The day after I saw Midnight in Moscow I overheard an Australian saying while it was a great play it was a bit too New Zealand focused: “You would have thought they started the Cold War”.
Midnight in Moscow by Dean Parker
Directed by Colin McColl
Auckland Theatre Company
Aotea Centre
Until May 4
The day after I saw Midnight in Moscow I overheard an Australian saying that while it was a great play it was a bit too New Zealand focused: “You would have thought they started the Cold War”.
The other thing we learn from the play is that the New Zealand embassy had the best parties in the late 1940s and that we had a small part to play in shaping Russian literature at the time, probably helping to get poet Boris Pasternak even more offside with the authorities.
The play is set in Moscow in 1947 in our embassy, where the happy round of parties and personal intrigues is disrupted by accusations of a spy in their midst. Loyalties to colleagues and country are tested.
Ambassador June Temm has to query the loyalties of her staff; Kit, Hugh and Hugh's wife Sophie, who all appear to have very loose job descriptions, with Hugh spending most of his time having long conversations with Pasternak.
While the core of the play is about spying and spies, it provides playwright Dean Parker the opportunity to expand on a number of themes around literature, culture and the power of ideas as well as nationalism and the future of Communism.
Truth and honesty
One of the central themes relates to a quote by E M Forster (who appears off stage) about the nature of truth and honesty: "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
Much of the play delves into notions about personal morality and public morality, whether one owes allegiance to one's personal beliefs or those of country or employer. So inside the insignificant walls of the embassy are played out the various issues which were central to the Cold War.
While there is a lot of serious debate, the play has all the elements of farce, along with some great stand-up comedy. Carl Bland as Kit Lovell-Smith opens and closes the play with wry comments on the nature of life and theatre is brilliant as the suave lounge lizard of the consular circuit.
Elena Stejko plays Pasternak’s mistress Olga with a mixture of the sultry and brittle. Phil Grieve as Pasternak has a far better stage accent than Russian-born Stejko but looks unlike the clean-shaven thin Pasternak and more like a tubby Tolstoy.
Grieve gives the play some of its wittier and more distressing moments as he and Hugh discuss literature and life.
Robyn Malcolm gives a compelling performance as Ambassador Temm, who is a hard-drinking, shrewd bureaucrat. She is able to provide the range of emotional responses necessary to create the complex character.
Adam Gardiner as Hugh Toomey inhabits a character with many levels which are slowly revealed through dialogue and his astute acting.
Hera Dunleavy as Hugh’s wife Sophie manages to create a character that continually surprises herself and the audience with insights which display naivety, candor and integrity.
The play was moved to the Aotea Centre after a fire at the University of Auckland's Maidment Theatre and it is a much more interesting space. With no proscenium, you feel as though you are in a cross between a cabaret and a circus – just like life at the embassy.
