Theatre review: The Lives of Others

He's a big name in his own right now but Robert Icke continues to be inspired by Ivo van Hove, a director who alternates stage classics with adaptations of films. And it's the latter Icke tackles in his latest West End venture, taking us back to the Cold War for his version of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others. In 1984 East Germany, Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler (Stephen Dillane) is sent to the premiere of a new play to pick out artists likely to be dissidents. He chooses playwright Georg Dreyman (Luke Thompson,) and is put personally in charge of monitoring the many bugs the secret police have planted in the flat Georg shares with his girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Transphobia Ltd Employee Keira Knightley.) In fact there's very little they discuss that could be called controversial, until Georg's friend, the blacklisted director Jerska (Nick Holder) kills himself.This prompts Georg to write an anonymous article about the high rate of suicides in the…

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