Fringe 25: Pussy Riot

Rating: ★★★★★

On what was otherwise an ordinary Tuesday evening in Edinburgh, four members of Pussy Riot shook Summerhall to its very foundations. The punk rock feminist collective have earnt themselves a reputation for excellence after their decade of activism against Vladimir Putin and his cronies both in Russia and internationally. Audiences rightly enter their show with expectations, but these are not merely fulfilled, they are incinerated. In sixty minutes, the quartet confronts us with a sensory overload conveying, however partially, the realities of political dissidence in Putin’s Russia. It is hot, sticky, and pulsing. This show transcends the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where the rioters chose to end their European tour, and invigorates naive audience members, not only with the dousing of water it subjects them to, but with its extraordinary bravery amidst the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

I first heard of Pussy Riot in 2012, when I was passively flicking through my parent’s wilted newspaper and something daringly bright caught my eye: a hastily-captured image of a hot pink balaclava, pulled over the face of a woman moshing in front of a crowd of churchgoers. At nine years old, I did not grasp the significance of this scene at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. I saw a rebel in a dress and I was electrified at the oddity.  In fact, I distinctly remember thinking I’d get in trouble for reading such a naughty word as “pussy” and that I had better not tell anyone (of course, the group’s name is deliberately provocative). What I did not know was that this woman and her comrades had been staging punk performances across Russia’s most important cultural spaces to condemn state sanctioned homophobia, censorship, and corruption under the name Pussy Riot. The performance of their song “Punk Prayer” at the cathedral was the crescendo. This was guerrilla feminism. And it was dangerous. Deemed enemies of Putin’s bombastically nationalistic and conservative motherland, these women were imprisoned for their actions. 

Riot Days follows the experiences of Maria Alyokhina, one of the members charged following the events at Moscow’s seat of orthodox power. At the time of the performance, she was a university student and young mother. She is joined at the Fringe by multi instrumentalists Taso Pletner, Olga Borisova (a former policewoman turned political activist), and Eric Breitenbach. Together, they present a palimpsest of aggressive political lyricism and imagery. Be warned, ears plug are advised. The performance mainly consists of Russian spoken-word poetry, interspersed with documentary clips, dance breaks, and moments of reflection. Maria recollects her experiences in prison in harrowing detail before refocusing the narrative on Pussy Riot’s political activism, particularly its agitation at the 2014 Sochi Olympics against Russia’s anti-LGBT laws. In the second half, the group speculate over the suspicious death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2024. They finish with “Mama, Don’t Watch TV”, their 2022 anti-war anthem that unpicks Putin’s measly justification for the invasion of Ukraine (“Mama, there are no Nazis here”).  

Every sense is overwhelmed during Riot Days. The room is smokey and where there is light, it is harsh and yellow. The rioters move through the audience, they scream lyrics in your face, and, yes, they throw water and empty plastic bottles at you. Costumes are deftly used: the infamous balaclavas are only worn for sections of the performance, but when they are, the room erupts. Elsewhere, Maria wears t-shirts with political messages. Summerhall was exceedingly hot and there was a lingering smell of body odour too. These staging choices are masterful: we cannot be idle nor comfortable when suffering engulfs Eastern Europe.

Oddly, I left Summerhall thinking of the banshee, a female spirit in Irish folklore, whose wails and shrieks portend death. Pussy Riot is now a somewhat dislocated collective and has lost much of its original membership; it cannot and will not solely bring about the collapse of Putinism. Yet, its loud and foulmouthed resistance remains a thorn, however symbolic, in its side. Political freedom and democratic will, articulated so expertly by these feminist punk rockers, will always undo authoritarianism. Pussy Riot: Riot Days demonstrates this inevitability with unapologetic rage and cacophonous determination.