REVIEW: One Hour Eighteen Minutes at New Diorama Theatre by Theodora Clarke
It takes a brave playwright in Russia to tackle Government corruption there today. However, that is exactly what Elena Gremina does in ‘One Hour Eighteen Minutes’. Her play is a political work that draws on the real life story of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who accused Russian Interior Ministry officials of embezzling 230 million dollars in the form of a fraudulent tax refund. Shortly afterwards, Magnitsky was arrested and held without trial for nearly a year. Two weeks before he would have had to be released, he was found dead in custody during a transfer to another prison. The title of the play refers to the period of time that medical treatment was denied to him in his cell. The assumption here is that Magnitsky died as a result of medical neglect and abuse in prison.
The play is inspired by a range of materials including first hand interviews with whistleblowers. Gremina’s text asserts that Magnitsky was denied access to clean drinking water and shared a cell with seventy prisoners surrounded by open sewage and rats. The play suggests it is most likely he developed pancreatitis brought on by these squalid conditions. Gremina pulls no punches in her presentation of the story. She presents the viewpoint that he was murdered and that the Government then proceeded to cover up the truth.
The theme of Government corruption looms large in the production. The performance by Wendy Nottingham of Judge Elena Stashnikova is both convincing and terrifying. She is interviewed about her decision to refuse Magnitsky medical treatment in prison. In one telling moment she says:
“No. I’m not a person. Judges are not “people” in the legal process. We’re there to reflect the will of the government.
I’ve had cases where there’s been nowhere near enough evidence against the accused – but I managed to get a guilty verdict in the end. That’s my job. If you’re in court and the judge says black is white and white is black, then that’s how it has to be.”
Interestingly, when the play first opened in November 2010 at theatre.doc in Moscow it did not include several of the interviews in the current version. Following the premiere, a number of people who knew the characters in the play, approached Gremina with additional testimony. This was a year after Magnitsky’s death. As a result, new interviews have been included in the updated version of the play.
All of the characters in the play are real and where possible words are taken from interviews and court hearings conducted between 2008 and 2012. Their names are flashed up on projections above the stage so that the audience is aware which scenes are reconstructions and which are based on real transcripts.
While the subject matter is gripping it sometimes it is hard to follow the action. There are only four actors, who play several parts in the production, so it is not always clear who is speaking. Then there is the question of context, as this play was written for a specific audience in Moscow. There are a number of aspects of the play which are lost in translation. For example, it makes assumptions about the knowledge of a British audience who will be less well-acquainted with Magnitsky’s case. Also it is hard to shrink such huge subject matter into only sixty minutes and so the story feels somewhat condensed.
However, despite these minor shortcomings, this is a disturbing and gripping play. The setting of an office filled with books and files is used to full claustrophobic effect such as, when Magnitsky’s wife embarks on a Kafkaesque search for her missing husband. She uses various windows to speak to prison guards which open in the bookshelves. The director Noah Birkted-Breen also makes effective use of video cameras to interview characters and project them onto transparent screens above the stage.
Sputnik Theatre, which brought the play over to London, provide an important service to the public in sourcing, translating and presenting contemporary Russian drama in the UK. ‘One Hour Eighteen Minutes’ works well as an introduction to Russian political theatre. For audiences looking for a good fringe or off-West End production to see then they could do no better than to start here.
One Hour Eighteen Minutes
New Diorama Theatre
Tickets: 0844 209 0344 .To 1 Dec. www.newdiorama.com/ hairy girl hairy girl https://www.zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php быстрые займы онлайн
Moscow-on-Thames
When most people think of British-Russian relations, they imagine Bond films, iron curtains, Cambridge double agents, irradiated dissidents, and billionaire oligarchs who dress like Evelyn Waugh but behave like Tony Soprano and then sue each other in London courts. But there’s another element underwriting this not-so-special relationship.
British elites, elected or otherwise, have grown highly susceptible to the unscrutinized rubles that continue to pour into the boom-or-boom London real estate market and a luxury-service industry catering to wealthy Russians who are as bodyguarded as they are jet-set. This phenomenon has not only imported some of the worst practices of a mafia state across the English Channel, but it has had a deleterious impact on Britain’s domestic politics. And some of the most powerful and well-connected figures of British public life, from the Rothschilds to former prime ministers, have been taken in by it. Most surprising, though, is how the heirs to Margaret Thatcher’s fierce opposition to the Soviets have often been the ones most easily seduced by the Kremlin’s entreaties.
