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"PEOPLE have always been fascinated by spies and this play is a great way of learning about two of Britain's most notorious double agents," says Nigel Havers, who is currently on tour starring in Alan Bennett's Single Spies.

Staged as a double bill, it sees Havers play Guy Burgess and Sir Anthony Blunt, two Cambridge spies who sold information to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

The first play, An Englishman Abroad, is set in Moscow in 1958, five years after Burgess's sensational defection.

Despite betraying his country, Burgess can't quite relinquish his Britishness and while living alone in a seedy flat, his thoughts regularly turn to England.

Although Bennett portrays his life in exile as tragic, he does so with trademark wit. In fact the play won an Olivier Award for best comedy.

Havers explains: "Bennett wasn't really concerned with Burgess's motives for betraying his country because he felt he'd paid the price for that.

"He was more interested in exploring his emotional state and exposing the tragedy that lurked beneath a man living a double life."

Burgess's longing for home is intensified when he goes to a Moscow theatre to see the RSC perform Hamlet and ends up in the dressing room of British actress Coral Brown.

She accepts an invitation to his flat for lunch but the man she dines with is not the distinguished Etonian she expects but someone longing for society gossip and a new suit from his London tailor.

In Bennett's second play, A Question Of Attribution, Havers plays Sir Anthony Blunt, an eminent art historian and surveyor of the Queen's art collection.

While cleaning one of Her Majesty's paintings, he discovers several more figures hidden in the background of the canvas - the painting is a fake.

The Queen discovers her enigmatic servant removing the painting to examine it further, but is she aware of another fake in her midst?

"Bennett draws parallels between the fake painting and Sir Anthony's life," says Havers.

"Motivated by his ideologies, he is forced to hide his own secret identities behind his public one, which must have been an incredibly difficult existence. In the end, he was outed, stripped of his honours and spent his remaining days in isolation."

It is clear that Havers shares Bennett's sympathy for both spies.

"Although technically they were villains, they were living in difficult times under difficult circumstances," he says.

"The government of the day was seemingly unwilling to tackle the problems of poverty at home and facism abroad. Bennett exposes the establishment as the real villains and leaves the audience to question whether they would have done the same as Blunt and Burgess in their position."

Nigel Havers is one of Britain's most loved actors, having starred in a string of hit television series and films including The Charmer, Born and Bred, Manchild, Don't Wait Up, Dangerfield, Chariots of Fire and A Passage to India.

He returns to the Mayflower after starring as Maxim de Wynter in a record-breaking 36-week national tour of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

Havers stars alongside Diana Quick, famed for her roles in Brideshead Revisited, Mrs Rochester and Mother Courage, and Jack Ryder, an accomplished stage actor best known as Jamie Mitchell in EastEnders.

Tickets for Single Spies, which runs from Monday to Saturday, are on sale from 023 8071 1811, online at mayflower.org.uk or in person.

12:19pm Friday 16th May 2008

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