STAGE : From Los Angeles to Moscow--The Sequel

On his first night home from directing in the Soviet Union, Mark Lamos went out to the nearest mini-mart for a quart of milk.

“This was a place I had previously considered a complete dump. Now it looked so beautiful. There were black people, there were Hispanic people, there was rock music, there was color! I realized what I had been missing for five weeks.”

On the other hand, when Nagle Jackson got home from directing in the Soviet Union, his first reaction was: Hmm, the lawn needs cutting.

Moral: Beware generalizations about the Russian theater. Lamos had been in Moscow, staging “Desire Under the Elms” for the Pushkin Theatre. Jackson had been in Leningrad, doing “The Glass Menagerie” at the Gorky Theatre. Different men, different towns, different experiences. I’d chatted with both men while visiting the Soviet Union in March, and wondered how they viewed their experience now that they were back in the States. Over the phone from Hartford, where he is artistic director of the Hartford Stage Company, Lamos sounded a bit disenchanted--not with the Pushkin, particularly (“I made some wonderful friends”), but with the Russian theater system in general.

Like most American theater people, he had envied that system for years: long rehearsal periods, permanent acting companies, big staffs, strong government support, low ticket prices, a couple of dozen plays in the repertory at all times.

But from up close, he could see the problems: stock performances, a certain reluctance to come up to speed. When theater becomes a job--moreover, a guaranteed job--perhaps something vital leaks away. Maybe theater people need to stay a little hungry.

Speaking from Princeton, N.J., where he heads the McCarter Theatre, Jackson conceded the problems. In his case, they included a star who couldn’t be replaced. (“She gave a performance, but it wasn’t Amanada.”)

Still, Jackson continues to envy the Russian system: the depth of the acting company; the rhythm of working in rep; the way everybody contributes to the rehearsal, including the head electrician--at the Gorky, a member of the theater’s board of artists.

“Besides, that city is so wonderful to explore . . . “

Moral: No two people ever take the same trip. For example, the group with whom I had traveled in the Soviet Union got together last Sunday night to look at each other’s pictures, and the most common reaction was: “How come I didn’t see that?”

Like one’s pictures, it takes time to process one’s final reaction to such a trip. For me, it was a trip to the past--a past that will need to be protected if it’s to survive.

Theater in the Soviet Union exists, you might say, before the Fall. Not that people don’t watch TV or go to the movies. But an evening at the theater still has a certain cachet to it, without being so intimidating that it scares people off. People go to the theater in somewhat the mood that they would go to the library: looking for something worthwhile that will also be a good read.

Theater in the Soviet Union still speaks to the intelligent audience that was outpriced by the American theater years ago. What happens if the Soviet government decides, under perestroika --restructuring--to cut subsidies and make theater pay its own way?

Ticket prices could go up. The repertory could become cheapened. The very idea of repertory could go by the board--it’s much cheaper to run “Starlight Express” for three years than it is to keep Chekhov, Ostrovsky, Gorky and Eugene O’Neill on call.

And, what happens when the VCR hits the Soviet Union? On a cold night in Leningrad, will they go out to see “The Glass Menagerie” when they can rent Brando in “Streetcar Named Desire”? Don’t bet that that won’t be possible in the Soviet Union within the next couple of years; all sorts of joint ventures are in the works. Perestroika could make the Russian theater all too responsive to market forces.

Glasnost --openness--is the other big word just now. And they mean it. I had been on a panel with a Soviet theater critic at an Italian theater conference in the early ‘80s, and immediately we were fighting the Cold War.

Nothing like that this time. The critics and artists we met in Moscow and Leningrad talked like people, not like the representatives of the people.

Nobody said: “Well, how free is the American theater? How many plays do you have on Broadway about the CIA?” Rather, the people we met were quite ready to acknowledge that until the mid-’80s Soviet theater-makers were, in fact, under the thumb of “the bureaucrats” (never “the Party”) and had to say things by indirection.

Moreover, our friends were quite ready to admit that the current thaw might not last. “A counterattack from the right is always possible,” is a phrase that sticks. Naively, one hadn’t thought of the Soviet Union in terms of “right” or “left.” Suddenly one saw that of course there would be factions here--and now they could talk about it.

But something interesting happened on the tour bus. Our guide recalled working with an American TV crew, whose producer seemed to think she wanted to defect to the United States. “But this is where I live,” she told him.

This is where they live, and their definition of freedom does not include the right to question the guiding principles of Soviet society--not, certainly, from the stage. But it does include the right to question how well “the bureaucrats,” including Stalin, have implemented these principles, and a look at recent issues of Soviet Theatre magazine shows many playwrights are doing just that.

Vladlen Dozortsev’s “The Last Appointment,” for instance, concerns a deputy minister of health who is visited by a man who seems to know a disturbing amount about his past.

The visitor may be imaginary: the minister has been under a strain recently. Still, his first words are compelling. “I came to suggest that you leave your job.” He goes on to note that “people in charge of things should be honest” and to explain, in detail, how the minister has kept himself technically honest while letting his underling work a deal here, a connection there.

“Lenin could spot your type a mile away,” says the accuser--a real Jimmy Stewart line. These plays do recall the populist films of the ‘30s, with their sense that there’s nothing wrong with the American Way, if we can only get back to it.

We might find these plays a bit naive, but “The Last Appointment” is a lot more subtle than the dreary, uplifting plays about the New Soviet Man that were the rule for so many years. In the last scene, for example, the bureaucrat outsmarts his visitor and gets to keep his job. But the audience has perhaps applied his story to bureaucrats of their acquaintance.

I know a Russian who says that glasnost can’t last: That its logical result is the questioning of the Party’s collective wisdom, and that the Party isn’t about to allow that. Maybe that’s why so many people answered our questions about the future with “Who knows?”

At the moment, though, it’s exciting to see a country where the playwrights are being encouraged to examine their society, and where there’s a real audience for their findings. That was the best part of being in the Soviet Union, for this American. I wasn’t away long enough to miss the glitz.