The Promise

by Aleksei Arbuzov

In the savage 1942 winter siege of Leningrad, as the Russians fight off the Nazi invaders, three teenagers - Lika, Marat and Leondik - are thrown together. Losing everything from their past, they forge a new love that binds them and a new hope which keeps them alive: the promise of a better future.

Arbuzov's classic of the 1960s is revived here in Nick Dear's stunning adaptation for the Tricycle Theatre, London in 2002.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Russian Literature

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Arbuzov (Алексей Николаевич Арбузов) was a Soviet playwright. He was born in Moscow, but his family moved to Petrograd in 1914. Orphaned at the age of eleven, he found salvation in the theatre, and at fourteen he began to work in the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1928 he joined a group of young actors in the Guild of Experimental Drama; after its dissolution he joined a traveling agitprop theater for which he began to write plays. He moved to Moscow in 1930; in 1935 he wrote the play Dal'nyaya doroga (A long road) and in 1939 Tanya, his two most successful plays. Avril Pyman writes of him, "The charm of his work lies in his shrewd but affectionate attitude to his fellow-man; he sees through human foibles to the basic desire to lead a good and useful life, and creates plausible, even likeable, 'positive' characters."

Several of Arbuzov's plays deal with personal transformation and redemption within a Soviet context. In Tanya (1939), a woman whose life is shattered by the death of her husband finally finds meaning and purpose serving the sick in a Siberian village. An Irkutsk Story (1960) describes how the shallow and hedonistic life of 25-year-old Valya is transformed by the love of Sergei, foreman of an excavator crew building a dam in Siberia. Following the death of Sergei in a drowning accident, she finds new meaning in joining the construction crew and raising her children.

This affectionate immersion into the emotional lives of his characters brought rebukes from some Soviet literary critics. For example, Dmitry Shcheglov wrote, "Upon turning to a play by Arbuzov, we are engulfed in a pleasant atmosphere of universal love, nobility, and friendship; however, these fine feelings fail to guide us, to mobilize us, or to direct our minds and thoughts toward a great goal."

Arbuzov's characters embrace the communist ideal of working to build a classless society, but it is the celebration of their personal struggles that endeared Arbuzov to Soviet audiences.

Reviews

[Bettie]

Because there is nothing in the blurb box, nor any review outlining the story (sheesh I hate all taker no giver!), here is the gen:

An episodic play set in Leningrad between 1942 and 1960, The Promise covers the lives of three teenagers - Lika, Leonidik and Marat - thrown together in a bombed-out house during the siege of the city by the Nazis. Bonding together in adversity, they vow to keep in touch in the future, even though their lives might change. Arbuzov's play tries to discover whether that vow is kept, once they graduate into adulthood.

[Mark Friend · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nick Dear’s 2002 version of The Promise is set in Leningrad over three time periods- 1942, 946 and 1959.

The opening act finds the three characters sharing a room in a derelict building in Leningrad during WW2; Each responding to the traumatic events occurring around them. Whilst The Promise is more specific in time and place, I found this opening act was quite reminiscent of Philip Ridleys’ Brokenville (2001) and Debra Oswald’s Stories in the Dark (2008) - which both set up a similar scenario of isolated teenagers negotiating their way through upheaval and shared stories.

This play differs in the second and third act where we are offered the opportunity to follow these characters further into their future, to potentially see how those events in the first act have continued to impact upon their lives.

However, for me, this is where the play might lose some traction. I’m not sure whether the play is using the subtext of their repressed love triangle to explore the connotations of their experiences, or using the context of the war to present the love triangle? At times – particularly in the second act – it feels like the later.

Beyond any inferred promise the characters may have made to each other, The Promise of the title must be that which the war(and their personal sacrifices) made towards a possible future and the ideology of the Soviet Union. The play might be about the how and where of that promise, and how it falls short of that ideal.

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