Review: Cyanide at 5, King’s Head Theatre

Review: Cyanide at 5, King’s Head Theatre

Sometimes a set says the whole lot it’s essential find out about what’s to return. Tara Kelly’s design for Cyanide at 5 actually supplies a kind of units. It’s old style chairs set round a espresso desk with tea pot and cups and saucers, the lamp with frilly lampshade simply beside, and lastly the massive rug: which all make it completely clear we’re within the house of an aged woman. And probably a lone woman. And one with some cash.  

It’s on this sitting room that each one the motion takes place; though possibly motion will not be fairly the proper phrase. Rather, this two-hander may be very a lot in regards to the dialog and debate between the house’s occupant, Zofia (Lise-Ann McLaughlin) and her customer Irene (Philippa Heimann).

Zofia, in addition to being that lone aged lady, can also be a well-known author, though she has solely ever written the one e book, ‘The War Between Us’. It’s a fictional diary of a younger Polish Jewish lady throughout World War Two. The e book is a global finest vendor that, even 40 years later, continues to be thought of an necessary contribution in the direction of understanding the therapy and homicide of Polish Jews underneath the Nazi occupation. Her customer Irene is, or so it first appears, a fan of the e book. She claims it modified her life and so has requested to fulfill with Zofia to debate simply why that’s so.

It’s this dialogue that kinds the play. The pair speak, argue and debate, slowly drawing out new info from one another, nearly in a recreation of cat and mouse, though it’s not all the time clear who’s which creature. We quickly uncover who precisely Irene is and why the e book was so necessary to her. The twists come frequently because the pair duel collectively, with every new revelation main us in one other path.

It’s a captivating thought and simple to see how this play may maintain nice that means to some audiences. It addresses id and cultural misappropriation, and there’s the fantastic ethical debate at its coronary heart over whether or not it’s proper to revenue from another person’s life, particularly one lower brief by the Holocaust. To this finish Cyanide at 5 actually makes for an attention-grabbing watch.

The drawback is, nevertheless, that it feels just a bit stilted and dated in model. Maybe one thing has been misplaced in translation; the play is by Czech playwright Pavel Kohout and set in his native Prague. It’s very simple to think about it will really feel way more impactful in these nations whose historical past is so intertwined throughout the story being informed and performed to folks with an emotional attachment to them.

But right here in London it doesn’t fairly hit house; there isn’t any actual energy in its telling. The construction feels fallacious: we get plot, slightly extra plot, then twist, repeated again and again. By the time we attain the ultimate twist the response will not be a lot one in every of shock, extra a case of ‘oh look another twist that we could almost see coming since the last twist five minutes prior’. It generates a sense of apathy somewhat than shock. The uncommon configuration of King’s Head Theatre maybe doesn’t assist both, from my seat (on the lefthand aspect of the stage) it felt that I used to be watching Heimann’s again greater than her face, absolutely an oversight in Peter Kavanagh’s directing?

It’s nice to see European performs being given area on London phases, and that is genuinely an attention-grabbing hour debating the rights and wrongs. But very similar to the set informed us who could be occupying the area, an excessive amount of of this play is signposted far prematurely and fails to actually depart you guessing the place it is going to finish.

Written by: Pavel Kohout
Directed by: Peter Kavanagh
Produced by: Peter Kavanagh and Maddy Chisholm-Scott
Design by: Tara Kelly
Lighting and Sound Design by: Benjy Adams

Cyanide at 5 performs at King’s Head Theatre till 26 November. Further info and bookings will be discovered right here.