than pretension is a testament to the work of Dado. If her direction at first appears slightly disjointed, that just makes it all the more wonderful to realize how perfectly the pieces all fit together. This is not Chekov’s gun; this is Dado’s 11 chandeliers, lamp, overcoat, and general basement clutter. This reviewer has never before seen a flutter of artistic choices orchestrated to such perfection as in Six Men’s final scenes. Believe it or not, A Red Orchid pulls off a dance that starts with shimmies before a crescendo into Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake theme—and it does so spectacularly.
Despite all this beautiful spectacle, Six Men never loses sight of its emotional heart. When, near the play’s end, Judd delivers one of theater’s most famous monologues, he does so with poise, vulnerability, and real heart. Such sweet, magical, well-constructed art as A Red Orchid’s Six Men Dressed Like Joseph Stalin is not just rare to find in the theater. It is rare to find in the world.
Dianne Nora’s Six Men Dressed Like Joseph Stalin is at A Red Orchid Theatre through June 28.