Wordy, overwritten flop – perfect for the BBC: Noor, at Southwark Playhouse, reviewed

A heroic Asian woman parachutes into occupied France to work for the resistance and help overthrow the Nazis. This sounds like a fictional yarn but the story of Noor Inayat Khan is true. Her family were well-educated Sufi Muslims, who counted Gandhi among their friends, and they raised Noor as a pacifist intellectual who spoke several languages. And that’s the first oddity of the show. We aren’t told what drives Noor to side with Britain in a war that violates her family principles. And because we don’t know why she’s fighting, we’re bound to lose interest in her progress.

Other puzzles emerge. She’s engaged to be married but we learn nothing about her fiancé. In Britain her commanding officer reveals that undercover wireless operators in France usually survive no more than six weeks without being executed by the Gestapo. At this, Noor barely raises a shrug. And she certainly doesn’t tell her fiancé about her proposed suicide mission. Or perhaps she does. If so, that scene is omitted from this curiously undramatic melodrama.

When the action moves to France, things turn a bit Carry On. Being Asian, Noor could naturally adopt a Moroccan or Algerian identity but she poses as a French teacher called Jeanne-Marie. To make herself look more European she coats her cheeks with white talcum powder and slaps crimson lipstick over her mouth. In this eye-catching disguise, she ambles around Paris carrying a heavy suitcase crammed with radio equipment. She’s immediately stopped and searched by the Gestapo but she breezily informs them that her British-made radio transmitter is ‘cinematographic’ gear. The Gestapo believe her and let her go.

Then Noor catches the eye of a Nazi major who appears to be ‘sophisticated’ (i.e., he listens to Bach and wears a cravat – which is a teenage boy’s idea of sophistication). Surely the pair will throw themselves into a red-hot affair in the French capital, but no – not in this tepid show. Conflict and tension are avoided at all costs. Noor and her Nazi enjoy a mild flirtation over a glass of claret that looks like Ribena, and that’s as steamy as it gets. Writer Azma Dar seems bored with Noor’s personality and she clutters up her story with half a dozen irrelevant characters.

It’s such a shame. The show is handsomely designed and it features the excellent and versatile Chris Porter as the Nazi major (and other roles). Highly watchable Annice Boparai does her best as the stuffy and passionless Noor. But there may be some good news on the horizon. This wordy and overwritten flop is perfectly configured to become a ten-part BBC drama. The cast are about to make a mint.

Cyanide at 5 is a one-act thriller by Czech dramatist Pavel Kohout who had a significant influence on Tom Stoppard. The setting is a lavish townhouse in Prague occupied by a lonely author, Zofia, whose wartime novel about Jews in the Warsaw ghetto became an international bestseller. But something’s amiss about Zofia’s career. She never followed up her debut novel with a second book. And although she’s a gentile, she seemed to enjoy a remarkable level of expertise about the wartime experiences of Jews.

A surprise visitor, Irene, sets the tale in motion. At first Zofia assumes that Irene is a devoted fan and she cracks open a bottle of her favourite tipple, cherry brandy. Irene refuses the offer and Zofia begs her not to follow ‘those who ruin their health with abstinence and vegetarianism’. (The script has several Wildean flourishes like this.) Irene reveals that she’s the daughter of Zofia’s closest friend, a Jewess, who died in the war. Irene was smuggled out of Warsaw inside a suitcase that contained her mother’s copious diaries about life under Nazi occupation. (Another nod to Wilde and Miss Prism’s three-volume novel hidden in the famous ‘handbag’.)

The game’s afoot between Irene and Zofia. Irene suspects that Zofia stole her mother’s intellectual copyright and made a fortune by traducing the memory of her best friend. But what compensation does Irene seek? Not just money, surely. Irene then introduces a deadly new element – the bottle of cyanide pills owned by her mother during the war.

Kahout is a seasoned dramatist who knows how to exploit the elements in his story for maximum effect. And a secondary tale runs alongside the dispute between the plagiarist and her avenger. Both women are isolated and loveless. Irene is an unmarried misfit who considers herself unattractive while Zofia derives little pleasure from her wealth and fame. Undercurrents of longing and thwarted emotion simmer between the two women who at times seem on the brink of throwing themselves into each other’s arms. And yet those cyanide pills are still in play. This is a small gem directed by Peter Kavanagh.