Churchill in Moscow
Orange Tree Theatre, London

CHURCHILL IN MOSCOW, which premieres at the Orange Tree Richmond, is already a highlight of the theatrical year and a must-see.

For a start it’s by Howard Brenton – he whose powerful political voice has kept us on our toes for 60 years. Secondly, though historical, it illuminates for us the current world. Next, it takes the fruits of serious research and transforms them into deeply character-driven, joyful theatre, directed by the inimitable Tom Littler. And lastly, Roger Allam and Peter Forbes are sensational as the leads.  

Winston Churchill spent three days with Joseph Stalin in Moscow in August 1942. It was the height of World War II when the world leaders saw, in a blinding flash, that they must combine forces or Hitler would win.  

Churchill, though, had a dodgy opening gambit: that instead of helping Russia fend off the ongoing German invasion, Britain would unhelpfully divert troops to north Africa: a bad start! But the two protagonists are poles apart anyway: in war strategy and ideology, class and origins, social style and mores, language and culture. And, as both expect to be – and are – constantly mystified by the other, you’d expect their conflict to define the play. 

Not so. For what is distilled from potentially dry debate and hostility is the glorious humanity of two very specific, idiosyncratic men who meet at a tipping point of history.  

And, while the script is erudite, authentic, inventive and often hugely funny, it enters a higher plane in the hands of Allam and Forbes who embody the two protagonists to perfection: one English posh, the other with a peasant’s accent. Both so precisely inhabit the moment that we can almost hear their brains working. And as, together, they bravely circumvent the terror of the future they must endeavour to shape, we feel too their human vulnerability. 

Communism in British drama is usually shorthand for something bleak and incomprehensible. Brenton, here, simply but profoundly shows us what it means to men like Stalin, why he will fight to the death to protect it, and why history and the great poetry of Pushkin can have no place in the Soviet Union. It’s the fairest-minded representation of the communist dream I’ve ever seen on the English stage. World leaders who today ignore or demonise beliefs and cultures other than their own should take note.

It’s all great fun, though. Every line is a winner and all is thrown into perspective by the few underlings in attendance who converse privately in a kind of upstairs/downstairs world: the ingeniously inspired interpreters (Jo Herbert and Elisabeth Snegir) who are more than they seem; the articulate ambassador Archie Clark Kerr (Alan Cox) and the fierce Soviet prime minister Vyacheslav Molotov (Julius D’Silva), who all bring endless insight. And Tamara Greatrex delightfully embodies the gentle, free-thinking Svetlana Stalin, though her scenes presaging the world to come seem somehow tangential to the action and the stuff of a whole other play.

However, this is Howard Brenton still in the game, and surely the West End calls.  

Runs until March 8. Box Office: 020 8940 3633, orangetreethreatre.co.uk