On Aug. 21, a new lobby group called Conservative Friends of Russia (CFoR) was launched at the London home of Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to Britain. The launch was attended by some 250 guests, including parliamentarians, Conservative Party members, businessmen, lobbyists, NGO representatives, and even princes. Yakovenko and Member of Parliament John Whittingdale, who chairs the Culture Select Committee in Parliament and is an “honorary vice president” of CFoR, both delivered keynote addresses. The lavish do in the backyard of the Kremlin envoy featured, as the Guardian reported, a “barbecue, drinks and a raffle, with prizes of vodka, champagne and a biography of Vladimir Putin,” and it came just days after the Pussy Riot verdict. It was an open invitation to controversy. If CFoR wanted to portray itself as merely a promoter of “dialogue” between Britain and Russia, it was an odd beginning for a group born looking and sounding a lot like “Tories for Putin.”
CFoR was founded by Richard Royal, a public affairs manager at Ladbrokes, a popular chain of betting parlors in Britain. He also owns his own company, Lionheart Public Affairs, which has no website but shares a registered address with the new pro-Russia lobby group. Responding to the storm of criticism his new project has provoked, Royal took to the Guardian’s website to defend the initiative against what he called “armchair critics on Twitter,” in language you’d expect from a PR professional. “Whether we like it or not,” Royal wrote, “Russia is an influential and essential part of the international community and its importance will only grow over time. We need to stop making decisions based on misconceptions that are decades old, and deal with reality.”
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Why Obama Should Sign the Magnitsky Act
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the Magnitsky Act last week, legislation that would simultaneously sanction Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses and normalize U.S. trade relations with Russia. The dual nature of the bill may seem at cross purposes, but this is not the case. Increasing trade with Russia and investment in Russia requires the rule of law.
For the past four years, under U.S. President Barack Obama, the “reset” policy has delinked questions of human rights, democracy and rule of law from all other areas of U.S. policy toward Russia. In doing so, it has sent a message that the U.S. may talk about these issues but it will not do anything to discourage abuses.
The Magnitsky Act is a recognition by Congress that the reset policy was a mistake. In 1975, after the U.S. Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which withheld U.S. trade benefits to certain countries that restricted emigration, the effects were profound. Year after year, the Soviet Union “paid” to obtain U.S. trade benefits by allowing some of its citizens to emigrate. About 1 million Jews were allowed to leave the Soviet Union, while thousands of other minorities also emigrated. Jackson-Vanik was one of the most successful examples of U.S. human rights legislation. It increased trade and promoted universal human rights.
In August, Russia finally joined the World Trade Organization. According to WTO rules, members may not discriminate against each other, and those members who do are penalized. If the U.S. leaves Jackson-Vanik on the books, Russia can choose to give the U.S. less favorable trade terms with Russia, while U.S. firms that have trade disputes with Russia can be denied access to WTO dispute-resolution mechanisms. That is a situation nobody wants. It’s clear that it is time to repeal Jackson-Vanik and for the U.S. to grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations, or PNTR, to Russia.
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Artists, dissidents look to EU after US human rights law
Artists, exiles and rights campaigners say the EU can help Russia by closing its door to regime officials with blood on their hands.
Vladimir Bukovsky knows what it is like to be inside a Russian jail. He spent 12 years in and out of them in the 1960s and 1970s for trying to expose the Soviet Union’s use of psychiatric institutions to torture dissidents.
The 69-year-old scientist now lives in the UK, but travels to Russia from time to time.
Speaking in London on Tuesday (20 November) after the staging of a play on Sergei Magnitsky – a Russian accountant who was killed in prison in 2009 for trying to expose high-level corruption – Bukovsky said today’s Kremlin reminds him of the old one.
“Russia is going around like a blind donkey … They used to write plays about psychological abuse and now we are here to talk about this play,” he noted.
He added: “Magnitsky was a political prisoner because corruption is at the heart of Russia’s political system and this is exactly what he went against.”
The play – One Hour and 18 Minutes, by Elena Gremina – tries to show the human side of what happened.
It uses home videos of Magnitsky – a portly, jovial 37-year-old – at family parties.
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Celebrities, dissidents pay tribute to Magnitsky
On Tuesday night, playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, activist Bianca Jagger and legendary dissident Vladimir Bukowski joined Hermitage Capital CEO William Browder in paying tribute to Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption attorney killed in prison three years ago.
The panel gathered to attend a performance of the play “One Hour Eighteen Minutes,” which recounts the final moments of Sergei’s life, after being beaten and left to die in a cell in Moscow’s Butyrka prison. The title of the play refers to the time that prison guards prevented civilian medics from entering his cell to register his death. Written by Russian playwright Elena Gremina, this new production is directed by Noah Birksted-Breen, winner of the Channel 4 Theatre Director’s Award in 2006.
The performance was scheduled to commemorate the three-year anniversary of Sergei’s death on the 16th of November. The anniversary itself saw the passage of the historic Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in the US House of Representatives. The bill, which would impose sanctions on the individuals implicated in Magnitsky’s imprisonment and death, as well as other Russian individuals credibly suspected of human rights abuses, is expected to pass in the Senate and be signed into law by President Obama before the end of the year.
