Regional Reviews: St. Louis - "Romanov Family Yard Sale" (2024)

John Wolbers, Ashwini Aurora, and Courtney Bailey
Photo by Jason Hackett

This story traces fifteen cousins and followers of Czar Nicholas II, who are reduced to poverty as they flee the Bolshevik Revolution, in a humorous pantomime set (allegedly) in 1919. Brontë Sister was produced by Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble, but both Bailey scripts feature lots of modern touches. Along with Romanov Family, ERA has given us half a dozen clever, experimental-feeling, and reality-adjacent, new works in St. Louis in recent years. Co-producer Lucy Cashion directs, unexpectedly defying her own familiar humor and transcendence at nearly every turn, to make space for an original work. In her selflessness, the show feels slightly evasive as a result. But she guides these Romanovs to realization in a way that's very gratifying.

Hastily pulling up roots, the Russian exiles are forced to give up what little they have. The stage at the Kranzberg Arts Center becomes a shabby bazaar of old clothes, books, and kitchenware. It is, at last, a commentary on the immigrant experience in America from a one-of-a-kind troupe. And we are invited to purchase their cast-off items with arcade tickets handed out for free at the box office. So it was a bit like Christmas, for me, getting a used theatre book.

"Everything must go," the cast laments, desperate and numb and Slavically absurd. "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is sung in a minor key, becoming less funny and more genuinely bizarre, as they acclimate to a new land. In a very audience-friendly way, it's the haunting story of the destruction of a middle class. An American film crew hovers around them, revealing a very different tale near the end with their cameras and projector. That's when the focus really shifts to all the things you can't have anymore. And as the skeletal hand of economist Adam Smith seems to tell us, earlier in the show, the memory of childhood toys and friends may be the most precious of all.

It's a very different "purgatory" from Ms. Bailey's thrilling, cabaret-like Brontë Sister script. Here in a sweeping new work, a highly insightful ensemble drifts around and around in a comic swirl. Past ERA creations have sprung from Shakespeare, or Sophocles, or Craigslist postings. And, in the Broadway revival in my head, there would be a choreographer and a few more special effects added on here. But the play is exhilarating as it is, holding up a mirror to us all with a million pop-culture references, the worthless trinkets of the mind, now just three for a penny.

A whole new spirituality is hastily contrived as the last thing they can sell, based on a matryoshka doll and a beautiful martyr to bear their burdens. Beanie babies will be ripped open and sacrificed by a resurrected Rasputin, under lighting that suggests a 1970s TV commercial. A herd mentality will keep us all together, with occasional "in-group" spectacles as large as the Kranzberg stage can accommodate.

And yet there's something alien and maddening about it all: our own grandmothers playing uninvited guests banging on the door of America, bringing in their mess, comically misunderstanding both the old world and the new: babushkas all around, a do-rag chorus, a chaos lapping at our feet. Their traditions mock us for being too married to the moment. The cast conjures a xenophobic attitude, which the show exploits perfectly. But in the end, the wanderers follow their own thread out of Hades, through a desperate kind of comedy, to claw their way back to the heart of all that matters.

It's a big fun step forward for a breathtaking group. They fly in hyperspace.

Romanov Family Yard Sale, by Equally Represented Arts, runs through July 20, 2024 at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.eratheatre.org

Cast:
Anastasia: Ashwini Aurora
Cousin Katrina: Courtney Bailey
Masha #3: Maggie Conroy
Aunt Babooshka: Miranda Jagels Felix
Cousin Alexi: Adam Flores
Rasputin: Cassidy Flynn
Masha #1: Celeste Gardner
Uncle Boris: Anthony Kramer
Pigbat: Alicen Moser
Little Yelena: Ellie Schwetye
Masha #2: Kristen Strom
A Choir of Raccoons: Joe Taylor
Big Yelena: Rachel Tibbetts
Dody: Chrissie Watkins
Kirk: John Wolbers

Production Staff:
Director: Lucy Cashion
Production Manager: Emma Glose
Stage Manager: Spencer Lawton
Assistant Stage Manager, Assistant Director: Jack Rimar
Cinematographer: Joe Taylor
Costume Designer: Marcy Wiegert
Scenic Designer: Lucy Cashion
Sound Designers: Lucy CAshion & Joe Taylor
Original Score: Joe Taylor
Accent & Dialect Coach: Keating
Swing Actor: Jake Santhuff
Production Assistants: Jack Rimar, Morgan Schindler, Jake Santhuff
House Manager: Morgan Schindler
Baby Raccoons: Jack Rimar & Jake Santhuff