As Terrible as God: Drama society's term one production
Tsar Ivan The Terrible, A. K. Lazuko Victor Vasnetsov, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
The minute I saw the cast and crew of As Terrible As God crowded around a table at Phineas, I instinctively thought ‘family’. Excuse the cliche, but as the interview unfolded, it became clear that the bond between the team was the fundamental reason for the show’s success. I was first met by Rui Rui, the producer, calm and composed, seeming to glide across the floor as she introduced me to the rest of the group - throughout the interview, I noticed how she remained largely quiet, watching the team she had cultivated in complete adoration.
The play follows the slow descent of Russia’s first Czar, Ivan IV Vasilyevich, into madness deep inside the dim, candlelit halls of his Kremlin. As his despotism and his gruesome reign of terror bring his kingdom to the brink of destruction, his beloved son, Ivan Ivanovich, tries to stand in his father’s path. What follows seals the fate of his dynasty and his people and forever earns the Czar his infamous title: ‘The Terrible’.
Writer Daniel Fruman told me of the multiple sources of inspiration for the production, ranging from Shakespeare to his Ukrainian lineage; he wrote the play over the three years of the pandemic and the ongoing Ukraine War, where feelings of existential dread were commonplace, and this theme certainly finds its way into the play. Fruman himself is a walking poet; he speaks in sonnets and brings the play to life in its opening sentence. He dresses the part, too. During the interview, I couldn’t help but notice his suit, a Dickensian brown with a waistcoat and handkerchief to match. His demeanour is eccentric, charismatic, electric— everything a playwright should be. Fruman’s suit was arguably as show-stopping as his choice of aesthetic for the production, which was modelled on the painting of ‘Ivan The Terrible’ by Ilya Repin and the famous Pushkin opera.
The expansive choice of Western art and literature that was dotted around Fruman’s vision board led to a world of possibilities for Noel Buscher, the show’s costume designer. Noel brings a resourceful edge to the group, and her crown worn by Ivan the Terrible (played by Luke Zamosky-Freitag) is a brilliant example of this. Created from an Ikea bowl, her final creation could be passed off as the real deal. The cast joke about costume mishaps and look to Buscher as the ultimate problem solver; quick to fix the issue and always with a fabulously creative solution. Noel, in typical thrifty-student fashion, developed her costumes from a mix of Edwardian-style rentals from the National Theatre and second-hand pieces that she carefully hunted for in and around London. The results of her efforts matched Fruman’s vision perfectly and complemented the dark, Gothic set curated by Irene Ou. As with the supportive nature of this team, Noel took a minute to commend both Irene and the props master Nefeli Lalioti, who ‘did an amazing job’: hiring from three different agencies and conducting a wealth of research which ultimately led to a raving review which was left on the production’s Instagram page. Buscher, Ou, and Lalioti seemed to be the backstage power trio; the three musketeers of all things design.
Both Buscher and Ella Eastwood, who played Yelena, the second wife of the Czarevich, stressed how invaluable having such a brilliant set was, not only for Buscher’s creative process but also for the actors’ when bringing their characters to life. As a first-time UCL performer, Eastwood could be described as a bit of an underdog, but her colleagues most certainly find her to be an excellent performer; she is said to have ‘carried the second act’.Eastwood humbly puts her success to the team spirit that had been cultivated over only a short period of time, with someone at the far end of the table echoing, ‘It felt like a UCL play because we were all holding each other up.’ Eastwood’s visceral onstage performance was juxtaposed by the shenanigans that took place backstage with fond moments including the ridiculously long spears that had to be hurled on and off stage in pin-drop silence and an inventive charades-game that those off-stage played to pass the time. Despite the heavy subject matter of the play, the cast still had fun, with Eastwood summing up, ‘We’re not psychopaths!’
Not only did the team explore the characters emotionally but also physically, with the inclusion of fight choreography as directed by Karina Zakharyan, who also played the Czarevich, the Czar’s son. Zakharyan is a tour-de-force in the group, and their presence can hardly be ignored. In the typical way of an amateur performer, Karina commands the corner of Phineas we find ourselves in and immediately dives into a comprehensive analysis of their elusive character. They note their particular experience with performing as genderqueer and how this journey was essential when characterising the Czarevich, who goes through quite the emotional renaissance himself. Questions surrounding what masculinity truly means were raised by Zakharyan when deep diving into their character— is it inherently violent? Eastwood eloquently chimes into the conversation and proposes that the violent, patriarchal world of the Czarevich is undercut by moments of softness that are established by her character and the Czarina, played by Iman Hafeez. With the careful guidance of Kelsey Norris, the show’s intimacy coordinator and assistant producer (who herself has produced three productions and a short film!), both Hafeez and Eastwood navigated powerful scenes in which their characters question the authority of the men in their lives.
