Much has changed – and nowhere near enough has changed – since I first saw “Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy,” a play by Sarah Gancher based on a frightening true story: How the employees of the Internet Research Agency, a benign-sounding nefarious operation based in St. Petersburg, Russia, used social media to create disinformation, sow discord in the United States and get Donald Trump elected in 2016.
Using some of the actual Tweets verbatim in her script, the playwright fashioned a story with five invented characters — conventional office workers engaged in unconventional trolling. “Russian Troll Farm” was first produced in October, 2020, during the run-up to the next U.S. Presidential election. This was a time (as you’ll recall) when the Russians were reportedly trying once again to interfere in the election in much the same way as they had done in 2016. It was also a time (as it’s hard to forget) when in-person theater and almost everything else was shut down because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The play was presented online, an impressive early example of the era’s experiments in digital theater, with a visual aesthetic that merged the workers with the work they do; the scrolling Tweets were superimposed on their faces.
Four years after it was first produced as digital theater, “Russian Troll Farm” is now opening as an in-person Off-Broadway play, which loses the benefit of its original imaginative staging. And while Russia is still up to no good, its aggression is much more blatant now (i.e. invading Ukraine); Twitter also has lost much of its relevance. At the same time, though, Trump’s involvement in yet a third U.S. Presidential election threatens Democracy anew, and the design team works hard through flashing projections and harsh sounds to suggest the claustrophobic online world. So, if Sarah Gancher’s play thus hits differently now – neither as direct nor as timely — it still offers an intelligent, informative and sometimes entertaining take on a newfangled weapon in the modern arsenal against liberal society.
In a new program note, the playwright tells us she has divided “Russian Troll Farm” into four different sections, each written in a different style.
Part One comes closest to the play’s subtitle, a workplace comedy, introducing us to each of the five characters, starting seven months before the 2016 U.S Presidential election.
In an added introductory scene (one of several such tweaks in the piece), the boss Lyuba (Christine Lahti) interviews a prospective new employee Masha (Renata Friedman), which consists of a test of cultural competence
Ljuba: What does Trump promise to build?
Masha: A big, beautiful wall.
Ljuba: “Wall” is fine.
Masha takes her place with her new colleagues in the drab office (the only decoration a photograph of Putin.) Egor (Haskell King, the only holdover from the original online cast), is antisocial and all-business, determined to do the most posts and thus win the microwave. Steve (John Lavelle) is an obnoxious alt-right ideologue, intent on office intrigue and pressing everybody else’s buttons. Nikolai (Hadi Tabbal), the department supervisor, sees the subversion of American democracy as his day job; he is working on a screenplay. Still, he takes his work seriously, applying the lessons he’s learned from a how-to book on storytelling. “I think what we do is evil but I still want to do a good job at it,”
“Speak for yourself,” Steve scoffs. “I think we’re fucking saving the world.”
Masha and Nikolai hit if off; we see them together developing a whole new disinformation campaign about Hillary Clinton through a crosscurrent of fake Twitter accounts, which goes viral. “It’s a rush right,” Nikolai says. Ljuba is unimpressed:
“Don’t waste your time on story.
This is post volume. The volume of posts. How many. How loud.
It’s not art. It’s gossip.
Imagine some housewife in Indiana, scrolling through Facebook:
Hillary Clinton is corrupt.
Hillary Clinton is in the pocket of Wall Street.
Hillary Clinton is old and sick.
Hillary Clinton is racist.
Hillary Clinton is a criminal, lock her up.
Our housewife might support Hillary, but she’ll keep quiet about it — she’d be ashamed to speak up. But only if we are loud enough. Data knows exactly how many posts we need, so do not get creative, and don’t get distracted. OK?”
But Nikolai and Masha do get distracted; although he is married, the two have an affair, which doesn’t end well.
Each of the characters gets their turn at being the focus of the remaining three acts, each one darker the closer they come to the election – Steve’s bigotry uglier, increasingly difficult to stomach (more so because of John Lavelle’s exuberantly no holds barred impersonation of a vulgarian); Ljuba’s long, grim monologue a chilling autobiography of her life from heartless childhood to bloodless apparatchik, which gives us a strong taste of life under a totalitarian, and then an authoritarian, regime.
The playwright manages to paint these characters with some nuance, to the extent that one might (to one’s horror) start identifying with, say, Egor when he argues with Ljuba when she tells him he’s becoming too attached to specific online circles.
“I have an audience I’m responsible to. I’m part of a community,” Egor replies. Ljuba tells him “They’re not your real friends.”
“They are.”
“You need actual flesh and blood friends.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Online life is not real life.”
“I disagree. My online life is my real life.”
Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy
Vineyard Theater through February 25. Update: Extended to March 3.
Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission
Tickets: $38 – $118
Written by Sarah Gancher
Directed by Darko Tresnjak
Scenic design by Alexander Dodge, costume design by Linda Cho, lighting design by Marcus Doshi, sound design by Darron L West, video & projection design by Jared Mezzocchi
Cast: Christine Lahti as Ljuba, Renata Friedman as Masha, Haskell King as Egor, John Lavelle as Steve and Hadi Tabbal as Nikolai.
Photographs by Carol Rosegg
