Besties With Rasputin in ‘Red Emma and the Mad Monk’

NEW YORK — It’s not uncommon for a 12-year-old girl to have an imaginary friend, but even so, young Addison’s confidant is a little out of the ordinary: Rasputin, the Russian pseudo-monk who became the last czar’s éminence grise before being assassinated in 1916.

As far-fetched as this premise sounds, it makes surreal sense in “Red Emma and the Mad Monk,” an eccentric, scrappy new musical by Alexis Roblan and Teresa Lotz that is part of the Tank’s second annual Lady Fest.

The show, which Roblan created with director Katie Lindsay, is an astute representation of a searching tween’s inner world. After all, for a digital native like Addison (the nonbinary performer Maybe Burke), people, ideas and events coexist freely in a melding of life and internet. The set by Diggle, in which the girl’s bedroom seamlessly incorporates the outside of her house, reflects the porous border between private and public, real and imaginary.

Typically, Addison discovered her bestie via a YouTube documentary. “You were so wild and free,” she sings of what drew her to Rasputin (the charismatic Drita Kabashi). “Confident and hot and weird and mystical and brave/You made me want to be myself, even if you didn’t bathe.”

Unlike, it’s safe to say, the real Rasputin, Kabashi’s version wears pink fishnet stockings under a long black overcoat. He has the slyly funny, sexy-cool appeal of a 1980s pop star, with dramatic purple makeup poking up above a cartoonish beard.

The friends have entertaining banter — their exchange about the film “Anastasia” is especially funny — but Addison, who is fumbling for ways to carry out her budding activism in the tumultuous first weeks of 2017, needs more guidance.

So she zeros in on another Russian native born in 1869, albeit one who took a very different path: anarchist Emma Goldman (Imani Pearl Williams).

As befits a web surfer, Addison picks and chooses from Goldman’s biography, and she is particularly drawn to her relationship with fellow agitators Sasha Berkman (Fernando Gonzalez) and Modest Stein (Jonathan Randell Silver).

In one of the best songs, Rasputin suggests the trio open an ice-cream shop and Emma swoons: “A worker-owned collective that exists to fund our anarchy!” Modest, who is lured by the discreet charm of the petty bourgeoisie, exults — “We’ll make lots and lots of money” — before being swatted down.

Add the actual Vladimir Putin agent Vladislav Surkov (Silver) to the mix, representing the nihilist side of revolution, and you end up with a lot of radicals on one small stage, all of them brimming with so many schemes and dreams that the show struggles to stay focused.

The consequences of Addison’s efforts to graduate from Twitter feuds to real-life action remain underexplored, for instance, and most of the songs are so short that there is barely time to appreciate Lotz’s tuneful, post-Michael Friedman sensibility.

Still, despite its imperfections, the sweet, sui generis “Red Emma and the Mad Monk” qualifies as a late-summer discovery. And with tickets going for just $20, it is also a welcome example of radical cheap.

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Event Information:

‘Red Emma and the Mad Monk’

Through Sept. 1; at the Tank, Manhattan; thetanknyc.org. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.