The show is played in costume, red floral headdresses and a backdrop of Comrade Stalin, the dance is lots of twirling and stamping with lots of strings from the orchestra. Wiktor is conducting. Kaczmarek tells us that the Deputy Minister loved it, this celebration of the Fatherland. Irena falls foul of the political regime because she did not ban a folksong from a proscribed area and she leaves.   

While on tour in East Berlin, Wiktor and Zula plan to escape but Zula is persuaded to stay while Wiktor sees life in Berlin from the other side of the Iron Curtain.  The gauche Americans ask stupid questions.  Much later, Zula will come to the West after marrying a Sicilian and getting Italian Nationality. 

In Act Two Wiktor and Zula are living in Paris but Zula is jealous of Wiktor’s old girlfriends and unhappy and asks Wiktor whether he thinks about going back. She spends her time in Paris in a Polish bar. If he did go back to Poland he would be accused of defection and he says to Zula, “I’d be breaking rocks in quarries for 20 years.”  The Poles ask him to spy on other Polish defectors.  No more spoilers!