When the Illinois Theatre Center selected Royce Ryton’s dry historical drama “The Anastasia File,” the company probably had no idea that the youngest daughter of the butchered Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra would become an animated heroine last Thanksgiving. But whereas the chirpy Anastasia of the 20th Century Fox cartoon hangs out with cute bats and talking dogs (not to mention the voice of Kelsey Grammer), Ryton’s stolid British treatment of the same historical subject is a far more serious affair.
This ponderous play explores one central question. In 1920, a woman was brought into a Berlin mental institution after attempting to kill herself by jumping from a bridge. Although she did not like answering questions about her identity, she was strikingly similar in appearance and manner to the Grand Duchess Anastasia (and therefore entitled to the money squirreled away by the murdered czar). Thanks in part to an ulterior financial motive, her extended family and its banks refused to recognize that she was a Romanov, but the patient persisted in her quiet claim.
Starting with the woman’s arrival at the hospital, Ryton tells this real-life unsolved mystery using four actors. Aside from the constant title character (played by Loretta Rezos), the other performers play not only the inspector (Alan Kopischke) seeking the truth about the unusual patient, but various other hospital functionaries and visiting members of the ousted Russian bourgeoisie.
While Anastasia’s story is not without some interest, this is far from a compelling play. Ryton’s rather obvious script has no visible sense of irony or subtlety.
Director David Perkovich does his best to enliven this dull drama with fluid transitions and some efficient staging. There’s also a carefully crafted performance from Rezos. But the show otherwise remains bogged down by a whole raft of Slavic stereotypes and a heavy setting of dark wooden panels.
Every other word spoken by the miscast Steven J. Anderson, it seems, begins with the letter Z; actress Carolyne Haycraft is equally heavy handed in the treatment of her various characters. So with Zis and Zats and big Russian hats floating all around the stage, it’s hard to take this long-winded affair with much seriousness.
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“The Anastasia File”
When: Through Jan. 25
Where: Illinois Theatre Center, 400a Lakewood Blvd., Park Forest
Call: 708-481-3510.