Fruman explores masculinity in all its forms, ranging from the temperamental and emotionally fragile Czar to strong and bold characters like Shuisky, the Czar’s general, played by Thys Milan. Milan executed the role fantastically and looks the part too. As he speaks, I imagine he could easily have snuck onto the set of Game of Thrones, playing one of Jon Snow’s comrades. Milan is tall and indeed mighty - the perfect look for the general of a blood-thirsty Czar. In contrast with his character, Milan has a jovial quality about him and quite blatantly adores his castmates as much as they adore him. Joseph Scull, who plays The Spirit, joins the interview just after my arrival, and I notice how seamlessly he fits into the group, laughing along with Milan’s jokes as if he hadn’t missed a thing.
Scull quite nobly admits that he struggled to get into his role but commends his castmates for helping him along the way. One of his highlights was letting out a blood-curdling scream in the play’s penultimate scene, and how he went from unfamiliar with performing to acting in a scene of such intensity is demonstrative of the team’s collective effort in ‘bolstering’ each other up. His more experienced counterpart, Jacob Merchant, who played Godunov, listened along in admiration and wholly agreed. Jacob is a bonafide UCL Drama Society performer and had starred in two productions before As Terrible as God; one being the Binding of Loki, also written by Daniel Fruman.
In the characteristic manner of a seasoned performer, Merchant listens along to his castmates without much interjection before heading off to his second life as an Arts and Sciences undergrad; his uncomplicated demeanour tells me that we might all see his face on the side of a bus one day. To see actors from Joseph’s level all the way to Merchant’s sitting side by side fully emphasises the true UCL spirit of the production, bringing people together from all corners of the world with a whole host of skills.
Just as I decided to wrap up the interview, Caleb Seed hastily ran over to our corner of Phineas and exclaimed, ‘Sorry, I was just dropping off a mammoth-bone throne.’ His cast immediately erupts into applause, and Seed is warmly ushered over to my part of the bench. Although he is hailed as an inspiring director by his colleagues, Seed remains modest and curiously calm despite the crazy afternoon he’d had. The third-year media student was more accustomed to filmmaking, working on a variety of such projects,but starting at UCL introduced him to the world of theatre, and his passions have since developed into directing productions such as these, especially after meeting Fruman and Rui at the New Writing Festival.
Despite the show’s success, Seed recounts the struggle that he and the team had, proposing that ‘whenever there was a problem, we gelled together even more’ and that he had ‘genuinely never worked with a better team’. He jokes that it was nice to have a solid team to struggle with as opposed to being the only one solving the various issues. Seed and the rest of the assistant producers, including Audrey Lau, Joe Critchlow, and, of course, Rui, recount their heavy dependence on the steadfast Matthew Todd, another vital member of the production team. Todd coordinated with the theatre, and without him, the team nearly lost their venue, but with Todd as middleman, the show was back on track, and even resulted in the Lion and Unicorn Theatre offering him a well-earned job.
I asked the cast and crew of As Terrible as God to sum up their experience in three words. I received some poignant responses and some funny ones, ‘scary, spectacular, symbiotic’. When I turned to Seed, he said the show couldn’t be summed up in three words; it was just too big. One thing that they did agree on, however, was that the show was a hit and ultimately a ‘fucking spectacle’.
This term, Drama Society is geared to the equally as anticipated Little Brogues, which follows the chauvinistic son of a recently deceased social media giant and how he sets a vicious course for the platform’s decline in the name of free speech. A tidal wave of hate speech hits ‘GrapeVine’, and the other executives must dethrone the site’s power-mad successor before it’s too late. Written and directed by Thomas Round, it’s almost as if Little Brogues is the contemporary cousin of As Terrible as God, exploring father-son conflict and toxic masculinity. Kicking off in early February, this term two production has big boots to fill! Buy tickets here.