Single Spies @ The Lowry
Alan Hulme
12/ 3/2008

OPENING a national tour at The Lowry, this double bill of plays by Alan Bennett was first seen at the National Theatre back in 1988.

Now starring Nigel Havers and Diana Quick, backed by leading producer David Pugh (Rebecca, Art, Equus) and with Bennett’s reputation as high as it’s ever been, you’d expect a sure-fire smash-hit. And at the box office it seems it is. But artistically…?

An Englishman Abroad is Bennett’s version of an extraordinary real-life meeting between actress Coral Browne and notorious British double agent Guy Burgess.

It took place in Burgess’s Moscow flat in 1958, five years after his sensational defection. Burgess had seen Brown in Moscow in a play, and went backstage to ask if she would come and measure him for some new suits from his London tailor.

Over lunch, she is blunt to the point of rudeness but witty with it. He declares he misses gossiping and bemoans his badly-fitting false teeth.

It’s mildly amusing and interestingly revealing as from beneath the banter emerge Burgess’s disillusion and despair.

The spy in A Question Of Attribution is the much-rumoured and sought-after ‘fourth man’, none other, it turned out, than Sir Anthony Blunt, surveyor of the Queen’s art collection.

Pillar

An eminent establishment pillar, we see him here in Buckingham Palace, fingering a fake Titian, when the Queen bumps into him.

Bennett’s comparisons between art forgery and treason are telling and there is the novelty of seeing Quick’s amusing impersonation of Her Majesty, which isn’t as convincing as some but it’s here that Bennett’s writing is at its best, as he makes HMQ witty, insightful and amusingly human.

Earlier, Quick as Coral Browne is commanding enough but Havers is pretty disappointing throughout. As Burgess, he adopts an old man’s doddering gait and is presumably trying for morning-after drunk. It just comes across as odd.

At least as Blunt he looks the part, far more comfortable in smart pinstripe and red tie but again the performance is tentative, looking for focus.

And the plays? Well, they’ve dated and anyone under about 60 needs to read up about the background. I was never a great fan of them the first time around and they haven’t improved.

Single Spies is at The Lowry until Saturday, March 15. £10.50 - £24, Conc £2 off. £10.50 - £24. Click here to book.

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Manchester Evening News