Review – Letter to Brezhnev – Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool

Review – Letter to Brezhnev – Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool

On 30th August 1985, Letter to Brezhnev premiered at the Venice Film Festival, introducing an international audience to the clubs and back streets of Liverpool and the people of Kirby. The film went on to become something of a cult classic, and it stands proudly in a line of domestic dramas that the British film industry does so well. Watching the film and now this stage reincarnation over 40 years later it has acquired a heavy air of nostalgia alongside its gritty realism, and in some ways its central love story, tinged with more than a whiff of fantasy, almost has traces of Brief Encounter about it.

In an essay written for the BFI’s re-release of the picture, writer Frank Clarke muses over the lengthy gestation of the script which, he explains, was given two performances in an adapted version at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre in the summer of 1983. Clarke has now revisited the script to create this full scale stage dramatisation for the Royal Court, and thankfully he has chosen to remain true to most aspects of the original, retaining much of the sharp dialogue intact, with only a few minor changes to enable the dramatic flow between scenes to work on a live stage.

There is a lot going on in this deceptively simple tale. On the surface it is a whirlwind romance that sits alongside a story of friendship, with the close bond between Elaine and Teresa being the glue that not only holds the two friends together, but keeps the storytelling tight and focused. While the prominent narrative is about Elaine and her quest to follow Peter, the Russian sailor who sweeps her off her feet, Teresa’s bluff façade begins to crack as we see that it is a veneer she uses to protect herself. Meanwhile, the rest of the world around them tentatively watches the thawing of the cold war from the back of the dole queue amidst a climate of economic decline, and we begin to see how governments shape each nation’s view of the world beyond their own shores.

‘Why don’t you sit down, get your wool out and knit yourself an iron curtain?’ snipes Elaine to her mother, in one of many original lines that are both witty and weighted with home truth.

Mother here is played by Michelle Butterly in a throaty, hard-edged performance that has some of the most fleshed-out dialogue compared to the screenplay. She has her depiction of a fiercely protective mother honed to perfection, which makes her tentative u-turn towards the close of the story all the more poignant.

Stealing the show though is a quartet of beautifully cast central performances. Thomas Cotran and Liam Powell-Berry are our two visiting sailors Peter and Sergei. Powell-Berry has the tricky task of delivering almost all his limited dialogue in Russian, making his strong characterisation all the more impressive. Cottran brings us a genuinely heart-warming performance as Peter, and it is easy to believe how Elaine is so swiftly smitten with his charm.

In the film, narrative attention focused on Elaine’s story, with Teresa appearing the stronger character through Margi Clarke’s screen presence. Here on stage the playing field is levelled by the glorious rapport between Ellie Clayton and Angela Simms. Clayton presents a tour-de force as Elaine, while Simms’ Teresa is a perfectly balanced foil, and, of course, gets to have that final brief line of dialogue that stabs the audience right through the heart.

There is a sturdy supporting cast who perform a lot of multiple roles, but none moreso than Reginald Edwards, who has various guises, including a brief but amusing appearance as the titular Russian President, who is given a few more lines here than he got on screen, but whose ‘Take a letter Miss Jones’ still has the same comedy value. One possible faux-pas is the foreign office official, whose stuffy dialect has been dropped here, with the cast-iron officialdom of his character depicted instead by somewhat incongruous portraits of the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Thatcher, which appear to be a rather unnecessary attempt at setting the already well established period.

That period (the early 1980s) is beautifully evoked by the combination of a score neatly assembled by Rob Green from disco hits and genuinely spectacular set and costume design from Mark Walters. The towering set spirals upwards into the heavy starlit sky, and provides multiple levels which transform magically from the exterior of a chicken factory to the Liverpool docks, and from hotels and houses to the State Ballroom.

This adaptation is a labour of love from Clarke and is directed with excellent pace and focus by Nicole Behan. Letter to Brezhnev is a film beloved of movie buffs in general, but especially revered here in Liverpool as a love letter to the city and the resilience of our people, and if it was going to be brought to the stage it had to strike the right balance to be accepted here. The enthusiastic and, indeed, emotional response from the audience shows that it walks the tightrope between sentimentality, fantasy and realism perfectly.

Here’s hoping that, like 2023’s Boys from the Blackstuff (which went on to the National Theatre and West End) this production has legs well beyond Roe Street. If two girls from Kirby and two Russian sailors could take Venice by storm and capture the hearts of the world on celluloid, Letter to Brezhnev on stage has the potential to do the same again. It certainly deserves to in a world where the power of love and friendship over divisions wrought by politics and prejudice is as important now as it was 40 years ago.

Letter to Brezhnev plays at Liverpool’s Royal Court until 17th October, with tickets available here.

Star rating: 4½ stars

Production pictures by AB Photography 

 

This review was originally written for publication by Good News Liverpool