I wonder if the reason John le Carré never allowed his novels to be adapted for the stage was the fear they'd get turned into the sort of trashy touring potboilers that crisscross the country in numbers but never make it to the scrutiny of the West End.
It was presumably his death in 2020 that allowed a stage version of his breakthrough The Spy Who Came in from the Cold to finally go ahead. But I’d say his estate was right to give the nod: the story is in safe hands with playwright David Eldridge and director Jeremy Herrin, whose adaptation settles in at the West End after scoring good notices in Chichester.
This is a slick and yes, maybe slightly MOR adaptation of Le Carre’s taut, brutal espionage yarn. But it’s a very good one, and Eldridge deftly crafts an intensely interior world, with us seeing the action unfold as much from within jaded spy protagonist Alec Leamas’s head as without. Herrin’s production goes heavy on the noir, and with good reason.
Rory Keenan is magnificently grumpy and rumpled as Leamas, a hardbitten British spy in Cold War Berlin who ‘comes in from the cold’ – that is to say, is brought home – after his last informer is executed by Hans-Dieter Mundt, a ruthless counterintelligence agent who has systematically dismantled the British spy apparatus in East Germany. (It is slightly disconcerting that Keenan speaks in his natural Dublin accent, although you soon get used to it).
But there is a long game at work: returning to The Circus (a fictionalised version of MI6), Leamas is persuaded to take on one last job: an elaborate long game scheme to frame Mundt as a traitor.
He’s required to pose as an embittered shadow of himself, cast out of the Circus for problem drinking, ripe for being turned by the East German forces. But as Keenan conveys so superbly, Leamas is actually hitting rock bottom even as he pretends to do so. His drinking is a problem. His disillusionment with his work is high. He is profoundly miserable and failing to look after himself. We see him go into his head repeatedly, dwelling on the assassination of his last source, and holding imaginary conversations with spymaster George Smiley. This may sound a touch naff but it really works. Max Jones’s claustrophobic, searchlight-illuminated in the round set feels like an extension of Leamas’s mental state. And a little more of a role for John Ramm’s Smiley than the novel calls for is no bad thing given how important he actually is to the plot.
The weakest link here is the romance between Leamas and Agnes O’Casey’s idealistic young librarian Liz Gold. Although clearly written in a different era, in 2025 the book’s untroubled assuredness that a 45-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman (O’Casey is older but doesn’t look it) would hook up just like that feels a bit… under-interrogated. O’Casey is good as the brave but vulnerable Liz. But I think it’s maybe hard to believe in the purity of the connection between them.
It hardly sinks the play, just feels like a dated detail in an otherwise meticulous and gripping piece of theatre. Mostly, Eldridge and co make the case for the 62-year-old novel’s enduring appeal, with Keenan’s study in disillusionment crossed with dogged determination really clinching the deal. The story feels fresh because Keenan’s it feels like Leamas is really living it – those shocking final hairpin plot twists are still jaw-dropping.
