The Spy Who Came in From the Cold at Soho Place review: John Le Carré thriller grips on stage
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold review and star rating: ★★★★
At the interval of David Eldridge’s adaptation of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, my friend and I placed bets on how we thought the play would end. We were both wrong.
I’m sure many people who go to watch the play, which started last week at Sohoplace Theatre, will already be familiar with John Le Carré’s novel, but for the uninitiated it was a thrilling introduction to the author’s work.
The production had everything you’d want from a spy thriller: great coats, a lonesome trumpet soundtrack, and enough drink-dropping twists to leave the person in front of you soaking (sorry).
We follow Alec Leamas, a grizzled spy looking to ‘come in from the cold’ (spy lingo for go home) after losing one of his top agents in Berlin. He’s convinced to go on one last mission by high command in London to strike back at the man who he’d faced in Berlin, Hans-Dieter Mundt. Suffice to say that not everything is as it seems.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: you’re impressed by the genius and cold-heartedness
The play explores the bounds of morality during the Cold War, in which the ideological pretensions of both east and west don’t matter in the messy world of espionage. “The high moral law of espionage is results,” George Smiley, the play’s top string-puller says.
The production is fresh from an acclaimed run in Chichester and is the first time that le Carré has been brought to the stage. Having seen it, you wonder why it has taken so long.
The dialogue is strong and for a complicated plot, the play never gets tangled or overly dense. I felt like I’d got my head around every twist just as the next was being revealed.
Rory Keenan as Leamas is fantastic. In the first act we watch him go from grizzled to manic, and in the second act he seems permanently in danger of losing the plot despite the swaggering persona.
He’s ably supported by John Ramm as the scholarly Smiley, who largely appears in Leamas’ mind delivering lectures on spying, while Agnes O’Cassey plays the communist librarian Liz Gold, Leamas’ romantic interest.
By the end you’re impressed by both the genius and the cold-heartedness.
Occasionally, the pace means the relationship between Leamas and Gold feels slightly rushed, and the final flurry of twists take place at a truly break-neck speed, but the result is still gripping from start-to-finish.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold plays at Soho Place until 21 February 2026
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