Review: COLD WAR, Almeida Theatre

It raised eyebrows when it was announced: Paweł Pawlikowski’s Oscar nominated Cold War is hardly five years old, not nearly enough time for it to have fallen off the cultural radar. If a stage adaptation isn’t rejuvenating a lost classic, what does it want to achieve?

The answer: very little. If you want a moody melancholic romance dripping with sultry stares and hot-blooded emotion set across the backdrop of 60s Europe watch the film, not this anaemic musical adaptation from Conor McPherson and Elvis Costello.

Wiktor and Zula are musicians who meet in the early days of Soviet Poland as part of a cultural programme promoting folk music. They perform in a series of jaunty folk dances to salute the new motherland and pledge friendship to the Soviet nation (imagine Shen-Yun but Polish). Longing for artistic freedom Wiktor defects after a performance in Berlin. Zula on the other hand decides to remain behind. But the iron curtain is not enough to keep them apart.

They are the kind of couple you hope fail, if only because together they are totally unconvincing together. Luke Thallon as Wiktor has buckets of endearing charm, and although we see flickers of his vulnerability through his always evasive eyes he never lets his cold guard down to let Zula’s warmth in. It doesn’t help that Anya Chalotra is never charming enough to pull off Zula’s devil-may-care standoffishness. They are constantly distant and gazing beyond each other.

Without the central nexus of their relationship everything else crumbles. Their passion ought to be the thread that ties together the themes of homeland, identity, and art. But none of it fits together and we are left with an overly episodic whistle stop tour of the film.

It’s difficult to believe that director Rupert Goold, who helmed the still vibrant Dear England, is responsible. There are a handful of moments that break up the swollen pace but at the cost of the tone. Moments of sitcom weirdness are peppered throughout. Elliot Levey hams it up as wheeler-dealer impresario Kaczmarek, seemingly the only one aware that sulking for two and a half hours can get a bit boring.

The real thing missing is the sense of place. The film oozes monochrome cool weaving from bombed out Poland to the sweaty intimacy of smoky Parisian drinking dens. But here everything is uniformly drab and dusty. The set is a designed as a decaying stage, crumbing wood and peeling wallpaper. Piles of rubble sit patiently in the darkness behind. Only a colourful lighting change shifts the action from Eastern to Western Europe after the two lovers reunite in France.

The traditional music is the only saving grace. A rollicking chorus performing Lemko and Polish highlands folk music injects the production with needed vibrancy. Shifting with time, Zula’s career takes off taking us on a journey through sultry lounge jazz and the early days of pop. Costello’s original songs less impactful. Generic ornamentation rather than an emotional driving force.

Cold War plays at the Almeida until 27 January 2024

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

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