The White Guard

(The National Theatre, 22 May 2010)

The play lacks character---not just Russian or Ukrainian one, but any. Russian pensiveness is replaced by verbosity. Familial and friendship relationships appear shallow, hence arbitrary. Protagonists have been assigned accents (English, Scottish, Swiss) that do not help delineate the play's geographic or social divisions, if any. Instead of illustrating past concerns that remain relevant today, the production imputes present anxieties to past characters.

The play is a warning against the intoxicating, addictive simplicity of war. The play's civil war is dispensable; it could have been replaced by an election. Even though some wars are indispensable (given the prevailing institutions), the damage inflicted by all wars on witnesses and their descendants has never been fully accounted for when deciding whether to war. The distinction between desertion and voting is blurred.