Interview: Belinda Lang On SINGLE SPIES UK Tour

Hello Belinda, thanks for talking to us! Tell us a little bit about Single Spies.

It's two separate plays concerning two of the Cambridge spies, Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess. The first play is based on a story that Coral Browne told to Alan Bennett one night about her trip to Moscow when cultural exchanges were going on; she'd gone out in a production of Hamlet and Guy Burgess wrote her a note and invited her for lunch. She kept it quiet for years because he'd asked her to; obviously at the time the temperature was not sufficiently cool to go around saying you'd had lunch with Guy Burgess! But she had kept her correspondence and she told Alan Bennett about it, and he turned it into this wonderful little play. It's very funny, and fascinating, and a little sad view into the life of a man who, one discovers, hadn't meant to defect at all but had been tricked into it.

The second play concerns Anthony Blunt, who gave up his spying and became a bastion of the establishment, as the first real art historian, taking care of paintings and artworks for the Royal Family. It's an imaginary scene in which the Queen discovers him up a ladder in a corridor, trying to identify a mysterious painting which seems to have more to it than meets the eye. The Queen must have known all about him. She would have been briefed. In the play, he doesn't know if she knows. She teases him out a bit, and lets him know she's on to him.

They were all very young, they were easily led, as young people are, and they were fiery about their beliefs. It was a different climate, which they chose to question. You can see where their idealism came from.

Playing the Queen seems to be the role du jour...

It couldn't be more ghastly. When it was first done, this was the first time the Queen had been portrayed on stage, and it happened to be that Prunella Scales was very good at it.. There are expectations now which simply can't be met. You've had some definitive performances, notably Helen Mirren, who even looks a bit like her - it's just not fair! Having said that, the play is so well written, he's such a master craftsman, the play will absorb people.

And you're off on tour around the country having done Oklahoma! quite recently.

It's the same director (Rachel Kavanaugh). She asked me to do Oklahoma!, which was a bit of a leap in many ways. I loved doing it, and loved working with her. I knew she was doing this, but it didn't occur to me she'd offer it to me, I didn't even think about it. I couldn't have been more delighted. She's my kind of director.

She's assembled a fantastic cast, and she's very canny, hard-working, and takes a lot of trouble - nothing gets by her without scrutiny. I'm having a lovely time as a result! I haven't worked with Nick Farrell (Nicholas Farrell) since 1978, David Robb I didn't know but he's wonderful. I feel very lucky. These jobs don't come along all the time, where the writing is fabulous and the actors are so good - and you feel as comfortable as you can feel, bearing in mind the whole process is scary!

Belinda Lang plays Coral Browne and the Queen in Single Spies, touring the UK from February 2016.

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