Theatre review: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Back to @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it would like to tell you its theories about Scully's abduction, and a play full of a few conspiracies of its own: In what is apparently the first time anyone has ever adapted the work of spy novelist John le Carré for the stage, David Eldridge takes us to 1961's divided Germany for The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Alec Leamas (Rory Keenan) runs the Berlin branch of intelligence agency The Circus, but his East Berlin opposite and hated nemesis Mundt (Gunnar Cauthery) is far too efficient at exposing and eliminating his spies. When his last and best agent is killed, Leamas retires from the agency, disillusioned and disheartened: He starts drinking more, finds it hard to hold down a job, and eventually spends some time in prison after assaulting a shopkeeper for refusing him credit.

But the extent of his downfall is actually all part of his final mission for the Circus, orchestrated by Control (Ian Drysdale) to make him appear vulnerable. The plan is for the East Germans to try and recruit him, giving him the access to sow the seeds of Mundt's downfall.

Needless to say things don't go according to plan, or at least not the plan as Leamas understands it - he and his girlfriend Liz (Agnes O'Casey,) who he meets while building up his convoluted cover story, are just pawns for Control, and for the spymaster who pulls his strings in turn, George Smiley. Jeremy Herrin's production has transferred from Chichester, and for the in-the-round configuration @ @sohoplace Max Jones has added four small balconies surrounding the stage, on which characters appear to offer Leamas advice or judgement - whether for real or just in his imagination.

I never got round to reading any le Carré but I know his work is more based in gritty, grubby and morally ambiguous spywork than the glossy world of Ian Fleming, and although it gets there in the end I'm not sure the way the story's told is always clear - I was particularly baffled by the cliffhanger into the interval, where Leamas discovers he'll be taken back into East Berlin and is furious at the betrayal: While I get this wasn't the official plan, we know the mission is dangerous and I would have thought that, if the plan involves posing as a potential defector to East Germany, the possibility of actually ending up in East Germany is one of the most obvious risks you'd take into consideration.

For Ben the plot sticking point was more the way the seemingly chance meeting and relationship with Liz was engineered, the ultimate example of how Machiavellian Smiley (John Ramm, doubling as the East German officer who appears to have unravelled his plan) can be. But if the first act left me wondering if I was still suffering from the aftereffects of last week's head trauma, the second gets more smoothly down to business.

Here Mundt's deputy Fiedler (Philip Arditti) falls into the trap of trying to take down his boss on the evidence the Circus has been planting all this time, and the big setpiece is a dramatic courtroom scene where who exactly is on trial at any given moment seems to be in constant flux. Ultimately The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is a novel condensed into a little over two hours of theatre and at times you can feel the strain of all the plot it's trying to fit in, but by the end it hits the right mix of intrigue and twisted morality. And with all the content warnings about le Carré's language and attitudes being Very Much Of Their Time ^TM, I liked the way Eldridge reappropriated this for an additional little sour note about where the "good" guys' priorities really lie.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by David Eldridge, based on the novel by John le Carré, is booking until the 21st of February at @sohoplace Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.