Propaganda: A New Musical assessment – love and betrayal on the delivery of the chilly struggle | Theatre

Fake information is the foreign money in Berlin throughout the 1948-49 Soviet blockade in composer and director Conor Mitchell’s formidable musical theatre co-production for the Belfast Ensemble and Lyric theatre. Private tales of affection and betrayal play out in opposition to the huge post-second world struggle canvas of redrawn maps and shifting allegiances. As American and British forces airlift provides to the residents of the devastated metropolis, the chilly struggle is born.

In Conor Murphy’s imposing design, a bombed-out streetscape looms, with scaffolding extending from the theatre’s orchestra pit, uncovered by searchlights. The setting is the naked condominium of a Russian former struggle photographer, Slavi (Darren Franklin) and his self-sacrificing German lover, Hanna (Joanna O’Hare). For money, they rely on promoting erotic pictures of Hanna on the black market, with the doubtful help of an American Purple Cross serviceman, Ruddy (Oliver Lidert). When Margot (Celia Graham), a diva in Marlene Dietrich mode, recognises Slavi’s inventive expertise, she attracts the younger couple to the eye of Comrade Poliakoff (Sean Kearns).

Establishing these characters slowly, utilizing effervescent jazz and satirical Hollywood dance numbers, Mitchell’s rating additionally incorporates operatic lyricism by means of the character of Magda (Rebecca Caine), whose night robe is all that’s left of her former life as a live performance pianist. Within the haunting track By no means Mentioned a Phrase, Magda remembers the prewar years when she had turned a blind eye to the persecution of her Jewish neighbours, together with the younger Hanna.

Mitchell is librettist-composer-director right here, which suggests one hyphen too many; one other director’s eye might need tightened the primary act. But within the second, in intricately orchestrated through-sung ensembles, the performances, music and dramatic plot gel, as Hanna emerges from Slavi’s shadow, into new risks. Margot and her sidekick Gerhardt (Matthew Cavan) show adept at adapting to shifts in energy. Everyone seems to be desperately hiding one thing with a view to survive.

Poliakoff’s unreliable commentary on fact and reality, artwork and realism is layered over video projections that mix archive newsreel footage with fictional imitations of them. This manipulation of photographs and phrases turns into integral to a manufacturing that threatens to be overcomplicated however grows thrillingly in influence – and in modern resonance.