A tense drama exploring the enduring legacy of the Holocaust

Although award-winning Czech writer Pavel Kohout, an opponent of Soviet aggression, notably during the Prague Spring, is well-known in his homeland and has inspired Tom Stoppard, he is if anything neglected in England. So the UK premiere of this gripping drama about the long reach of the legacy of the Holocaust is more than welcome. Kohout's mother was Jewish (making him halachically Jewish), but she did not register him as such at birth in 1928, which might well have saved his life during the tense war years.

It might also have contributed to the birth of Cyanide at 5, which is set in Prague in the 1980s, where Zofia, a Polish Jewish writer has settled. Famous for an apparently autobiographical novel written some decades ago, she is waiting in her comfortable apartment for a younger female fan, who has journeyed all the way from the UK to meet her idol. It’s the kind of adulation Zofia is used to and, when mousy and shy Irene (also of Polish Jewish extraction) arrives, she appears to be breathless with admiration for the woman whose novel she first read aged just 15, some 30 years ago.

Irene, however, has an ulterior motive. She's here to confront a woman with whom her obsession actually stems from a suspicion that has become almost a certainty. She is more or less convinced that she herself is the baby whose life is saved when she is smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto, which means Clara, the novel’s heroine, is based on her mother Hannele, who disappeared in the death camps, leaving Irene orphaned. So Zofia has effectively ‘stolen’ her life story and profited from it in every way. Irene, by contrast, is penniless and frustrated. She's a trained dentist, but can't practise because as a refugee foster child, her nationality has not been confirmed, even though she arrived in the UK as a baby (a topical plotline). All this comes out over the coffee that Zofia offers in immaculate bone china and it soon becomes terrifyingly clear that a phial Irene offers Zofia contains the eponymous bringer of a speedy and certain death.

This all works especially well in the confined space of the King’s Head, with the audience sitting on all sides almost as if in judgement. The performances start out nicely calibrated under Peter Kavanagh’s direction. Lise-Ann McLaughlin makes of Zofia a gracious hostess, who gradually becomes more rattled and shows the steel that belies her now frail body. Philippa Heimann’s Irene is a study in paranoia, constantly on the move, pacing around her ‘prey’, her intensity increasing.

There is some arresting wordplay too. The Nazis are recalled comparing the Jews to Dracula, sucking on the soul just as vampires do on blood. At just over an hour, it almost feels too long, but comes to a satisfying end just as the nerviness risks veering into repetitive territory, rather than simply unsettling. Cyanide at 5 is an hour well spent, however, for the light it throws on the long shadow of the Shoah.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Tara Kelly

Cyanide at 5 runs until Saturday 26 November. 7pm. £12.50-£15. King’s Head Theatre, N1 1QN. kingsheadtheatre.com