In Conor McPherson’s first play since the Bob Dylan-laced The Girl from the North Country, pianist and musicologist Wiktor (Luke Thallon) meets Zula (Anya Chalotra) while touring postwar Poland collecting folk music for a state-sponsored show. These songs tend to concern either love or the devil, which rather sets the tone for this tale of amour fou. Zula, who is not the simple mountain girl she claims to be, is enjoined to spy on her new beau by apparatchiks; Wiktor harbours a devastating secret that explains his walled-in emotions. Their first duet even broaches the topic of deceit: “You may say I don’t lie / But I do.”
Over the next few decades, their paths crisscross in Europe and the eastern bloc, their passion persisting as it is bent out of shape by guilt, jealousy and political upheaval. Rubble, jagged wood and bullet-scarred brick is always visible on Jon Bausor’s set even when the stage is transformed by Paule Constable’s crisp lighting design into a recording studio or bebop club. This is a love in disrepair before it has really begun.
