It’s the late 1950s, we’re in the Soviet Union, and two groups of young people are about to battle it out for the soul of the state. The Stlyagi are traitors, who dream of the West and dance to jazz and rock’n’roll on records made out of repurposed x-ray scans. The Komsomol are members of a state-run youth organisation who infiltrate the Stlyagi, get them arrested, and send them off to be re-educated.

This musical has no time for the Komsomol, so our conventional comrades fall fairly rapidly for the bourgeois decadence of the Stlyagi. Mels (named after Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin) is in love with music and with Polly (Anastasia Aush) as quickly as she can shake an ankle at him. The fearsome Katya (Olga Pipchanka) is on the cusp of betraying her values, but is brought into line by jealousy and heartache. It soon becomes clear that escaping from ideological conformity and state power isn’t going to be easy, and that even when they do escape, they may be disillusioned.

However, there’s a strong streak of resilience mixed in with the mournful pessimism. The busts of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin glower across the stage stuck on coat racks and occasionally draped in the headscarves and jackets of terrified, angry parents, but they are treated with irreverence. The music never stops, and there’s an anachronistic nod to the 1980s in some of the style choices, the era of Glasnost, Perestroika and the Berlin Wall tumbling down. They also allude to the authoritarian regimes of today and make a strong plea for the right to protest.

The song and dance numbers have the feel of a big musical even in the tiny (and appropriate for the Soviet Union) confines of an ex-anatomy lecture hall.

The script (collectively written by Withintheatre) is a little jarring. There are sudden shifts of emotion and attitude that could do with more time to unfold. Mels, charmingly played by Andrii Zamiatin, would benefit from more internal and external obstacles to overcome. He’s a great protagonist but he’s too relaxed for someone trying to survive in the shadow of totalitarianism. Polly could also do with more space for her journey from carefree to careworn. She jumps as fast as Lady Macbeth from ambitious to ‘Out, damned spot!’ It would also be good to see more of the breezy Betsy (Sofia Barysevich) and her ill-fated love affair with the urbane Fred (Faiaz Valiullin).

Wanting more of a show is never a bad thing, and this is a joyous, and thought-provoking, way to spend 60 minutes.

Boogie on the Bones is at Anatomy Lecture Theatre at Summerhall until Mon 31 Aug 2026