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Single Spies
Single Spies
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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
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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 Spies
– subdivided into An Englishman Abroad and
A Question of Attribution – tells 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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