The Communist Threat
ZOO Southside
Edinburgh Festival
4 stars

That this doesn’t slide into the John Le Carre cold war cliche is down to two things. The quality of the acting by the two protagonists Kip (David Holmes) and Albert (Kieran O’Rourke) who make up the company, Rusted Dust, and the sheer number of layers on which the plot idea works.

A play set in a postwar Vienna basement and involving spies almost automatically invokes the spirit of The Third Man and the suits, trilbies and accents do nothing to disabuse us.

But gradually our perspective shifts. Yes, it’s about betrayal, yes it’s about politics, yes it’s about sexuality but do all these things point in the one direction?
Class, as always, is key. Are all communist defectors upper-class, cricket loving, Cambridge graduates? Mr Nightingale’s working-class northern rooted character says no (a first class performance by Kieran O’Rourke).

Who is the interrogator, and who the interrogated? The layers keep swapping our view. In fact, they all appear to be communists, albeit for a variety of reasons.

The ending comes rather too soon, and provides us with the only unchallenged cliche — the loaded gun in the locked room. But overall the play provides us with an entertaining and impressive exercise in the personal and the political. No more separated here than in real life.

Until Aug 31. Box office (0131) 662-6892

Chris Bartter