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Write a review Intriguing, but should be performed, October 7, 2023 by Victor Gijsbers (The Netherlands) So here's a strange autobiographical fact, or at least, a fact that felt strange when I started playing The Whisperers. I once made some plans for an IF in the form of a play. The players would not play any particular role, but would only make choices only at the end of scenes, choices that decided the final outcome. I can't at the moment remember the title I had in mind (though I suspect I have plot sketches somewhere in a drawer), but I certainly remember the setting: that would have been Russia during the time of the Stalin purges. So... I guess those sketches can remain where they are, because Milo van Mesdag has very much beaten me to it! reduction in Bolshevik power, newly elected *soviets* to include socialist and anarchist groups, economic freedom for peasants and workers, dissolution of the bureaucratic governmental organs created during the civil war, and the restoration of civil rights for the working class. Hard to disagree with, right? Well, not hard for Trotsky, who signed the order to ruthlessly crush this rebellion. About 2000 of the rebels were later executed. So I think it's clear that we are to understand Agnessa as just as much a blinded ideologue as anyone else in the play; in fact, the most blinded ideologue of them all. And this is underlined strongly by the fact that the terrorist attack she plots with Nikolai is incredibly stupid. I mean, what's the point? Who is going to benefit from a delay in the construction of this building? It makes no sense! It's hard not to understand it as the roundabout suicide of an ideologue who is addicted to purity. Really, the only sensible person in the play is Georgy, and his being sensible consists in his being as invisible as possible... which, you know, makes the whole play a pretty cynical thing (or, I suppose, simply realistic, given the actual history). A well-written and highly interesting cynical thing, but still. Except, that is, for the second intriguing feature that does not translate to the current medium: the ability for the audience to revolt. If you check out the script, you'll find that the idea is that when the final 'sentencing' scene comes along, a 'plant' in the audience starts booing and shouting that they don't want to be bound by the choices given to them (execution of 25 years in prison), and if the audience joins in, the actors are to 'improvise' a scene in which everyone goes free. Now that is interesting, and that is not cynical. It's just... not really in the piece that we have now. This thing really needs to be the play that it wants to be. Actually, this make me realise that there's also a way in which I beat Milo to 'it'. Back in 2005, I wrote a little roleplaying game called Vampires in which you play a male vampire who gets power by abusing his female victims. It's unrelenting in its bleakness and cynicism. And the whole point was... it was never played, as far as I know, so perhaps I should say... the whole point would have been that the players got so disgusted that they rebelled against the system. (I wrote about that in an accompanying essay.) But to be honest, I'd rather go to Milo's play than play my own game! Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Remove vote | Add a comment
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