The line between the truth and fake news becomes a blurry limbo pole the characters dance around, above and below in Sarah Gancher’s brilliantly relevant and wildly funny new play, Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy, now at the Vineyard Theater. This inventive playwright starts out with the shockingly real fact that Putin’s government interfered in the 2016 presidential election by sending out conspiracy-theory-laden tweets and social-media messages from thousands of fake accounts, tipping the scales for a certain orange-hued candidate. She goes inside the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg (an actual company) and creates a frightening and fiendish look at the interrelationships among five trolls, how they turn on each other, poison the information well, and threaten democracy around the world. The scary part is many of the tweets were taken from IRA fake accounts, and Gancher had to make up only a few.
The playwright employs another innovative writing strategy by dividing the play into four sections, each from a different character’s perspective and in a different style. First we get a romantic drama-comedy with former journalist Masha (a soulfully complex Renata Friedman) and married aspiring screenwriter Nikolai (appropriately pathetic and needy Hadi Tabbal). Both have no illusions about their work and see it as a means of storytelling and creative expression. When one of their cooked-up stories about Hillary Clinton kidnapping kids though tunnels underneath Disneyland goes viral, Gancher examines the seductive thrill of controlling the narrative. Their shared interests and beliefs lead to a dangerous affair (Nikolai’s father-in-law is a powerful oligarch) and complications.
Then we get a Kafka-esque nightmare focusing on Egor (hilariously introverted Haskell King), a friendless drone whose only emotional attachments have been formed with the American virtual community. (He obsessively frets over hitting his quota of tweets and not receiving invitations to cook-outs in the US.) Steve (John Lavelle)’s segment is like an out-of-control “SNL” sketch satirizing spy thrillers as he attempts to rise from his subordinate position to management. In this hilarious vignette, Lavelle crashes through the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience with a scorching tirade of right-wing belligerence in a dazzling performance.
Finally, Christine Lahti tops that as Ljuba, the Soviet true-believer supervisor, in a soul-baring monologue detailing her twisted personal history which parallels that of her volatile country. Lathi makes this angry, politically repulsive woman’s point of view understandable, delivering subtle shades of grey rather than those in simple black and white.
Director Darko Tresnjak seamlessly blends the various motifs into a sleek, riotous whole, employing Marcus Doshi’s versatile lighting, Jared Mezzocchi’s overwhelming video and projection design, and Alexander Dodge’s sterile, all-white set.
Russian Troll Farm is the best kind of dark comedy. It makes you laugh uncontrollably at its absurd premise, yet gives you a shock of recognition when you stop guffawing. It’s then you realize this is no satire but the reality we face in our media-saturated world.
