JOHN Le Carre was the king of gritty espionage thrillers, and his 1963 novel, The Spy Came In From The Cold, is widely considered not only one of the finest of the genre, but one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Chichester Festival Theatre had a big critical hit with the premiere of a stage adaptation, and this comes to Bath Theatre Royal from 11th to 22nd August.

Set in Le Carre’s fictitious intelligence organisation The Circus, the novel depicts a world-weary British spy Alec Leamas being sent to (the then Communist) East Germany as a faux defector, to sow disinformation about a powerful East German intelligence officer. As with le Carré’s previous novels Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, the novel features the fictitious agents George Smiley and Peter Guillam.

What made Le Carre’s Circus and its agents different from more conventional and gung-ho heroic spy stories was the moral ambiguity of their actions. He portrays Western espionage methods in the Cold War era as morally inconsistent with Western democracy and values. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was an international best-seller and was selected as one of the 100 Best Novels by Time magazine in 2005.

The novel is set in the aftermath of the building of the Berlin Wall, and the play, like the novel, is shrouded in the real and metaphorical bleak fog of the Cold War and 1960s East Berlin. The demanding role of Alec Leamas is played by Ralf Little, with Nicholas Murchie as Control and Tony Turner as George Smiley. Other cast members are Jeff D’Sangalang, Melody Chikakane Brown, Eddie Toll, Jonny Burman, Jo Servi, Clara Wessely, Gráinne Dromgoole and James Burman.

Written by David Eldridge and directed by Jeremy Herrin, the production has set and costume design by Max Jones, lighting by Azusa Ono, sound by Elizabeth Purnell, composition by Paul Englishby and movement by Lucy Cullingford.

Although many of Le Carre’s Smiley novels, and more recent work including The Night Manager, have been adapted for film or television, this is the first of his books to be put on stage.

Photographs by Johan Persson