Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others

A stage adaptation of The Lives of Others, the story of a Stasi officer in East Berlin who is assigned to watch a playwright and his partner. The production is presented at the Adelphi Theatre on The Strand in London.

The production adapts the 2006 film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, which follows a surveillance operation in East Berlin during the final years of the German Democratic Republic. The drama centres on the gradual shift in the officer's loyalties as he listens in on the lives of the people he has been ordered to monitor, and on the moral choices that follow. It is a play about state surveillance, art and conscience, rather than a light entertainment.

The staging is presented at the Adelphi Theatre, a venue on The Strand that is more usually associated with musicals and large-scale productions. Those attending should expect a dramatic, dialogue-driven evening in the auditorium, with the emphasis on the cast's performances and on the tension built through the story. The production is aimed at adult theatregoers interested in political drama and European history, and at those who know the original film.

For anyone deciding whether to book, the appeal lies in seeing a well-known Cold War narrative realised on a London stage, with its questions about privacy, power and personal integrity placed at the centre of the evening.