Spies Barely Peek At Script's Potential

THOM DIBDIN
Single Spies
King's Theatre

Published Date: 25 March 2008
Source: Edinburgh Evening News
Location: Scotland

TEETERING on the brink of excellence, this touring production fails to live up to the potential in Alan Bennett's pair of one-act plays and, lacking any real conviction, falls into the trough of mediocrity.

The spies of the title are Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, two of the so-called Cambridge Spies, members of the British establishment who were spying for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Single, because they are caught by Bennett's scripts in situations where they are alone, isolated by their beliefs. And called so with irony, as Blunt was the notorious "fourth man" of the group.

In An Englishman Abroad, Guy Burgess is discovered in Moscow in 1958, seven years after he defected. When the actress Coral Browne is touring Hamlet to Moscow just after the death of Stalin, he persuades her to visit him in his flat.

Diana Quick is relatively strong as Carol Browne. She succeeds in painting the necessary picture of her initial meeting with Burgess – when he drunkenly invades her dressing room. But there is never any sense that she is actually interested in Burgess or what he stands for. Not that Nigel Havers' performance as Burgess gives her much to be interested in. He gets the whole marooned Englishman missing home and going around in a permanently semi-drunken state spot on. Yet there is none of the arrogance or even the charisma needed to understand Burgess's motivations – or lack of them.

If the first half fails to convince that it would not be better on the radio, A Question of Attribution does rather better, but still falls woefully short.

Havers returns as Anthony Blunt, seen here sometime in the late Sixties after confessing to MI5 but before being publicly outed as a spy. At the time this brilliant academic art historian was Director of the Courthauld Institute and Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures.

This makes for a fascinating juxtaposition of scenes where Blunt's minder, Chubb (John Arthur) is quizzing Blunt to try and find out who the fifth man is, and Blunt is questioned by the Queen (Quick) about the nature of fakes and a picture in her collection attributed to Titian which cleaning and X-ray examination reveals to have not two, but five portraits.

Once again, neither star rises to the script. Although a programme note talks of Blunt as a "fluent and inspiring" lecturer, there is nothing of either attribute to Havers' performance. Nor does his aloofness capture the disdain that is particular to the English upper classes.

Quick's rendition of the Queen is more disappointing. She is hesitant in her delivery, creating a monarch who is disinterested and dull, whereas the lines indicate a fascinated and very quick-witted individual. Indeed, the play calls for her to be so.

• Run ends Saturday

Scotsman

Single Spies

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

NEIL COOPER
March 26 2008

The 1930s Cambridge spy ring suggested that signing up to the KGB was a useful alternative to making satirical whoopee elsewhere. Which is what may have piqued ex-Oxford Revue defector Alan Bennett's interest. His 1988 double-bill of one-act plays isn't really concerned with the cloak-and-dagger derring-do of why Guy Burgess and Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures Anthony Blunt became traitors. Rather, by imagining real-life incidents, cause and effect are scrutinised in a very personal manner.

Originally a television film, An Englishman Abroad finds exiled drunk Burgess forming an alliance with actress Coral Browne, who the old soak entrusts to deliver a little bit of the old country in the shape of a brand-new suit and some pyjamas. In A Question of Attribution, Blunt divides his time between his new handlers back in Blighty and the Courtauld Institute's hallowed halls when an unplanned audience with HMQ ensues.

Both pieces remain as personable as they were last time they toured five years ago. They also remain as slight. As a vehicle for Nigel Havers and Diana Quick, Christopher Luscombe's production soft soaps things somewhat. Havers may have upper-crust affectation, but is utterly lacking in edge.

Quick revels in playing Browne, though as HMQ is far too shrill for either party to display empathy. This is a shame, as A Question of Attribution's exploration of the double-bluff in life and art is an appealingly complex piece of implied sparring. When asked why they betrayed their country, both Burgess and Blunt confess that "it seemed a good idea at the time". One can't help but feel the same here.

The Herald