A play shines darkness on Soviet-era families: Can One Live This Way?

“Can One Live This Way?” a play in the 2014 Midwinter Madness Festival at Roy Arias Studios, is a gritty, and bleak view of the life of a Soviet-era family. From beginning to end, author Natalya Churlyaeva does not ever lead us to believe this story will resolve nicely.

Directed with a straight-forward, hide-nothing approach by Ian Ogden, we meet and never like any of the characters in the story. Since the story is light on plot, one needs to root for a character, and have more focus on character development. But unfortunately the play does not allow enough time for this to occur, thus it is difficult to stay with the situation: in a way, perhaps this too is part of the play’s commentary on Soviet-era life.

Christopher Sirota writes for OuterStage and DramaQueens on a regular basis. He is also a cinematographer with one film receiving international distribution, another in post-production, and a third readying for pre-production.
Photo by A.G. Liebowitz/WrightGroupNY