Churchill and Stalin get lost in translation but bond over a shared love of booze and ruthlessness in Howard Brenton’s clever, witty but laboured comedy about the two leaders’ face to face meeting in 1942. With no common language, they rely on female interpreters who initially stumble over unfamiliar idioms, then increasingly finesse their bosses’ aggressive bluster to preserve anti-Nazi unity.
The play is ultimately about power – the women’s presence, and that of Stalin’s daughter Svetlana, partially undermines the “great man” reading of history - but the translation schtick makes it underpowered. Though it allows for lots of comic misunderstandings, it means that a lot of the dialogue is laboriously repeated, in English, Russian or gobbledegook.
