Omnibus theatre, London
Natalia Lizorkina’s play traces a mother’s anguish when she is told her son ‘has not been captured’ in a dystopia where words mean their opposite

Alya, a Russian mother, worries about her son, Vanya, who has been “sent to the peace”. From the frontline, she receives a phone call to say that he “has not been captured”. She passes a beggar on the street who stresses that she doesn’t need money as she and her children are happy and well-nourished.

Viewers soon realise that this Russia is an inverted world in which words and statements mean their opposite and the truth can only be surmised by reversing lies – the sort of place where a president might call invasion of a sovereign nation “a special military operation”. By the time a judge tells Alya that she has “done nothing wrong” and a doctor sardonically reassures her that she is “not dying”, there is a chill in an audience that has learned this warped talk.