Last Friday, a Russian-language musical production of Don Juan came to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, 25 miles from the Russian border. My knowledge of Russian is limited to fragments gleaned from Bond villain dialogue, so I had to piece the plot together from choreography that tested the bounds of health and safety and not-so-subtle on stage boob grabs.
What I could discern was this: Don Juan is Russell Brand’s 17th century steampunk cousin, ailed by what used to be real-life Brand’s favourite conversation piece - before he got distracted by radical soundbite politics and Jeremy Paxman’s beard - sex addiction. Juan spends two hours singing and dancing his way through the knickers of just about every female character but his wife, all the while agonising about this slavery to his loins until the show closes with a full-cast number mourning his death at the point of a dagger. He has to die because he’s a tragic hero. We are supposed to pity, not celebrate him.
Unbeknownst to lead actor Vlad Kulev, a wannabe Juan was prowling the streets of Kharkiv that night. I met Geoff, a Californian in his thirties, that morning in a dank Kharkiv bungalow that had been repurposed as a youth hostel. He was lying in bed, the blue light of a laptop resting on his bare chest illuminating what he would later tell me was his “nice face”. Beauty is subjective, and when I asked what had taken him so far from his homeland, the answer was a search for a context where his subjective vision is shared, “The girls, man, the girls. Are you here for the girls? You should be.” I was not, but I was intrigued. I paid for my curiosity with a two hour lecture on Geoff’s unique take on gender politics.
