Who’s afraid of communists? The American Legion? The former Soviet citizens? Or those who feel compelled to be afraid, but have never encountered a communist in their entire lives? The Mosinee Project, on the surface, appears to be a play about the Red Terror haunting Cold War U.S., reconstructing the “facts” surrounding the Mosinee Invasion—a simulated takeover of Mosinee, Wisconsin, on May 1, 1950. It witnessed the town “occupied” by fake Soviet forces for the sake of anti-communist propaganda.
Yet, instead of a straightforward, linear retelling, writer Nikhil Vyas and co-creator/dramaturg Aaron Kilercioglu craft a brilliant, multi-layered, and intrinsically meta-theatrical project that invites the audience to revisit history as well as to question the very nature of performance.
Three actors greet the audience onstage, telling us that they are attempting to reconstruct the story through historical fragments, including public interviews of John Decker (Jonathan Oldfield), a World War II veteran leader of the American Legion who helped to organise the simulacrum of riot, and Francis Schweinler (Martha Watson Allpress), chief editor of the local newspaper and fellow member of the AL, and last but not least, the “protagonist”—Zack Kornfeder (Camilla Anvar), a former communist now turned fervent anti-communist.
As the plot unfolds, John, Francis, and Zack start to rehearse that day of invasion, particularly the arrest of Mosinee’s mayor. Nonetheless, the rehearsal gradually turns into a philosophical debate about the nature of performance. Zack believes that a faithful representation of one’s true emotion could conjure real fear among “the audience,” the Mosinee mob. His belief in emotional authenticity aligns, ironically, with Stanislavskian acting principles, widely embraced and refined in the U.S. nowadays, especially in movies, TV series, and reality shows.
In contrast, Francis, as a media professional, believes in the “performative” and manipulative nature of media, viewing it as a showy and rhetorical masterpiece that transforms real fear into a tool for the U.S. anti-communist political agenda. However, when placed within the environment of theatre, it should become precisely the space that educates its audience to see through the deceptive nature of performances crafted by the media and politicians.
This debate fuses seamlessly with the invasion itself—designed for a certain hidden agenda and fully packed with plots, conspiracies, fear, doubts, and deceptions—even a bit like a politicised Jacobean play! Vyas, also directing, wittily guides the trio through fluid transitions, shifting between their roles as themselves, the historical figures, and their “rehearsals.” These transitions are subtly signalled by the shifting lights of Catja Hamilton, whose design also intensifies the horror in the occupation scene presented through sandbox-like projection designed by Grace Venning (video designer Dan Light). Occasionally, their transitions feel less clear, and at times, the soundscape (Patch Middleton) feels overwhelming, but these are just minor distractions.
Anvar works hard to embody a middle-aged ex-Soviet, but at times, her acting feels too exaggerated and cartoonish to conjure “real fear.” Oldfield carries a scholarly demeanour, providing much of the humour by imitating Francis’s loving, meatloaf-making wife. Meanwhile, Allpress brings a historian’s precision to the storytelling while also convincingly portraying a U.S. journalist blindly loyal to the media’s power of deception.
