Review: THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, @sohoplace

The major challenge to anyone adapting John le Carré’s classic espionage novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold lies in the inscrutability of its protagonist. A grizzled former head of British intelligence in East Berlin sent on one last mission, Alec Leamas gives little away, a man who has learnt to survive rather than to think.

This adaptation, by David Eldridge, tackles this problem using the character of George Smiley, a key figure in le Carré’s other novels who, by the time of The Spy Who…, has (apparently) retreated from ‘the Circus’ to a life of quiet academic study. In this play, Smiley is less a character than he is an embodiment of Leamas’s conscience, drawing him out of the action and forcing him to morally justify his choice to do “wicked things so people can be safe in their beds at night”.

This is a device that yields mixed results. At its best, Rory Keenan as Leamas and John Ramm as Smiley play off each other excellently, Keenan’s gruff cynicism a match for Ramm’s clarity of purpose as a spy. The @sohoplace balconies are also utilised to great effect, Leamas never able to escape Smiley’s gaze from above.

At its worst, though, the ‘Smiley interludes’ betray a lack of confidence in the audience to understand Leamas’s character. Smiley is often a Greek chorus of the clunkiest kind, coldly explaining Leamas’s great dilemma between freedom and blind dedication to the mission, with no emotional investment in the man himself.

The rest of the script is very much capable of conveying these dilemmas independent of Smiley. Leamas’s romance with Liz (Agnes O’Casey), a young British Communist Party member, provides a believable emotional foundation for much of the ensuing political conflict. Liz is also a fully realised character in her own right, instantly suspicious of Leamas and grappling with the intellectual foundations of her Marxist ideology.

When Leamas arrives behind the Iron Curtain in the second act and the plots and counter-plots against him grow ever more complicated, and the writing finds its stride. At this point, a pair of supporting characters add life to what could easily turn into a monotonous haze of Abteilung interrogations.

Philip Arditti as Fiedler, Leamas’s interrogator and a target of latent East German antisemitism, pulls off a delicate balance of ideological dogma and lingering compassion. Meanwhile, Leamas’s ex-Nazi nemesis Mundt (Gunnar Cauthery) is portrayed with unapologetic brutality, especially when performing water torture on Leamas in a way that incurs genuine horror.

The temptation to make this into a visually detailed period piece is resisted, with the expansive auditorium mostly bare, and Jeremy Herrin’s direction full of movement even in the extended courtroom scenes. Meanwhile, lighting design by Azusa Ono brings a punchiness that raises the stakes between episodes without ever overwhelming the subtleties of the drama.

The only major set piece in the entire show, in fact, comes right at the end, a reconstruction of the Berlin Wall. Leamas and Liz’s mutual disillusionment as they try to escape back to the West is every bit as harrowing as in the novel. However, unfortunately, all momentum is lost when Smiley comes back onstage to do a ponderous and unnecessary epilogue.

This has still been a tale exhilaratingly told, and if it fails it fails for being too inventive in developing Smiley’s character, rather than not inventive enough. Leamas’s interiority is an issue for adaptations of this novel that needs puzzling out, but the solution is not just to have another character drily explaining his motivations.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold plays at @sohoplace until 21 February 2026

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