ODYSSEY THEATRE’S ‘MASTER CLASS’ : AN AMBITIOUS, GRAND DRAMA TO THINK ABOUT

Stalin and Prokofiev debating the future of Russian music may not sound like much of an idea for a play. But wait until you see what British playwright David Pownall does with it in “Master Class.�

This is the strongest show that the Odyssey Theatre has done in months--in years, come to think of it. It is that suspicious thing, a drama of ideas. But the ideas have legs.

Rather wobbly ones in the case of Comrade Prokofiev (John Rose) and Comrade Shostakovich (Randy Dreyfuss.) They have been summoned for a midnight chat with Comrade Stalin (Gene Dynarski) and Comrade Zhdanov (Louis R. Plante) about the kind of stuff they have been writing lately.

It’s 1948, and the Soviet government (which is to say, Stalin) is conducting an inquiry into contemporary music. Are symphonies that sound as if they had been composed in a boiler room contributing to the morale of the nation?

Perhaps a few conservatory professors consider cacophony ennobling, but Comrades Stalin and Zhdanov, who are not without an ear for music, do not. They thought it would be useful to discuss the issue with the state’s most honored composers over a friendly glass of vodka.

What ensues is not the kind of play this reviewer was expecting. “Master Class� does leave us with something to think about, but it is not a Shavian debate. Nor is it, at least under Ron Sossi’s direction, a grim study in totalitarian thought control.

Don’t think “Darkness at Noon.� Think “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.� Stalin and Zhdanov play get-the-guests with their friends, and it gets a little crazy in there about 3 a.m., with the vodka and the close harmony. If it weren’t the Kremlin, the neighbors would be pounding on the walls.

In other words, this is a play about Russians. Pownall takes the hilarity too far, I think, in the second act. The play begins to feel like a vaudeville sketch that can’t find its ending. But for the most part, “Master Class� has the unpredictability of a really good party. Not even Pownall can tell what his people are going to say next.

Dynarski’s Stalin is capable of absolutely anything. We expect a monolithic bully. We get a vivacious giant who responds to whatever emotion happens to blow through him, until it is time to get down to business. Then, you might be in trouble.

Is all this free-flowing emotion an act? Not a bit of it. But it’s a dandy way to keep one’s guests off-balance. Pownall’s version of Stalin may have nothing to do with the real one (“Master Class� doesn’t claim to be a documentary), but it does suggest how Stalin may have flummoxed FDR. Beware of “simple peasants� in high places.

Rose plays Prokofiev--definitely not a peasant. More like a career diplomat who knows how to keep his head down in a crisis. But Dynarski’s Stalin doesn’t intend to let him get away with that. By the end of the first act, the floor is littered with broken phonograph records and comrade Prokofiev is no longer taking the long view of the situation.

Dreyfuss as the timid Shostakovich doesn’t know how to cope with any of this. He’s as scandalized as an honor-roll student watching the headmaster freak out. But he too has his flarepoint.

Plante makes it plain that Zhdanov is Stalin’s man, but not his stooge. The pair quarrel and embrace like old campaigners, further isolating the two composers, who don’t feel at all like comrades. And it’s not a routine, Zhadanov playing the Bad Cop to Stalin’s Good Cop. The USSR is being run by the buddy system.

Late at night, perhaps every government comes down to two people and a bottle. That’s one idea to ponder in “Master Class.� There’s also the question of artistic freedom versus the common good. Stalin admits that he’s asking for old-fashioned music, but after the horrors of war, don’t the people have the right to some comfort in their art?

But the viewer is more likely to feel this play than to think it. At the Odyssey, it’s something like watching a fraternity hazing, with the possibility that the worm will turn, at least intellectually.

That’s the point of the scene where Stalin learns what hell it can be to actually compose something. But, as indicated, the fun gets labored and the reference suddenly seems to be to some old-time Hollywood mogul giving his boys instructions on what kind of songs to put in his next picture--a joke we’ve had before.

That reservation aside, “Master Class� is a grand evening of theater. Appropriately, that includes its musical side. Everyone displays an astonishing fluency at the piano (a trick: you’ll have to wait until the curtain call to see how it’s done) and Dynarski’s Stalin sings beautifully--unless that’s a trick too.

The all-female design team understands the needs of this all-male play perfectly: a large and somewhat disconcerting room; after-midnight lighting; clothing that tells whether the wearer considers himself a European or a Russian. Susan Lane designed the set; Dawn Hallingsworth the lights; Jackie Dalley the costumes.