THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, The Arts Theatre, Cambridge
The shadow of the Berlin Wall is set to loom over the Arts Theatre’s stage this week as John le Carré’s riveting tale of espionage, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, arrives in Cambridge on its UK tour. Adapted by David Eldridge and directed by Jeremy Herrin, the play premiered at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 2024. It is the first adaptation of the novel for the stage, coming some six decades after it was written. It was certainly worth the wait.
The action takes place in the early sixties: Londoners scurry about in long overcoats and peaked caps or headscarves, to an evocative soundtrack of noir jazz with crisp trumpet notes. A forty-something spy named Alec Leamas is set to leave the world of tradecraft behind him and ‘come in from the cold’ – only to be roped into one last operation by the smooth-talking head of MI6, Nicholas Murchie’s Control (aka ‘C’). Murchie plays the role with aplomb: reminiscent of Desmond Llewelyn’s ‘Q’, he has less need than Q did to become exasperated with his charge, for Leamas readily signs up for the mission when he learns that it will help take down a top East German spy and former Nazi, the sinister Mundt. Mundt is notorious for his MO of drowning his enemies with his own hands, and he killed a member of the FO (the Foreign Office) while in London. Leamas soon realises that George Smiley, the great spymaster, is behind the operation – but will Smiley’s bid to get his own back on Mundt pay off?
The decision to cast Ralf Little in the lead role of Leamas reaps enormous rewards, as Little’s delivery and northern frankness add hugely to the play’s comic moments. Those moments are surprisingly abundant for a play as tense and gripping as this. Leamas rails against the “puffed up Old Etonians” who run the intelligence service, and when asked how he is after a brutal (and stunning) torture scene, he deadpans: “Never better.”
Another star turn in the play comes from Gràinne Dromgoole as Liz Gold, the librarian who falls for Leamas when he starts working with her. The attraction is mutual, but Miss Gold is an idealistic Communist who believes that History ultimately guides all our actions. Will she be proved right, or will the world of spies – that “squalid procession of vain fools”, as Leamas describes his fellow operatives – interfere with her plans? One thing is for sure: George Smiley (the superb Tony Turner) will be keeping tabs on it all, peering over the razor wire through his binoculars and pulling the strings.
It is when Leamas is transplanted from drab Bayswater to drabber East Germany that the play really comes into its own, as finely-judged accents and stark set design recreate the world beyond the ‘Iron Curtain’. Special mention must go to the Sound Department: one particular sound effect will have you wincing, while at the same time thrilling to its sheer verisimilitude.
The play features spectacular use of lighting, too – not least to show when Leamas is merely imagining talking to the other characters, rather than meeting them face to face.
Come to this production for Ralf Little’s powerhouse performance as Alec Leamas, and stay for the thrilling twists and turns of this “sly, inductive mission”.
