Review: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold at the Liverpool Playhouse ***1/2

Berlin in 1963 was the central battleground between two conflicting ideologies which had recently brought the world to the brink of destruction.

Twelve months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, two years after the Berlin wall was erected - dividing the communist East from capitalist West - both Kennedy (“ich bin ein Berliner”) and Khrushchev paid visits to the city in an appeal for hearts and minds.

The perfect setting then, and perfect timing too, for the publication of John Le Carré’s morally complex tale of spying and lying, a brutal, squalid and ruthless riposte to Ian Fleming’s grandstanding James Bond who was entertaining cinema audiences with his jet-setting derring-do, dispensing cheeky quips, bedding provocatively named women and knocking back endless cocktails.

There’s nothing jet set about Alec Leamas the jaded, middle-aged career spy who is the chief protagonist both of Le Carré’s 1963 novel and this mostly faithful stage adaptation from David Eldridge, at the Playhouse this week as part of a UK tour.

As head of the Berlin Station, Leamas (Ralf Little, returning to the Playhouse 13 years after appearing in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg) has watched with mounting fury and frustration as his agents have been eradicated one by one by his efficient East German nemesis Hans-Dieter Mundt.

Returning to London, burnt out and with hopes of retirement – the titular coming ‘in from the cold’ – Leamas is asked by the urbane but ruthless Control (Nicholas Murchie) to carry out one final operation, the (faked) defection of a drunk and demoted ex-spook, in order to frame Mundt as a double agent and bring about his demise.

But nothing in the word of espionage is black and white. Or, as the saying goes, in the dark all cats are grey.

Meanwhile Leamas’s undercover operation is further complicated by the relationship he embarks on with Liz Gold (Gráinne Dromgoole) the idealistic young Jewish communist employee he meets at the run-down library where he ‘finds’ work, ruled over by Melody Chikakane Brown’s deliciously dry and formidable librarian Miss Crail.

Above: Liz Gold Gráinne Dromgoole) and Alec Leamas (Ralf Little). Top: Little as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Photos by Johan Persson.

This relationship between Alec and Liz is a key part of the plot, but it feels like there’s little sense of real chemistry or passion at the heart of it. Or at least not enough to explain the decisions the usually lone wolf Leamas makes, particularly in the second half. Which is a bit frustrating.

Like all his stories, Le Carré’s award-winning The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is densely plotted with a myriad of twists and turns which need sustained concentration to follow.

Eldridge’s adaptation rises to the challenge and under Jeremy Herrin’s direction there’s a pleasing clarity to the storytelling, which happily resists any idea of dumbing down, although the play’s tight running time (2hrs 10 including interval) necessitates a relentlessness to the action which means there’s little opportunity to pause and reflect, or to consider some of the troubling subtleties of the plot. There’s also a rather stagey, exposition-heavy introduction.

Saying that, its atmospherically and slickly staged on Max Jones’s strikingly gloomy set – dominated by a sinister, looming Berlin Wall, which is ever present upstage and on which shadowy, silent figures watch proceedings from its barbwire topped ramparts.

Above: Leamas (Ralf Little) contemplates his predicament. Photo by Johan Persson.

The brief and brisk scenes whip by, with seamless choreography from the ensemble. Even an unexpected, runaway tea trolley was deftly dealt with by Little on opening night.

There’s also an evocative jazz soundtrack from composer Paul Englishby.

The Spy That Came in From the Cold was the third, albeit in this case peripheral, outing for Le Carré’s master character George Smiley.

Here, although Control is putatively in control, in a departure from the source text it’s the wily Smiley (Tony Turner) who is revealed as the anonymous puppet-master ruthlessly manipulating proceedings. Only too late does Alec realise he is the puppet.

As the chain-smoking Leamas, Little vibrates with weariness and disillusionment, punctuated with flashes of bravado and cynical defiance.

His interrogation at the hands of Peter Losasso’s chilling Mundt in the second half is effectively brutal and realistic, although Leamas’s relationship with Eddie Toll’s Fielder – the German spy determined to bring Mundt down, ultimately remains somewhat underexplored.