REVIEW: Cell Mates, Hampstead Theatre ✭✭✭
Cell Mates. Hampstead Theatre. 12 December 2017 3 Stars Book Now Cell Mates has become a curio over time mainly to the troubles surrounding its West End production in 1995. Star Stephen Fry walked out of the production suffering from a breakdown, and the tabloid frenzy that surrounded it overshadowed the play itself. Thankfully Fry made a comeback in more ways than one, and Edward Hall’s new production aims to reclaim the play itself, and there is much to admire in Simon Gray’s writing, even if the play now looks dated. Based on fact, it’s the story of spy, double agent, and some would say traitor George Blake, who, four years into a 42 year prison sentence for leaking some of the West’s most sensitive intelligence secretes to the Russians, hatched a plot to escape from Wormwood Scrubs. He enlisted Irishman Sean Bourke to break him out, and, following the … Read more
