The Rasputin Affair

On a snowy night in Russia, angry Bolsheviks march through the streets of St. Petersburg, howling for the blood of the mad monk Rasputin. Inside a room of the Winter Palace, three men - the Tsar's younger brother, his friend the Grand Duke, and an old man named Vlad with a camera - huddle around a pink cupcake, plotting Rasputin's demise.

Playwright Kate Mulvany's The Rasputin Affair is the familiar tale of the assassination of the self-styled mystic from the Siberian wastes who enchanted the Russian royal family - but taken to bizarre extremes. This is especially impressive considering the figure of Rasputin is one of the strangest to haunt the annals of history. In this production at the Ensemble Theatre, characters debate the minutiae of their social system one moment and then charge through secret doors like it's Scooby Doo the next.

Amid the chaos, the monk himself reigns supreme. Sean O'Shea is arresting as the lecherous, wine-sodden madman with pretensions to the proletariat who sinks to his knees and bellows in an ancient tongue when gripped by frequent visions from Christ.

The Rasputin Affair conjures up the stiff-upper-lipped ghost of old British spy novels, and Mulvany cultivates this feeling with the sheer absurdity of her writing. It's fast-paced, over-the-top, and so funny it won't need to poison and then shoot you several times to knock you off your feet.

Ensemble Theatre presents The Rasputin Affair till 30 Apr.