Review:
Pussy Riot

“Pussy Riot?” wondered the passer-by t0 the enormous queue waiting to get into the main entrance of Gorilla in Manchester. “Never heard of them.”

Okay, so they come from Russia and sing most of their songs in Russian, when most Brits can barely manage to order a beer from a Spanish or French bar on their annual summer holiday. But while this group may be fiendishly difficult for native English speakers to sing along to, they can’t be dismissed as obscure or unimportant.

Combining punk rock with feminism and political protest, the collective founded in Moscow back in 2011 gained international recognition the following year when five members staged an unauthorised guerrilla performance inside the city’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Wearing knitted balaclavas to conceal their identities, they managed to jump around, singing and punching the air, for about 40 seconds before being hauled out of the building by security guards.

Footage of the incident, plus film shot at the Epiphany Cathedral in Yelokhovo, formed the online accompaniment to their song Punk Prayer, asking the Virgin Mary to get rid of Putin and join the feminists in protest. It was the centrepiece of the group’s sell-out gig at Gorilla.

Based closely on Maria Alyokhina’s recently published book of the same title, the Riot Days show deftly uses electronica, punk and jazz sax, together with spoken word narration, video and dance, to tell the tale of the Pussy Riot revolution, subsequent trial, eventual prison sentences and return to freedom.

Alyokhina’s guiding principle, repeated throughout show and book, baldly states: “To back down an inch is to give up a mile.”

With the screen providing an ongoing translation in English behind the performers, the story Maria tells has its roots in Russian history and literature. An initially reluctant member of Pussy Riot is finally persuaded to join the protest at Christ the Saviour when someone points out that at least it’s not like killing an old woman – a reference to Raskolnikov, the antagonist of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic Crime And Punishment, who believes he has the right to murder an old pawnbroker for her money because even murder is permissible in the pursuit of a higher purpose.

Quotes from famous authors and poets are used in both the book and the performance to comment, directly and ironically, on the issues raised by the Pussy Riot protests, trials and prison sentences. Alyokhina’s guiding principle, repeated throughout show and book, baldly states: “To back down an inch is to give up a mile.”

Some of these quotes, such as one by dissident poet, journalist and two-time gulag survivor Varlam Shalamov – whose works Maria read in the prison camp – are much appreciated by Russian readers but deserve to be far better known abroad. Alyokhina and her colleagues have brought them on the present tour to remind foreign audiences that freedom and human rights are vital issues that must constantly be fought for and won all over the world.

Biting Russian irony was in abundant evidence in all aspects of the performance. Strident sax solos from Riot founder Nastya Tolokonnnikova and violent percussion by guest star Max from Asian Women on the Telephone regularly punctuate Maria’s narrative. Tolokonnnikova dons a nun’s black habit and warbles hymns to comment on the Russian Orthodox Church’s restrictive traditionalist view of women and female behaviour. Max delivers rampaging raps to impersonate Russian politicians and their self-important, hypocritical speeches about Pussy Riot, then whirls round in a frenzy chucking water all over the audience to symbolise the way the authorities’ contempt for the people is like pissing on them.

Graphic novel-type illustrations appear on the screen, depicting a punk-feminist account of Alyokhina’s trial to counterpoint reports in the official Russian press. Pussy Riot have great fun here, re-enacting the trial transcripts and showing how they resemble the absurdities and hypocrisies of famous Soviet and tsarist cases persecuting political dissidents. By resisting lies and irrelevance, freedom is forged – but never stop being surprised by the mendacity of the authorities, or “you’ll be turning your backside to them and bending over for the rest of your life”.

The group delivered a triumphant multimedia production showing how political protest needs to be “desperate, sudden and joyous”. It fully deserved the standing ovation from the audience.