Single Spies

SADC's next production, directed by David Page, is the Olivier Award-winning comedy, Single Spies, a double bill of one-act plays by one of this country’s greatest living playwrights, Alan Bennett.  Each play has as its main protagonist one of the two most infamous spies of the 20th century, Guy Burgess and Sir Anthony Blunt (Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures). Recruited at Cambridge in the 1930s, they spied for Russia during and immediately after World War II.

The first play, An Englishman Abroad, is centred on a meeting between Burgess, who had fled to Russia, and Coral Browne, a leading actress appearing with the RSC on an exchange visit to Moscow. The second play, A Question of Attribution, imagines Blunt being interrogated initially by a policeman as keen to learn about art as about Blunt’s associates and later by Queen Elizabeth II about the appearance of a mystery third man in one of her pictures after it has been cleaned.

Both Burgess and Blunt were part of the Establishment and the plays are not only highly entertaining but also raise questions about whom you should be loyal to, your country or your tribe. As you would expect of Bennett, they are beautifully written.

Tickets, priced at £16, are on sale at www.ticketsource.co.uk/sadc.