Two plays on real-life spies. One lush like over-ripe fruit, the other dry as a vodka martini.

(Review of 2nd play added Feb 2012)

Burgess was everything repulsive about a man you could think of wrapped up into one confident, self-satisfied upper-class prig who found himself in reduced circumstances due to a bad political decision on his part. Bennett makes the most of the real-life meeting* between the actress Coral Browne and Burgess and turns what was a hearty feast in the first place into one of those banquets where everything looks lovely but smells faintly of rot, overripe fruit and the lettuce is slimy underneath.

Highly recommended in both print and audio.

*Coral Browne was touring Russia in a production of Hamlet when she met the exiled spy, Guy Burgess.

7 February 2012

I've just read the second part of Single Spies (I've only just got hold of it), A Question of Attribution. This is supposedly about an art historian questioning the attribution of one of the paintings, Triple Portrait, purportedly by Titian, in the Queen's collection. It is really about the unmasking of the real life Queen's art historian (Sir) Anthony Blunt as a spy, a comrade of Burgess and the notorious 'fifth man' who was never identified. There is a long conversation with the Queen where she is at a loose end following the cancellation of her opening a new municipal swimming pool (it cracked and leaked). When asked later about what he talked about with the Queen, he replies, "I was talking about art, but I'm not sure that she was", which entirely sums up this brilliant, this stupendously genius-level play.

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