Beneath the Ice of the Vistula – 18 February 2026

How different can two people possibly be? Beneath the Ice of the Vistula examines a polarizing time in Warsaw when society was beginning to differentiate between Poles and Jews. In addition to this divide, our characters Lydia (Cady McClain) and Adam (Roman Freud) understand the world through two very different art forms—cooking and music respectively. The show chronicles their journey from strangers to lovers as they use their respective passions to describe their enthusiasm for each other’s form of art. Speculating that all humans are created equal, each character commits to finding ways to understand the other.

Beneath the Ice of the Vistula focuses mostly on Adam’s story, as a slightly deranged musician who sees composers (Brad Fryman) in absurd situations in his dreams and struggles to compose because he’s waiting for perfection. Lydia, on the other hand, is inspired by the littlest things—cooking up a storm and leaving Adam with enough food for days. Unafraid to make a mistake with her art, Lydia is expressive and free of the kind of demons that haunt Adam. Yet when it comes to Adam’s safety as a Jew, Lydia is significantly more attuned to the shifts in the real world, while Adam feels safe in his isolation and untroubled by the world outside of his cello suite. Adam and Lydia are as different as different can be. One introvert, one extrovert. One educated man, one country bumpkin. One cut off from family by choice, the other unwelcome at home. One indifferent to hatred and bigotry, the other bothered by every slight. One with vast ambitions, the other living day by day. Despite their differences, Adam and Lydia see each other with a sharp clarity and a mirrorlike quality where every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The execution of Beneath the Ice of the Vistula had a lot of strengths, but felt a tad over-rehearsed. This was felt most sharply in the fight sequences (Christian Sordelet), in which actors were visibly preparing for their next move, detracting from the believability of the fight. Directorial (Eduard Tolokonnikov) choices to have some of the food be invisible and other food be real was perplexing at first, until I drew a soft association that the food was most real in moments of Lydia and Adam’s relationship that were the most real and provided the characters with the most clarity about their connections to each other being momentarily stronger than anything either of them could create alone. For me as a classically trained musician, I was a tad disappointed that Adam’s magnum opus was so enigmatic. It seems that the great tragedy of Beneath the Ice of the Vistula was Adam coming down from his high horse and being ordinary, while Lydia rose above as someone willing to run away from all she knows to save a Jew from the Holocaust.

Though the big picture ideas in this play were viscerally beautiful and pristinely methodical, the execution left something to be desired. Many moments felt performative and not genuine, and at times the human connection between the characters was clear, but the human connection between the actors and the audience was missing. The ideas encapsulated in this piece are deeply important at a time when the world around us is using labels to sever our connections and other eachother. I hope that as the run continues, the actors find a place that lets the audience in on the intimacy a little more to hammer home that we are all more alike than not.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Spin Cycle.