It’s 1992, and two young Russian men are mid-worship of a Filet-O-Fish sandwich. They fall to their knees and claim massive, moaning bites with sexual fervor. 

“How is it so soft?” one marvels. “Is this what capitalism tastes like?”

Lauren Yee’s Mother Russia, the final play in Profile Theatre’s 2024–25 season deep dive on her work, wonders whether capitalism offers sustenance or sickness. Its characters are hungry for meaning, attention, love, and fast food. The play is steeped in ’90s-era Western commercialism: a Nike slogan here, a Folgers jingle there, a Budweiser glued to a character’s palm. But while Mother Russia’s tragicomic angle is sometimes refreshing, it also misses an opportunity to fully connect the dots between the rise of fascism today and the authoritarian capitalism that followed Soviet collapse. 

Bets Swadis (left) as Evgeny and Orion Bradshaw (right) as Dmitri, eating a Filet-O-Fish sandwich. COURTESY OF PROFILE THEATRE.

Former classmates Dmitri (Orion Bradshaw) and Evgeny (Bets Swadis) reconnect in Dmitri’s basement shop in Saint Petersburg, a colorful store peddling chips and colanders. Scenic designer Alex Meyer extends shelves of hodgepodge products into the audience, a move that heightens immersion.

Evgeny has lost the cushy government gig handed down by his high-ranking politico father. He’s obsolete, replaced by an invisible hand. Fearing banishment to Siberia—it’s unclear if that’s a legitimate threat—he seeks new work. Dmitri admits that his shop is a front for a surveillance operation. He’s been extorted by a shadowy ex-KGB operative to track Katya (Ashley Song), a supposed schoolteacher and former pop star who couldn’t crack the US market. (Her songs have titles like “Gulag.”) 

Clad in an Adidas tracksuit, Dmitri is aggressive and loud, spinning and leaping with Parkour-like dedication. Once bound for the KGB, he’s now adrift. “I’m 25. At my age, my dad was already in the gulag,” he groans in a voice that sounds suspiciously millennial. 

Evgeny—dweeby, spectacled, earnest—wilts before Dmitri’s slapstick energy. The pair recalls a Costanza and Kramer dynamic: One bites his nails in the corner, the other shouts and trips over himself. Still, Evgeny joins the surveillance scheme, which spirals into a surprising love triangle. Frankly, Katya’s too interesting for either of them.

Ashley Song (right) as Katya. COURTESY OF PROFILE THEATRE.

Mother Russia (Diane Kondrat) and her bulky straw handbag drift in between scenes. She greets the audience with donuts—“Everything you love will kill you,” she reassures us—and her monologues contain an “in my day” humor that, at first, left me wondering if comic relief was her main point. And she is funny. But as Mother reflects on life under communism, her commentary drives home the play’s central tension: Is capitalism, with its burdens of choice and individualism, much of an improvement? 

Mother Russia never interacts directly with the play’s characters, but serves as a folkloric narrator whose musings tell us how to interpret the unfolding story. “You are only as happy as your happiest child,” she murmurs, making us wonder: If Mother’s child is, ostensibly, Russia, how happy is she? 

Diane Kondrat as Mother Russia with her box of donuts. COURTESY OF PROFILE THEATRE.

Ultimately, timid and bumbling Evgeny proves more devoted to his Casio watch and the approval of his oligarch father than to his only friend. His tilt toward villainy feels startling, and a little unearned.

Mother Russia is well-acted, well-staged, and tugs at intriguing threads—never trust your rich friends, loyalty to oppressive powers will be your downfall, excess is a trap—yet it manages to be both distractingly literal and not quite pointed enough. For a play that premiered just a few months ago, in March, it should have so much more to say about capitalism, consumerism, and Russia.

Profile Theatre presents Mother Russia at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison, Thurs-Sun through Sun June 22, $45, tickets and showtimes here.