Review: Single Spies, Theatre by the Lake, at York Theatre Royal until tonight.

ALAN Bennett’s two short plays - brought to York as part of The Lakes Season of plays from the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick - look back to the Cold War era of spies, espionage and deep tension between Britain and Russia. All so long ago now, of course, but also a rather familiar scenario again in 2018, following Russian interference in western democracy and, of course, the outrageous events in Salisbury.

But this thought-provoking double bill, An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attribution, focusses on two of the notorious Cambridge spies, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, examining why they betrayed their own country for the Communist cause before, during and after the Second World War.

The former play is based on a real life encounter in 1958 between Burgess,(Theo FraserSteele)who is living in exile in Moscow, and the actress Coral Browne (Karen Ascoe), who visits him while she is performing in the Russian capital.

There are moments of atypical Bennett humour, with brittle witticisms from a comically camp Burgess, but these mask a deeper pathos as he lives out the pathetic final years of his life, whiling the time away by drinking and repeatedly winding up his gramophone to play a Jack Buchanan record again and again.

The latter play features a much funnier encounter between Blunt, who is the Surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, and HM herself in 1979, long after he has confessed to treachery (but granted immunity from prosecution) and shortly before he is unmasked in Parliament by Margaret Thatcher.

Blunt, finely played by James Duke, talks to the Queen about the mysteries of art history, forgeries and fakes but it becomes increasingly clear that the monarch is all too aware of his own fraudulence and deception. And why did he do it? Blunt’s explanation is… blunt: “It seemed the right thing to do, at the time.”

If you want to see Single Spies, and I would recommend it, you need to hurry up: there’s only one more performance this evening.

Mike Laycock