I Miss Communism

[Croatia croatia]

The title is certainly provocative. I half expected an ironic paean to the good old days of state control. But this one-woman show performed by Ines Wurth, a Croatian exile in Los Angeles, turns out to be a mixture of personal memoir and potted history. While beguilingly performed, it never quite fulfils the promise of its title.

What emerges is that Wurth has always been the victim of polarised forces. Growing up in Tito's Yugoslavia, she was torn between her kindly grandmother and her disciplinarian mother. Her love of Croatia was countered by the lure of the west, symbolised by Oliver Twist, the film and the musical. But Wurth was, and evidently remains, divided about the attractions of rival political systems. At one point she says of communism: "It was a dream just like capitalism - freedom but not freedom."

I would have liked more about the parallels, as well as the palpable differences, between dictatorship and democracy. In the most gripping episode, Wurth describes how she was pursued by Serb police on a nightmare train journey to Zagreb during the civil war - an incident that recalls her rough handling by LA cops when she was accused of abandoning a baby in her care. However, when Wurth sings a communist pioneer corps anthem to the tune of All That Jazz, or treats the Internationale as a brassy showbiz number, she doesn't prove much except that she can handle a big tune.

Co-written with Mark Soper, who also directs, the show tells us a lot about Wurth, in particular her belief in sturdy self-reliance and her fervent determination to make a go of it in the US. But her gutsy self-revelation stops short of analysis of opposing systems. Like her beloved Oliver Twist, I found myself wanting more.