Iron Curtain Musical Is a Charming Jab at the Old Soviet Union in 1955

Iron Curtain
Baruch College Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Avenue
New York, N.Y.

It is a fact that Joseph Stalin, and Nikita Khrushchev after him, had the artistic wing of the Communist Party produce numerous dramas and musicals that completely rewrote world history and pushed the party line for mass audiences in cities and villages throughout the Soviet Union.  These awful, dreary shows, which the people madly applauded (naturally), were praised by the numerous censorship boards Soviet leaders formed to oversee, and rewrite, all literature, film, and theater.

A musical or play would go something like this:  in act one, a man in a small city who used to love the state thinks he might criticize the government over an issue.  In act two he does and creates havoc with neighbors, who despise him.  In act three, he realize the error of his ways, publicly repents and goes back to being a loyal party member and sings loving songs about the government as his smiling neighbors cheer madly.

The Soviets produced hundreds of these plays; they did not need any American writers to do what they did so well themselves.  Now, in a funny fictional musical, Iron Curtain, with book by Susan DiLallo and music and lyrics by Stephen Weiner and Peter Mills, the Soviets kidnap a pair of songwriters from New York and force them to rewrite a rather poorly conceived propaganda musical—in a week.

The musicalis a charming jab at Communists of all shapes and sizes and faithfully recreates the Cold War attitudes of Americans and Soviets in 1955, two years after Stalin’s death.  The plot of the propaganda play they wrote, a take off on the American musical Damned Yankees, was simple:  an attractive Russian girl sells her soul to the devil, moves to America and becomes a rich and famous movie star.  At the end of the show, realizing the error of her ways, she flees Hollywood and returns home to live a penniless life as a Russian peasant girl—and loves it.

The two abducted American writers, Howard Katz and Murray Finkel, were struggling playwrights who would not mind a hit—even if it opened far behind the Iron Curtain in Russia.  They were selected because they were so unknown that nobody would miss them (the KGB decided not to snatch Stephen Sondheim).  The pair wind up in Moscow, living at a dumpy small hotel called Lapov Luxury (get it?), an old wooden piano at their disposal and a Russian actress who falls for Murray as their companion.  They work with energetic bearded director Yevgenyi Onanov and are watched 24 hours a day by a secret Soviet agent, Sergei Schmearnov. There are lots of Russian singers and dancers, Soviet banners and spies.

Murray is smitten with the actress, Masha, and begins to think that life in Russia might not be that bad, with her at his side.  Who needed to vote and give speeches and read what they wanted anyway?  His partner sneers at him and continually hums the song God Bless America when he is around him.

The pair write a musical that is so pro-Soviet, and so good, that Khrushchev tells them to turn it into a movie, delaying their hoped for return to America.  There is always the threat that the KGB will kill them.  They are distraught and determined to find their way home and get involved in a very complex and very amusing finale.

The show at the Baruch College Performing Arts Center is a good one and features a stellar ensemble cast headed up by David Perlman as the very funny Murray, Todd Alan Johnson as Howard, his cantankerous partner, Maria Couch as Shirley Dooley, Howard’s ardent girlfriend, a marvelously ‘Communist’ Bobbi Kotula as Russian agent Hildret Heinz, whips and all, Aaron Ramey as the rugged, gun-toting Schmearnov, Gordon Stanley as the bearded Onanov, a fine singer and dancer, and winsome Jenn Gambatese as Masha, Murray’s girl.  John Fico is a wonder as Khrushchev, who barrels on to the stage at the start of the play, takes his shoe off and starts banging a clipboard with it (remember that at the UN?).

The play is nicely directed by Cara Reichel, who manages to keep the storyline moving along as fast as the pleasant musical numbers staged by choreographer Christine O’Grady.

The success of Iron Curtain is that it spoofs the propaganda musicals with a well staged American musical of its own. Writer DiLallo and composers Weiner and Mills continually stroke the old Cold War fears, on both sides, and stretch them out into one long laugh (the KGB agent says the songwriters are spies because in their show biz biographies they were listed as ‘collaborators.’

When aprons enter the theater they heard a long series of pro-Soviet songs and stare at a bright red ‘Iron Curtain’ in front of the stage. Everything about the show is as Soviet as the producers can make it, a moving ‘Spy vs. Spy’ drama that the zany editors of Mad Magazine would have adored.

The Off-Broadway play opens the door to an interesting piece of Soviet history.  The very real censorship boards not only drained Soviet artists of their creativity and skills, but helped untalented people produce propaganda musicals with idiotic plots and shallow, Party-loving actors and actresses.  These shows played for months in large cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg and then were taken to smaller cities and towns on lengthy tours.  Tickets were usually free (a successful Soviet move for the support of the masses that worked in both entertainment and sports) and the audiences loved them (at least they clapped when someone in authority was looking at them).  The enormous efforts that went into these sham musicals are hinted at in Iron Curtain.  The play not only makes fun of the censorship boards, such as Glavlit (an acronym for the rather inelegantly titled Main Administration for the Protection of Military and States Secrets in the Press under the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—to be fair, it sounds better in Russian), but harpoons the entire propaganda industry as well.

It was in these same years in the 1950s that American musicals bloomed with such hits as Oklahoma and West Side Story, shows without KGB agents rewriting songs or censorship boards blackening out dialogue.

Fortunately, the writers hold the line at the censorship boards and propaganda plays and do not jump into the bottomless pit of politics and the Communists. They are well to leave that lengthy task to someone else.

Iron Curtain is probably too long, at 2 ½ hours, has too many songs and drags in too many spots, but, overall, people should like it. It is a musical chestnut. The members of the old Soviet censorship boards, such as Glavlit, will hate it; Khrushchev will turn over in his grave (no more kitchen debates with Richard Nixon for him, either).

PRODUCTION: Producers: Prospect Theater Company, Fireboat Productions. Sets: Brian Prather, Lighting: Doug Harry, Costumes: Sidney Shannon, Sound: Andy Leviss, Musical Supervision: Brandon Sturiale and Remy Kurs.