Petru by Vlad Zografi – we must note that Vlad Zografi is brilliant and does not call the play Peter the Great, for even if the czar had positive traits, he was not altogether what we would call great…just like the one they have now, who is plagued by the Napoleon complex…how can we talk of greatness, when one is short, minuscule metaphorically 10 out of 10

 Petru by Vlad Zografi – we must note that Vlad Zografi is brilliant and does not call the play Peter the Great, for even if the czar had positive traits, he was not altogether what we would call great…just like the one they have now, who is plagued by the Napoleon complex…how can we talk of greatness, when one is short, minuscule metaphorically

10 out of 10

 

 

It may look like a really bad idea to read or listen to a play about one peculiar Russian czar, just as another mad one is turning the world upside down, launching a war in Ukraine -which if he is allowed to pursue will not stop there, he just said again yesterday [incidentally, like with the stock market news, we need to mention the delay here, for we will allow this note to marinate for some days, maybe a couple of weeks, before it is posted, in the hope that it might gain some flavor, if anything is missing to make this perfect fare] that his demands are well known, and among them, he wants NATO to push back from Eastern Europe, so that they can march in (after so goddamn many previous occupations, invasions, incursions) easily – which has sent the price of everything up, in places where people are poor and will not be able to afford food, fuel, well, anything, the way things are going with the calamity next door…

 

On the other hand, it could be instructive to see where Mad Putin is coming from, what the antecedents are, how the other monarchs of Russia behaved and what is there to explain the propensity that Russians have to elect, support or just tolerate monsters, from Stalin to Putin, through Lenin and to some extent Peter the ‘great’…while they have given the world incredible minds – Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Turgenev, Goncearov, Bulgakov, Ilf and Petrov, Gogol and others – in terms of leaders, there is a clear problem there – one of the few exceptions would be Catherine the Great, but she was a ‘damn foreigner’ http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/77-out-of-100-for-great-animal-instincts.html

The under signed has seen this excellent play some years ago (come to think of it, it was more than twenty, given that my daughter is of that age now, and the glory days of theater going had stopped before her birth, what with disappointment in the newer productions, wherein screaming, excess, pathetic performances had become the norm and a laziness of the spirit, lack of intellectual curiosity for this domain there was an end to seeing almost all the notable productions in town) when the Bulandra Theater had Peter in its repertory, at the Liviu Ciulei hall, then called Izvor, where the cast was excellent.

 

As in the case of the recent, acclaimed series The Great, where they specify from the start that only occasionally what we see is based on truth, it is problematic for those unfamiliar with Russian history to distinguish between artistic license and real enormities, debauchery and monstrosities that have really taken place – we could surely assume that a lot of patriotic acts did take place and more than are mentioned in this marvelous work…we must also admit that it is not just Peter, the Russians that have committed horrors – albeit we could also see things in contrast, how Peter and his men behaved compared with the French and The British – however, I have read in The Economist – I think it was from the best media source that I have got this – that the Czar’s troupe has smashed the place where they have been residing in Britain and a lot of money will have been asked for damages, by the owner, from the Crown or the state, whose guests it seems the majestic character has been while set on destruction…

 

While in France, the Russian ‘delegation’ buys all the parrots and eventually the whole market place – that would endear them to yours truly, who has two resplendent, and often screaming macaws – one of the personages regrets Russia while he is abroad, for the tortures he can indulge in while there he thinks of the priest that is castrated, the woman and the time when he has cut her tits and more such ‘entertainment’…they also get a giraffe and when they see they cannot put it on a boat, they want it cooked and  the head of the giraffe would be for Peter’s and his cabinet of curiosities…arguably, these Russian leaders are eccentricities themselves, suffering from delusions of grandeur – especially so in the present situation, when the Red Despot is short and clearly has a Napoleon complex

Admittedly, Peter from the play- -we must emphasize the work is not called Peter the Great for good reason, Vlad Zografi seems to have placed the czar into perspective and concluded that he is not all that great, he is…well, just Peter, a man plagued with shortcomings and some aspirations for greatness – is keen to learn things from the West, albeit what would happen to his empire is not a glorious tale, especially if we bring it up to date…there is the notion that his entourage (and surely many others) called the czar nuts, for looking for wise, sage people abroad, when you can find all the best in mother Russia…and we come to one baffling notion, perhaps they want their monarchs to be cruel, vicious and show ‘strength’ -which is not on display for Putin, on the contrary, he does not have self –esteem as explained by the Magister Ludi Nathaniel Branden in his magnum opus The Six Principles of Self-esteem http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/six-pillars-of-self-esteem-by-nathaniel.html

 

What if this people wants leaders that look, behave, think, act the way most of them do and the exhibitionist, weak, tense, paranoid Putin – think of the many displays of ‘manhood’, with bare chest on horseback, playing hokey and stumbling on his nose [quite a few of these ridiculous, ludicrous postures are available on YouTube and Last Week Tonight has just ridiculed them a few days ago] which indicate a needy persona – is what they really like – yes, it is stupid to take a group of people and make judgments, if the crowd is large enough, and say there are xenophobic, sexist, unless you have reliable opinion polls, something that is impossible in this tyranny – and we can look at interviews with ordinary folk and listen to what they say – yesterday, they had this on BBC, where they asked about what is going on and two women from the middle class, nice clothes and all, said that one hundred percent in one instant and the colleague contradicted to say…no, 200% with Putin…so you see where this is going.

There was a joke published in The Economist (where else…this reader has been an avid fan from 1984, when he has started reading the best magazine in the world and never stopped for one week) which goes…Putin is at the border with Finland (and it could be any other land in the East, and maybe soon we could laugh with this in France) and the border guard is asking for the name…Vladimir Vladimirich Putin…occupation is the next question, to which the short man answers…Not this time, just visiting…

 

Well, he has his troops in Ukraine, for what is for the masses in his country a ‘special operation’ and they seem to love it with a (maybe large) majority, even if the educated intellectuals may know better – not that motherfucker Gerghev (or whatever his cursed name is, I am not bothered to look it up so that I spell it right, he is not worth the trouble) a conductor in Germany at La Scala and a…Putin sycophant…Razvan Vasilescu is excellent in the adaptation for the National Radio