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Single Spies

Single Spies
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Last Copy!
Author: Alan Bennett
Publisher: Samuel French (cover may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 60
Pub. Date: 1991
Edition: Acting
ISBN-10: 057301891X
ISBN-13: 9780573018916
Cast Size: 2 female, 9 male

About the Play:

Single Spies is a full-length comedic drama by Alan Bennett. Single Spies is the collective name for this award-winning espionage double bill of one-act plays about two of the best-known members of the 'Cambridge Five' – the spy ring recruited at Cambridge University in the 1930s. These amusing and compelling plays span the globe from Moscow to London. With forgery, fraud and hilarious blunders, Single Spies gives your audience a glimpse into a life full of espionage, secret identities and even an interrogation by the Queen.

An Englishman Abroad is based on the true story of a meeting between Coral Browne (an actress and the wife of Vincent Price) and shunned double agent Guy Burgess, living in exile in Moscow in 1958, a time when his isolation had led to alcoholism. She accepts an invitation to lunch, with the sole instruction to 'bring a tape measure'. He is overjoyed to see someone from his former life in England. Starved for information, Burgess interrogates her about English society gossip, and cajoles her into taking home measurements for a new pinstripe suit from his London tailor. An Englishman Abroad is a wry and touching play that chronicles the pair's fleeting friendship and Burgess' attempts to cling to his way of life as a Soviet citizen.

A Question of Attribution gives your audience a glimpse into espionage within the very walls of Buckingham Palace. In 1956, Sir Anthony Blunt, pillar of the Establishment and respected Knight of the Realm, is working as Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures and a Soviet spy. Perfectly at home in the corridors of the Palace, he frequently encounters Her Majesty as he works on her paintings, and has a special fondness for one particular Titian. However, there is one small problem: the painting, like Blunt himself, is a fake. Is the Queen aware that her enigmatic servant might also be other than he seems? This witty tale of forgery and deceit culminates in a sharp and candid interrogation from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II herself.

Cast: 2 female, 9 male

Single Spies premiered in 1988 at the National Theatre's Lyttelton stage in London, and went on to become a major international hit, winning the 1990 Olivier Award for Best Comedy – the ultimate standard in British playwriting. The play has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

What people say:

"Alan Bennett's classic 1988 double bill explodes the myth of the secret agent as a sex-mad, gun-toting, fast car-driving charmer. Single Spiessubdivided into An Englishman Abroad and A Question of Attributiontells of two of Britain's most famous, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, neither of whom appears to be having a particularly good time." — TimeOut (London)

About the Playwright:

Alan Bennett has been one of England's leading dramatists since the success of Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. Now regarded as perhaps the premier English dramatist of his generation, he has written ten stage plays, three screenplays, eight television documentaries, and over thirty plays for television. His work focuses on the everyday and the mundane; on people with typically British characteristics and obsessions. He has won multiple awards for all aspects of his work including his writing and acting and has declined both a CBE and a knighthood.

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