Single Spies – Leeds Grand

DESPITE fleeing to Moscow in the 1950s the traitorous Guy Burgess remained a quintessential Englishman.

Meanwhile his partner-in-espionage Anthony Blunt stayed at the top of the Establishment and worked as the royal art historian.

So I’ll adopt a traditional English phrase to describe my response to Alan Bennett’s plays about these Russian spies: not my cup of tea.

The double bill Single Spies, performed until Saturday, April 16 at the Grand Theatre in Leeds, consists of two one-act dramas focusing on members of the infamous Cambridge Five, who rose to the top in the British Secret Service while working for the Russians.

Both plays feature Bennett’s trademark wit, but the occasional clever, telling or hilarious line doesn’t make up for long passages of dialogue when nothing much really happens.

An Englishman Abroad is set in Moscow in 1958, where Guy Burgess lives a lonely life in a flat without his home comforts.

He invites touring actress Coral Browne to his flat so she can measure him suit to order from his London tailor.

As the pair chat the play touches on several themes – Englishness, changing times, the theatre, homosexuality – without going deeply into anything.

Most annoyingly, it only superficially addresses the one subject that could have provided substance and bite, why Burgess betrayed his country.

A Question of Attribution promised more – a fictional meeting between the ‘fourth man’ Anthony Blunt and Her Majesty The Queen – and proved more enjoyable.

The play is set in London in the 1960s when Blunt had been unmasked by the authorities, but to the public was still an upstanding member of the English Establishment who worked as a respected art historian.

The play opens with Blunt’s gentle monthly interrogation by MI5, scanning photographs to identify other Russian spies, then proceeds to Buckingham Palace where he is taking down one of the Queen’s paintings.

In comes the Queen herself, and their initial conversation about the painting becomes a hugely-intelligent sparring match because it is obvious Her Majesty knows the truth about him.

The dialogue, much of which went over my head, compares art – its history, meaning and fakery – with the duplicitous life of a secret agent.

There is a moderate amount of tension towards the end, but not enough to make this play worth watching unless you’re a diehard Bennett fan with intellectual leanings.

• Leeds Grand, until Saturday. Visit leedsgrandtheatre.com or call 0844 8482700 to book tickets.

David Knights