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Nicholas Farrell as the slightly worse for wear Guy Burgess. Pictures: Alastair Muir Single Spies
Birmingham Rep
**** FOR those of a certain age the Burgess
and Maclean affair was the sensation of the age. Front page news on and
off for years. Two Foreign Office officials, establishment
through and through, first of all vanished, amid cloak and dagger tales
of spying, then turned up at a Press conference as traitors in Moscow. They had spied for the Soviets from the 1930s,
through the Second World War and defected to Moscow in 1951 as the net
closed in, not very successfully as it turned out. It was the height of the Cold War and the very
real fear of a nuclear Armageddon with the four-minute warning and
public information films about defending yourself against nuclear attack
– although I suspect that even if you could whitewash all your windows
and assemble your family together huddled under a stout table, all in
less than four minutes, there might still have been a flaw or two
discovered in the Government advice if an A-bomb had actually arrived. Alan Bennett’s play looks at two of what was to
become known as the Cambridge Five, opening with Guy Francis de Moncy
Burgess - Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. Australian actress Coral Browne was touring
Russia with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, forerunner of the Royal
Shakespeare Company, in 1958, seven years after the defection, when she
met Burgess by chance and visited his dingy flat, which was nevertheless
palatial by Moscow standards, where, lightly lubricated, he offers her a
lunch of a tomato – just the one. Nicholas Farrell, as
Burgess, is quite superb,
an Englishman abroad – the title of the Bennett TV play from which the
first act of Single Spies
is adapted. We discover his spying was because “it seemed the
right thing to do at the time” which seemed to be the mantra of both he
and fellow spy Anthony Blunt, who we shall meet later.
Life in Moscow was less than convivial for a man
of taste so he persuaded Browne, played with a haughty mix of
fascination and indifference by Belinda Lang, to measure him for a suit
and take the measurements to his Savile Row tailor where, despite being
a defector and Soviet spy, he still had an account, as he did with his
hat maker and other gentlemen’s establishments although his pyjama
supplier had closed his account. The reason given being his spying for the Soviets
and we see a strange moment of support for the estranged Englishman from
Browne as she admonishes the sales assistant for refusing to reopen the
account tempered slightly when she hears the origin of the company. Hungarian firm, you see, and 1956 had seen
Russian tanks roll into Budapest as 2,500 Hungarians died in a
short-lived revolution. Burgess never fitted in to Moscow life, refusing
to learn Russian and was unhappy that he was unable to carry on his
homosexual life – although he did have a lover he described as
“allocated” to him, although he was never sure whether the young man
concerned had been given the English spy as a reward or a punishment. There is some delightful wit and interchanges
between actress and spy and we find Farrell’s Burgess is a man who seems
to accept rather than enjoy his situation. He was to die young, aged 52,
some 12 years after his defection, with drink an ever increasing feature
of his later life. In Farrell’s hands he becomes a sad figure,
living a lonely life, drinking and listening to his one Jack Buchannan
record, desperate for gossip and news of the society life he has left
behind. Sir Anthony Blunt was the fourth man in the
infamous quintet – Kim Philby was the third and John Cairncross the
fifth. David Robb gives us a rather aloof, humourless
Blunt, University of London Professor, director of the Courtauld
Institute of Art, a leading art historian and expert on French art and
architecture - and Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. We meet him in his office at the institute where
he is being questioned by Inspector Chubb from . . . we never did find
out where, who shows him a succession of photographs of Blunt’s
contemporaries in the hope of discovering more spies. He wants
information not only about other students and acquaintances from
Cambridge but also on art, as he attempts to expand his own growing
knowledge. Farrell takes on the role of Chubb quite
admirably, the shabbily, slightly bumbling, urbane, Burgess forgotten
and replaced by the more down to earth, gritty and lower class Chubb.
The heart of the act is a chance meeting with the
Queen, played by Lang again. The cut glass, actress’s enunciation of
Browne replaced by the more clipped tones of HMQ. Playing someone we all
know and hear so well – at least in public – is a challenge and perhaps
considering the meeting is in the late 1960s when the Queen would have
been in her early 40s, the portrayal seems to have her older and more
frail that you would expect, and, perhaps, a little short of the
gravitas you might expect. Bennett gives us a Queen who is quite witty and
toys with Blunt about fakes, frauds and pictures not being what they
seem to be, with one particular painting, originally thought to be by
Titian, the main subject being questioned after cleaning and x-rays
revealed three hidden figures. It is a clever avenue to explore as the Queen is
talking to the biggest fraud around, someone who was certainly not what
was seen and who can throw light on a host of ghostly figures in the
background. Blunt was given anonymity from prosecution in
1964 after admitting he was a Soviet spy, a fact that remained a closely
guarded secret until it was revealed by Margaret Thatcher 15 years later
when he was immediately stripped of his knighthood. Like Burgess in Moscow, Blunt is also a lonely
man, with few friends and the added fear of exposure held over his head
if information dries up. Both are perhaps traitors trapped in a foreign
country. Peter McKintosh’s set is a wall of a Palladian
Soviet government building in the opening act with a picture of Joe
Stalin in every window, which becomes walls of a gallery in Buckingham
Palace, covered in works of art in the second act with Burgess’s
scruffy, untidy flat and Blunt’s comfortable office sitting on a red
square of carpet which at times seems a little lost on the huge Rep
stage. This revival of the 1988 National Theatre
production, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, brings a sensational episode
in our recent history to life in a clever, beautifully written and
well-acted way. Worth a look. To 27-02-16. Roger Clarke
18-02-16
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