Latest news with #DavidEldridge
BreakingNews.ie
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BreakingNews.ie
John le Carre's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold to be staged in West End
Espionage author John le Carre's global best-selling thriller The Spy Who Came In From The Cold will be staged in London's West End for the first time. Set at the height of the Cold War, the novel follows a disillusioned British intelligence officer, Alec Leamas, who is forced to carry out one last operation in Berlin. Advertisement After a sold-out production at Chichester Festival Theatre, the stage adaptation will run for 14 weeks in London from November. John Ramm as George Smiley in the stage adaptation of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (Johan Persson) Adapted by playwright and screenwriter David Eldridge, the London production will star Rory Keenan, best known for Somewhere Boy and The Regime, who reprises his role as Alec and is joined by Black Doves star Agnes O'Casey, who returns to play librarian Liz. John Ramm, known for his stage performances in King Lear and Wolf Hall/Bring Up The Bodies, will also return for the London production to play spymaster George Smiley. Eldridge said: 'It has been a great privilege adapting John le Carre's youthful masterpiece for the theatre, and it gives me great pleasure that after a sell-out run in Chichester, we're able to share the play with audiences in London. Advertisement 'Although set in the murky world of the Cold War espionage thriller it's a strikingly relevant story for our times. 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold asks us how one can retain one's humanity and morality if one must operate with the same impunity and brutality as your enemy to defeat him?' Agnes O'Casey as Liz in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (Johan Persson/PA) Le Carre, whose real name was David Cornwell, wrote best-selling novels including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager, and died in December 2020 aged 89. Prior to his career as a writer, he worked in British intelligence throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Advertisement Career intelligence officer Smiley became the author's most well-known character and was made even more famous by Alec Guinness in the TV series of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which aired in the late 1970s. Film versions of Le Carre's novels include 2001's The Tailor Of Panama, starring Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis; 2005's The Constant Gardener, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz; and 2011's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Tom Hardy. The theatre production will be directed by Jeremy Herrin, who describes it as a 'thrilling ride' full of 'twists and turns'. Speaking about the London production, Herrin said: 'It's an appropriate place to explore the high stakes of the Cold War, the moral bankruptcy of both East and West, and the power of love when Alec Leamas eventually finds something worth fighting for. Advertisement 'David Eldridge keeps us on the edge of our seats as a talented group of actors take us on the twists and turns of this shattering and thrilling ride.' The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was adapted into a film in 1967 and starred Welsh actor Richard Burton, who won the Bafta for best actor for his portrayal of Leamas. The film took home a total of four Baftas, including the award for British film, art direction and cinematography – black and white. The London production will run for 14 weeks at Soho Place from November 17th, 2025 until February 21st, 2026. Advertisement Opening night is due to take place on November 26th with tickets going on general sale from 10am on Thursday, May 22nd.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ukraine war has reignited ‘cold war strategies', says John le Carré's son
Russia's war in Ukraine has reignited 'cold war strategies', according to the son of John le Carré, who announced that an adaptation of his father's classic novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is coming to the West End for the first time. Nick Harkaway, who published Karla's Choice last year, a sequel to the 1963 thriller, said the current geopolitical situation had echoes of the charged postwar period. 'With the conflicts that we're in, it just does feel as if all the cold war conversations and the underlying geopolitics of the cold war, all the strategic stuff, is still the same,' he said. 'It doesn't shift.' Asked what his father would have made of the state of world politics today, Harkaway said he would have been horrified. 'He was an optimist, he believed in people and that we could build a better world,' he said. 'All the books, to one degree or another, are about someone finding the courage to do something that will change things for the better. The implication is always that if we don't find that courage, we will spiral downwards.' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was adapted shortly after its publication into a film starring Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, the titular spy who is convinced to go back into the field by the spymaster George Smiley. But it was not until last year's run at the Minerva theatre in Chichester that a Le Carré novel had been adapted for the stage. The play's director, David Eldridge, said the initial idea for the adaptation came at around the same time as the novichok poisoning in Salisbury, which raised the question of how a country reacts to such an attack. 'Should you respond in kind, so that you can defeat your enemy?' Eldridge said. 'But in doing so, do you compromise your value system?' The idea of where British intelligence services draw the line is one of the dominant themes of the story. As is the effect that spying has on Leamas, who is in a state of existential despair at the end of the novel. Some of the action takes place in East Germany, and Harkaway said the appearance of the Berlin wall – the dividing line across the city that fell in 1989 – as part of the stage set was a dramatic reminder of the period. 'We talk about modern relevance – well, this was a scar across the middle of Europe which existed for 40 years,' he said. 'When you see that up close, it's really powerful.' Leamas calls spies a 'squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives'. When Eldridge met Le Carré, before his death in 2020, the novelist told him 'not to get carried away with the idea that intelligence officers are a special breed in some way', repeatedly saying that they're just 'ordinary people'. Eldridge said his adaptation was true to that idea. The Guardian's Mark Lawson commented on the 'extreme moral ambiguity' of Smiley in the Chichester production as he battles with his Russian counterpart – and nemesis – the KGB's Karla. Lawson also praised Agnes O'Casey's performance as the librarian Liz Gold, who gets caught up in the brutal churn of spycraft. Eldridge said: 'The novel and the play constantly asks the audience whether it's worth it or not.' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold opens on 17 November at Soho Place and runs until 21 February
