Cold War – Almeida Theatre, London

Book: Conor McPherson

Music: Elvis Costello

Director: Rupert Goold

The Almeida theatre’s big winter production, Conor McPherson’s Cold War makes a rather dull transition from screen to stage, a disjointed evening that struggles to connect a decades-long tragic romance with the changing political experience of post-war Europe either side of the Communist dividing line. Anyone who hasn’t seen Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2018 original film may struggle to understand a plot that skips about, jettisoning character depth and replacing them with a rather sentimental suite of songs by Elvis Costello.

In 1940s Poland, pianist and composer Wiktor falls in love with local singer Zula who auditions to take part in a touring show celebrating Polish folk music. When the Communist local government encourage the troupe to perform songs that support the State, Wiktor and Zula plan to run away to Paris where they can be free. Years later their lives have taken a very different course, but their destructive attraction remains as strong as ever.

Directed by Rupert Goold, the Almeida Theatre’s production is filled with identity crises, not only within the story as characters question their national loyalties and political allegiances, but those problems are built into the very structure of the show. Described at various times as both a play with music and a musical, Cold War finds itself in no man’s land where the songs are sometimes part of the context – performed by the stage troupe in rehearsal and on tour – and sometimes a reflection of their emotional state used like a cinema soundtrack intercut with dialogue. Costello’s compositions are blended with traditional Polish and Lemko folk songs adapted by McPherson, but while evocative at times, the variation in the score never sets the play on fire as it should.

This is a complex period in European history, yet the foregrounding of the slightly unbelievable romance tends to push the politics into the background. The short scenes of the film transition into a jagged book and as a result Cold War skims the important substance of the story including Wiktor’s possible history of collaboration with both the German army and the Communists, the contrasting Americanisation of Paris relative to the more restrictive impression of Poland and the continued existence of workcamps into the 1960s. Instead, the ill-fated and terribly drawn-out love affair between two people hopelessly unsuited to one another takes centre stage. It aims for epic but there is little in the relationship to root for.

Anya Chalotra’s Zula is a difficult character to like and develops very little across the show, remaining angry, often aggressive and closed off to the audience, a woman who marries multiple times but never seems to deserve the devotion of the men she meets. The great and eternal love that Zula and Wiktor repeatedly declare in McPherson’s book doesn’t feel as tangible in practice and over nearly three hours of performance, what they see in each other remains a mystery. Luke Thallon has a little more success with Wiktor, hinting at some of the depths that both prevent him from composing and also provides a long-bubbling guilt about his earlier choices, but production decisions leave the actor with little room to really develop the character.

Ellen Kane’s choreography reflects the different eras and styles well while Evie Gurney’s costumes create some striking stage pictures, but the love affair and thepolitics in Cold War are too tepid to make this show all it could have been.

Runs until 30 January 2024