Shortly before the Russian Revolution, the west London market boy-cum-mystic Ezra Montefiore was elevated into the orbit of the country’s aristocracy after meeting Prince Felix Yusupov. Afterwards he performed as a séance master at Yusupov’s palace in St Petersburg.
The prince, who came from one of the Russian aristocracy’s wealthiest families and studied at Oxford University from 1909 to 1912, was later involved in assassinating Grigori Rasputin, the mystic and faith healer. Rasputin had become a favourite of Tsar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia, and Tsarina Alexandra due to their belief in his healing powers over Alexei, their haemophiliac son.
Into this steaming cauldron of intrigue steps the writer-performer Saul Boyer, 31. He is the stentorian-voiced Montefiore and plays with a grandiloquent air in director Toby Hampton’s tempestuous, thunder-and-lightning-coated three-hander. Montefiore, wearing white tie throughout and occasionally a fez, is addicted to opium. He is also a gambler and a charlatan and when the lights are not on him and the creditors come knocking his manner becomes less salutory.
He is joined by Lewis Chandler, 31, as the posh-voiced Yusupov, sporting a blue velvet jacket and cravat, and the feisty, dual-roling Laurel Marks. Wearing a black and white-trimmed petticoat dress and a brown shawl, Marks, 27, transmutes effortlessly between th characters. There is defiantly un-posh Mrs Guppy, Montefiore’s blowsy cockney landlady-cum-sexual “benefactor”, and the sozzled Irina, wife of the no-good Yusupov, who has taken to drink after the death of their baby son.
There’s no shortage of snogging, mostly among the men, as Unleash the Llama mark their tenth year at the Fringe with another untold queer historical narrative.
Smoke is blown onstage at various points and the lighting dimmed for the table-rocking séance scenes as Montefiore seeks to contact Yusupov’s dead brother. This helps to create an eerie atmosphere, which is enhanced by the tense background music. At times it’s in danger of straying too far over the top. The promise in the press release that “audiences will experience the first-hand exhilaration of live psychic phenomena”, including levitation, left this particular member a tad less than exhilarated. It was nonetheless a spirited performance in more ways than one.
In Defiance of Gravity
Summerhall, Demonstration Room, until 26 August
