Oslo review – high drama in the back channels

I went into Oslo expecting to be informed, and fairly confident of being interested. I did not expect to find myself following the plot as eagerly as if it were a whodunnit to which I didn’t know the ending, or often to be laughing – or to find myself once on the brink of tears.

JT Rogers’s play, first seen last year at the Lincoln Center, is the story of a peace process; it is almost wall to wall men in suits. But the events it elucidates are riveting. Improbably, the secret talks that led to the 1993 Oslo accords, the first agreement ever struck between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the state of Israel, were organised not through official channels but by a Norwegian academic and his diplomat wife. The negotiators were served waffles. The US was not told of the encounters. Yet later that year Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin were shaking hands on the lawn of the White House. There were sobs of joyful surprise from witnesses as agreement was reached. The sobs provoked by watching this now are bitter: by the end of the decade the accord was in tatters.

Rogers’s play is not verbatim theatre but a reimagining. With fierce individual confrontations and high-powered comic eruptions. Philip Arditti is a chameleon Israeli negotiator who swivels from seductor to boa constrictor with a shimmy of his snake hips. He does provocative take-offs, not only of Henry Kissinger but also (jacket backwards over the head) Arafat. From the PLO, Peter Polycarpou is explosive and expansive. Both of them have daughters called Maya.

Bartlett Sher’s incisive production makes debate look like action. Which is part of Rogers’s point: talking is a deed – and may replace an act of war. Against the odds, the evening is truly theatrical – because it is essentially a backstage story. It makes most “news” look like mere window dressing.

As the Norwegian prime mover, Toby Stephens is a magnetic mixture of inspired enterprise and self-promotion. He moves like a spin doctor. With perhaps a touch too much flounce. He begins to look as if he is on the brink of doing an imitation of himself: has he inherited this from his mother, Maggie Smith? Lydia Leonard draws all eyes by her extraordinary composure. Limpid but sceptical, she is one of the most interesting actors currently on stage. The production moves to the West End next month.