Yesterday Victor Pelevin’s “Crystal World” made it for the first time to London. Controversial feelings… Too difficult to watch if it’s just a simple mirroring of the Revolution. And if so, then, too easy to understand for a work signed by the postmodernist Pelevin. Those might have been dreams or, maybe, a kind of a reality, still, definitely a phantasmagorical one, nevertheless, it was not easy to delimit the two dimensions in the performance.

On one hand everything seems very simple and easy to understand. It’s 1917. The Shpalernaya Street is leading to Smolny. Two Junkers are supposed to stop everyone who tries to break in. They are sniffing cocaine meanwhile discussing sophisticated philosophical problems, trying to understand whether every man has a mission while coming to this world.

On the other hand, the discussions about man’s mission are interrupted by Lenin’s character coming to stage taking different appearances, the guise being quite funny, from a Japanese woman with the famous “R” till a box of lemonade carried by a workman called Eino Rahja, a hint to the Finnish communist, obviously.

In case Lenin’s various appearances symbolise devil and temptation, a simplistic understanding of the play is not sustainable. The parallel between the discussions regarding the mission of a man on the earth and the two Junkers’ fail to accomplish their mission to stop everyone from getting inside Smolny is very eloquent.

“Cristal World” is not about the October Revolution. It’s most likely about all of us; about what we have to do while coming to this world and what we end up doing.