Cold War | Live Show Review

Those who have seen Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-nominated, black-and-white 2018 film Cold War might not immediately think that it lends itself to the Musical Theatre treatment. Sleek and sparse, it deftly outlines an abrasive love story that unfurls down the years and decades in Communist-era Poland, before ending defiantly uncheerfully. The doubters, however, will not have reckoned with the might of playwright Conor McPherson, director Rupert Goold and songwriter Elvis Costello.

The magic these three men weave is nothing short of remarkable, nurturing and caressing Pawlikowski’s taciturn original script into something finer and deeper, so that it resonates on the level of the existential as well as the personal. How do we define freedom, they ask, and how can we best attain it? Can we truly call ourselves free if love binds us to another? Or, heretical though the idea might seem, does unlimited freedom somehow impede us?

McPherson, let us not forget, was the power behind Girl from the North Country, that magnificent ‘play with songs’ woven around the music of Bob Dylan. He applies the same skill here, ensuring that the script could, if it had to, stand proudly alone without any music. But what power the music brings, from traditional Polish folk tunes, played with fire and verve, to Costello’s haunting contemporary numbers. ‘I Do’, sung by our heroine Zula (Anya Chalotra), is deftly plaited through the action, as she and Wiktor (Luke Thallon) plot their unconventional love story.

They meet in 1949, with Poland beleaguered by the Second World War and the Communists now firmly in control. An initiative from the Ministry of Culture urges the formation of a troupe to perform traditional folk songs and dances, to operate as a ‘cultural calling card for our fatherland’. Wiktor, a conductor, is one of the overseers of the project and Zula, blazing with forthrightness and passion from the minute we meet her, auditions successfully. At least two of the three elements that she is promised – ‘clean clothes, three meals a day and unlimited political instruction’ – are appealing to her.

Love blossoms tentatively, but problems abound. Wiktor is an emotionally elusive man, a repository of unspoken feeling, and Zula is not the sort of woman who responds well to equivocation. This is a time of secrets and subterfuge, when words must be spoken with great care in case the wrong ears are listening. Wiktor’s on-off lover Irena (Alex Young), another of the troupe’s guiding hands, initially understands better than him that wily bet-hedging is an inelegant but necessary survival tactic. Wiktor, increasingly weary of being coerced into deploying his musical skills to eulogise Stalin’s agricultural collectivism, flees to the West, to Paris. Zula stays in Poland, but the pair’s romance by no means ends there.

Chalotra is a revelation as Zula. She sings with spirit, in a raw, husky voice overflowing with feeling. Fiery and direct, she is frustrated by, yet attracted to Wiktor’s diffidence, which Thallon suggests so surely. From the cast of 13, there is strong supporting work from Elliot Levey as a pragmatic official happy to drift where the cultural tides take him. Noted Musical Theatre actress Young (Standing at the Sky’s Edge) is stately and stoic as the woman Wiktor throws over for Zula.

Goold, one of our very finest directors, oversees it all with a quiet confidence, allowing the pensive qualities of the film space to breathe. Designer Jon Bausor cleverly plays with the stripped-back brick walls of the Almeida to evoke a sense of the run-down austerity of post-war Poland, but there’s an entirely different timbre of tenebrous gloom when the action shifts to Paris. If this show doesn’t move into a larger venue after this sell-out run, it would be a desperate shame, as work as fine as this deserves to be enjoyed far more widely.

Production credits

Cast Luke Thallon, Anya Chalotra, Elliot Levey, Alex Young et al

Direction Rupert Goold

Musical direction Jo Cichonska

Musical supervision, orchestrations, arrangements Simon Hale

Choreography Ellen Kane

Set Jon Bausor

Lighting Paule Constable

Sound Sinéad Diskin

Costumes Evie Gurney

Elvis Costello songs

Conor McPherson book

This article originally appeared in the February/March 2024 issue of Musicals magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today