The Spy Who Came In From The Cold – Grand Opera House York

Writer: John LeCarré

Adaptor: David Eldridge

Director: Jeremy Herrin

British agent Alec Leamas (Ralf Little) demands answers: ‘What do you think spies are?’. In this long-awaited adaptation of John LeCarré’s genre-defining tale of espionage, none of the answers are good. 

Disillusioned after an operation goes wrong, Leamas is considering ‘coming in’. But Control (Nicolas Murchie) has one more job to set Leamas up for life, avenge the fallen agents and eliminate his former-Nazi nemesis, Mundt (Peter Losasso). Looming God-like in the background (and often in Leamas’s mind) is the distant, allegedly-retired spy master George Smiley (Tony Turner). He seems both ever present and completely absent, like all terrible bosses (and all excellent spies) and is performed convincingly with suspicious gentleness by Turner.

With the stakes set and exposition delivered, a confident (if quietly haunted) Leamas embarks on his mission and is immediately charmed by librarian Liz Gold, played with believable naivety by Gráinne Dromgoole. Their chemistry is strong, but there is too much plot and intrigue to spend more than a few snatched scenes on this romance.

Production design by Max Jones places all the action on a stage wide map of a divided Germany, complete with a Berlin Wall that sits at the back of the stage and acts as a platform for an ominous Smiley. It keeps the Cold War context in the foreground (literally), the scale of the map dwarfing the cast, reminding audiences that operatives (and their friends and families) are pawns in a greater game. Lit in unexpectedly vibrant reds, yellows and greens, Azuza Ono’s bold designs use contrast to create noirish shadows in Leamas’ international missions.

A particular high point is the impactful fight in the ‘darkness’. On a red-drenched stage, fight director Sam Lyon-Behan brings much of LeCarré’s well-researched details to life, and the results are quite brutal. This interest in realism is also present in an impressive interrogation stunt performed by Little and Losasso which is appropriately uncomfortable to watch. Witnessing unvarnished violence audiences are reminded of Smiley’s prescient comment that ‘Intelligence work has one moral law – it is justified by results’.

However, the brutal potential of the plot is fully unleashed in the tribunal scene which allows a capable cast to lean into the theatrics of the setting. Here the despicable Mundt is frustratingly controlled, with Losasso using stillness, minimal dialogue and a mocking gaze to rile a hot-tempered Leamas. Eddie Toll is also brilliant as the eloquent Fiedler, his sense of certainty and righteousness swirling out to the audience from his gestures exaggerated by court robes. 

As the cast perform multiple roles throughout, like agents taking on multiple identities, the metatextual sense of mistrust only grows. While this moody production may be a little too slick and speedy to convey the full griminess of LeCarré’s espionage epic, it does explore the emotional realities of a Cold War era, in all its cynical, paranoid loneliness.

Runs until Saturday 13 June 2026, before continuing on tour