The play that changed my life: ‘Sarcophagus dealt with Chornobyl as a symptom of corruption in Russia’
I was pregnant when the terrifying radiation clouds came over Europe after the Chornobyl disaster. My interest was much greater as a result. I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company as a director at the time, and they had asked me to find a contemporary play for the next London season in 1987.
By coincidence, I got a phone call from Michael Glenny, the translator. He had come across this play being done in Russia. Most of its regional theatres had ensemble troupes and they were all doing it.
Vladimir Gubarev was the science editor of the newspaper Pravda and was one of the first journalists to step inside Chornobyl and witness what had happened. He was so horrified that he didn’t want to just write journalism. He’d never written a play before, but he went away to his dacha and wrote Sarcophagus. It dealt with what happened at the plant, but also touched on so many other things to do with corruption at the time in Russia. This was a moment when Gorbachev had announced perestroika. So you were kind of encouraged to be truthful about everything. The play talked about alcoholism, corruption, laziness. All the things which previously you wouldn’t have been able to speak about because the great Soviet empire was glorious and untouchable.
It is a perfect metaphor for a totally sealed up country where the truth can’t get out
Chornobyl was a symptom of all of it. The sarcophagus was a literal thing, because the solution to trying to deal with the radiation was to enclose everything in a concrete bunker so the radiation couldn’t get out. And that’s what happened, although it is also a perfect metaphor for a totally sealed up country where the truth can’t get out.
Michael had translated it kind of instantly and said, I’ll send it to you now. It was that urgent. I remember reading these pieces of paper as they came off the fax in Stratford, thinking, God, this is incredible. I went to Russia with Michael to see some of their productions, in very far off regions. Some lasted five hours. Some lasted two. There were huge audience discussions afterwards. I remember one particular night in Tambov where they were hanging off the rafters, watching with electric intensity. It was amazing; Russia at a moment of great change.
The play takes place in one of the main hospitals where they took the first victims. There are key figures like a firefighter, one of the main engineers, the people who were on the frontline, and they were all dying. There were doctors who were trying to shield them from that knowledge, some sympathetically, some protecting the regime. And investigators coming to question people.
Then this patient, played brilliantly in our production by Nick Woodeson, who kept prodding the investigation to ask the questions they were avoiding, dotting around in his pyjamas but clearly not that mad. He knew the score and wasn’t afraid to say it because he had nothing to lose. He insisted on telling the truth.
Bit by bit they all die, so it’s tragic but it was funny as well, a satire of pomposity and bureaucracy and all the lies. In Russia they cheered when the central character scored a point about hypocrisy. I’d never done a piece that was erupting from a place of such political and social momentum.
People sometimes think the theatre is just for middle-class people, a kind of hobby. But when you have something in your society that has to be named and has to be discussed, then suddenly the theatre becomes a place everybody flocks to. A place of absolute necessity.
• Jude Kelly is the founder of the WOW Foundation, which organises the annual Women of the World festival across six continents.
• As told to Lindesay Irvine