There was an orgy in the next room. Or possibly a riot. Upstairs the aristocracy colluded. Downstairs the workers plotted. Norms were flouted, alternative medicine practiced. The world tumbled toward anarchy and decadence. Honestly, there are worse ways to spend an evening.
This was “The Death of Rasputin,” an immersive event created by the collective Artemis Is Burning and staged in an arts building on Governors Island. The much delayed closing of “Sleep No More” in January and the more abrupt shuttering of “Life and Trust” last month have left a vacuum in the immersive scene. “The Death of Rasputin,” which runs through the end of May, is one attempt to fill it. (The bar offerings — pierogi, spicy pickles, an elevated White Russian — are another.) With 10 performers, this show is smaller in scale than those others, but even on a limited budget, it glimmers like a Fabergé egg. Especially if you don’t look too closely at the jewels.
Conceived and directed by Ashley Brett Chipman and written by Chipman and three others, the show is set, loosely, in St. Petersburg (a.k.a. Petrograd) in 1916. Most of the scenes, even the more outré ones, have some basis in fact, though Artemis takes a relaxed approach to language and chronology. Broadly, the shows is in thrall to Grigory Rasputin, the mystic who exerted an unhealthy influence on the Romanov royal family in the years just before the Russian Revolution. His sway unsettled several aristocrats, who conspired in his murder. Legend has it that he was poisoned, shot, bludgeoned, then finally drowned in the Neva River. (The real story is probably duller.)
The performance begins with a ride to the island. Ticket holders are instructed to wear black and embrace Romanov chic, albeit in comfortable shoes, which looks a little funny in the electric light of the ferry, a cult afloat. After coat check and perhaps a drink at the bar, there is an introductory scene, then participants can roam at will across two floors and a dozen or so environments in a single building.
In structure and style, “The Death of Rasputin” doesn’t diverge too much from recent immersive offerings. There are drawers to poke through, letters to read, eldritch items to caress, a secret passage or two, performers to chase. (Unless you are very, very fast, sightlines remain a problem.) There is also lots of dance fighting and hanky-panky, though in a welcome departure, the characters speak and pains have been taken to offer audiences a coherent experience.
Even with fewer square feet, forking narrative paths remain. I arrived with one friend and ran into two more there. In the debrief in the bar afterward (a pleasure particular to immersive theater), we discovered that we all had significantly different evenings. I had missed, for example, a pig’s head and something that a friend referred to as a “rope sex magic thing.” Others had failed to spot the secret passages. Having been mesmerized once, it’s obvious why someone might want to return — for the glamour, for the dancing, for the comfort that history, even violent history, provides. It’s no surprise how this one ends.
The parallels between “The Death of Rasputin” and our country today aren’t straightforward, and thankfully the collective doesn’t contort them to fit this moment. As in most immersive shows, you can’t really join the revolution or resist it — only watch from the margins and try to stay out of the way. Maybe that’s true of most people during most real insurrections. And it’s too much for a show to offer a real alternative. At least in this revolution you can dance.
The Death of Rasputin
Through May 31 at the Arts Center at Governors Island, Manhattan; deathofrasputin.com. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes.
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media.
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