I spy... something beginning with Zzzz: QUENTIN LETTS says Cell Mates redefines the term 'sleeper'
George Blake was — and remains — that nasty piece of work who spied for the Soviet Union and betrayed 40 Western agents before being sent to prison for 42 years in 1961.
Five years later, he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs with the help of former inmate Sean Bourke.
This should be a cracking tale of power shifts in a friendship (or was it a love affair?). I’m afraid it proves a great deal less exciting than that
Simon Gray’s Cell Mates tells how Bourke helped Blake flee to Russia, then how Blake lured Bourke to Moscow, where he had his passport seized.
This should be a cracking tale of power shifts in a friendship (or was it a love affair?). I’m afraid it proves a great deal less exciting than that.
The two-and-a-half hours (with interval) pass slowly enough to make one sympathise with young Bourke and his rising sense of entrapment.
This is the play from which Stephen Fry infamously fled when it opened in the West End in 1995. Stephen, dear heart, I don’t blame you.
Edward Hall’s Hampstead revival has a boxy staging, all low ceilings and over-fussy sets. How dated it feels.
Edward Hall’s Hampstead revival has a boxy staging, all low ceilings and over-fussy sets. How dated it feels
Geoffrey Streatfeild adopts a cleverly strangulated accent for half-Dutch, half-Egyptian Blake, but is this really a figure who could inspire respect from his fellow jailbirds?
He seems too effete and slow off the mark.
The real Sean Bourke is said to have been unruly, overweight, provocative. Emmet Byrne conveys none of those things, making the Irishman a dim bore.
Philip Bird and Danny Lee Wynter help with minor roles. Mr Wynter has comic talents, but they are wrongly applied when he gurns it up as a KGB man. Where is the sense of danger? For that matter, where is the anger at what the evil Blake did?
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