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Anti-Corruption Views – One Hour Eighteen Minutes – a review
One hour, eighteen minutes is the amount of time that remains unaccounted for between a doctor being called to treat Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian prison and the time Magnitsky, a lawyer, was pronounced dead. It is also the name of a new play by Elena Gremina – a play that portrays accounts, from his supporters and from his own diary entries, of events in the year leading up to his death. The play uses as background official reports that were either public or dug up by supporters.
Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year old father of two, died just under a year after being held on tax evasion and fraud charges. Former colleagues say the charges were fabricated by police investigators he had accused of stealing $230 million from the Russian state through fraudulent tax refunds.
While Magnitsky’s death was officially attributed to an undetected illness, the Kremlin’s own human rights council has said he was probably beaten to death.
His story has gained international prominence due to the campaigning efforts of his friends, family and former colleagues.
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US Magnitsky Bill Collides With New Russian Nationalism
Next week, the United States Senate is to take up the Magnitsky Act, a bill that would ban visas for, and freeze the bank accounts of, about 60 Russian officials believed to have been involved in the arrest and death of Sergei Magnitsky.
Reviled by Russian authorities, the legislation has become the touchstone in relations between the West and a newly nationalist Russia under Vladimir Putin.
Three years ago last week, Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian lawyer for an American investment fund, died in a Moscow jail cell. His defenders say he was jailed and killed for exposing the biggest tax fraud in modern Russian history. To this day, no one in Russia has been put on trial.
So last week, the US House of Representatives approved their version of the Magnitsky Act. The measure passed by 365 votes to 43, more than an 8-to-1 margin.
By the end of December, a version of the Magnitsky Act is expected to be signed by President Barack Obama.
Moscow responds
Not so fast, say Russian officials.
“If this is supported by the executive branch, Russia will not leave it unanswered,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters in Moscow. “We will have to respond – and our response will be tough.”
The spokesman said that approval of this “anti-Russian law” would “inevitably have a negative impact on the entire range of Russian-US relations.”
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One Hour Eighteen Minutes, New Diorama, review
In the UK, we’re familiar with the name of Anna Politkovskaya, the fearless Russian journalist and outspoken critic of the Putin regime gunned down outside her flat in Moscow in 2006.
Despite much thorough and expert reporting by the Telegraph’s economics editor Philip Aldrick, I suspect readers may be far less aware of the perturbing case of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in November 2009 at the age of 37 as a consequence of appalling neglect – and probably abuse – by the authorities. He had been detained in increasingly squalid conditions for 358 days without trial.
Held on charges of tax evasion, his offence appears to have been that he uncovered a huge trail of fraud and corruption while working for the UK-based hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management – centring on the criminal hijacking of sundry legitimate Hermitage companies in order to reclaim $230m in tax from the Russian state.
Partly because this embezzlement was a complex business, Magnitsky – who is currently being tried posthumously, in a new low for Russian law – is not an easy name to conjure with but he has still become a cause celebre in the West and quite possibly a catalyst for significant change.
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U.S.–Russia Trade Relations Linked to Human Rights
A bill that would grant the Russian Federation Permanent Normal Trade Relations, or PNTR, comes with a condition: punishment of Russian officials for human rights abuses resulting in the death of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
Magnitsky’s story “is emblematic of corruption, human rights abuses and impunity in Russia,” said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).
Magnitsky was a tax lawyer who exposed a $230 million tax fraud—the largest known tax refund fraud in Russian history—carried out by officials of the Russian government. McGovern told Magnitsky’s story during the House debate on Nov.15: “Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was wrongly arrested and tortured in a Russian prison. Six months later, he became seriously ill. He was denied medical attention despite 20 formal requests.
“On the night of November 16, 2009—three years ago tomorrow—his condition became critical. Instead of being treated in a hospital, he was taken to an isolation cell, chained to a bed, and beaten by eight prison guards for one hour and 18 minutes, which resulted in his death.”
Chief Executive Director of Hermitage Capital Management William Browder, who had hired Magnitsky, testified that 59 of the 60 people involved in the Magnitsky case have been exonerated. Some of the guiltiest have been promoted and received state honors, he said.
The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act bans visas and freezes the assets of those individuals responsible for the false arrest, torture, and death of Magnitsky. It applies as well to Russian officials engaged in corruption or gross violations of human rights.
Several Congress members with reputations as stalwarts for human rights were reluctant to grant Russia PNTR status because of the nation’s deteriorating human rights situation. Both Democrat Congressman Jim McGovern and Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen stated publicly that they would not have voted in favor of granting PNTR for the Russian Federation if it did not include the Magnitsky Act.
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To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
