H&H Series Thursday, December 14, 2017 33 ETCETERA Black spy farce never comes in from the cold

Marianka Swain nds the acting compelling and the story intriguing, but Simon Gray’s Cell Mates is more theatrical curio than lost masterpiece

CELL MATES Did Blake really believe in HAMPSTEAD THEATRE sacrificing lives for the cause? ✩✩ Does he miss his wife and children? And where does The premiere of Simon Gray’s this Dutch-Egyptian man, who 1995 play was overshadowed assumed English nationality by lead Stephen Fry infamously and was then embraced by absconding mid-run. Edward Russia, really consider home? Hall’s revival puts the focus Likewise, his relationship back on the work – though this with Bourke is tiptoed around. is more theatrical curio than Surely there must have been an lost masterpiece. intimacy between them, beyond shared imprisonment, to form Notorious spy George Blake was such co-dependency – but Gray’s sentenced to a record 42 years in not telling. prison, but in 1966, Irish petty However, Emmet Byrne and criminal Sean Bourke helped Geoffrey Streatfeild are him escape Wormwood Scrubs compelling performers: Byrne using a ladder made from rope demonstrating Bourke’s and knitting needles. The pair garrulous wit and shrewd then wound up in Moscow – and opportunism, which curdles into in a different kind of vodka-fuelled depression, and incarceration. Streatfeild sketching the It’s an extraordinary true contradictions of Blake: the Geoffrey Streatfeild in Cell Mates at Hampstead Theatre. Pictures: MARC BRENNER story, but Gray’s writing is oddly awkward outsider capable of icy opaque, as if respecting the ruthlessness. ideological sympathiser, and Michael Pavelka’s designs are wishes of two men who were Yet the more clearly written Cara Horgan as a loyal Russian sumptuous, and there’s an determined to control their supporting characters almost housekeeper and no-nonsense interesting strand questioning narratives; we see them reciting steal the show: Danny Lee doctor. The duo deliver the play’s what’s real in this world. But the their versions of events into Wynter is superb as both a best moment of pitch-black spy never comes in from the tape recorders. melancholy KGB agent and farce. cold.

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Theatre A Christmas Carol Review

DAISY PULLS IT OFF enforcer chum Monica (playing A CHRISTMAS CAROL clad ghosts efficiently whisk us PARK THEATRE with hilarious comic effect by the THE OLD VIC through Scrooge’s night  sensational Clare Perkins) who ✩ from hell. They show how are worried about the his debt-ridden childhood It is 1927 and Grangewood School downmarket contamination that Dickens’ timeless morality has led to a Thatcherite for Girls is having its open day. will befall Grangewood with the tale gets the all-star treatment world view and lonely old age, The headteacher, revelling in the arrival of an outsider. few examples will have bettered with Matilda director a love of money replacing school tradition of “all girls Pauline McLynn plays the Denise Deegan’s Daisy in Matt Warchus bringing affection for sweetheart Belle. together”, announces the fourth faithful and decent Trixie who producing so may brilliant lines inventive flourish, Jack As the reborn Scrooge skips form’s offering: a play called soon develops, well, a bit of a and prompting so many guffaws. Thorne a socially-conscious around dispensing festivities “Daisy Pulls it Off” ... and it’s crush, on Daisy. Grangewood is in In a production that makes a adaptation, and a scruffily and enlisting the audience in wizard! financial trouble and the pair vow virtue of age-blind casting, an charismatic Rhys Ifans gathering ingredients for the to find the lost treasure that will experienced ensemble, some winning pity as miser Cratchit’s Christmas dinner, Young Daisy (played with lashings save the school and their chums. decades past their own Scrooge. his redemption is moving, of earnestness and goodness by As the narrative rips along, the schooldays, were clearly having a funny and life-affirming. Anna Shaffer) hopes to leave her dialogue is stuffed with references terrific time: occasionally the Like all good festive To the strains of Joy to the state Elementary and join the gals to the preoccupations and values script seemed to be abandoned in entertainment there’s tears, World, a final fall of fake at Grangewood. Her dream comes of the times – Bolsheviks, money, favour of ad libs and spontaneous laughter and a joyful clap-a- snow and Silent Night on true when her withered old Ma class, the burden of Empire, laughter. At times it was long to arrangements of carols handbells, this traditional, brings her the letter that will sneaks, playing the game and impossible to hear the dialogue as for handbells and voices. uplifting, and entertaining change her (and Grangewood’s) Doing the Right Thing. members of the audience were Rob Howell’s in the round set blend of knees up merriment future for ever – she has won a This sort of affectionate spoof crying with laughter. evokes a party atmosphere as creepy ghost story and a scholarship. had its origins in Michael Palin’s A spiffing evening’s the cast hand out mince pies pricked conscience is highly On the train to school we meet 1970’s Ripping Yarns and has entertainment, oozing with oodles and play jigs before patchwork- recommended. the super snobby Sybil (the become a regular genre on radio, of fun. A Christmas cracker. fabulous Shobna Gulati) and her stage and screen ever since. But David Winskill