John le Carré’s
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Adapted for the stage by David Eldridge
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to this performance of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, our fourth world premiere of Festival 2024. John le Carré’s novels have long been a staple of film and television, so it’s hard to believe there’s never been a stage adaptation before. We’re delighted to rectify that omission with David Eldridge’s new version of this gripping portrait of covert operations during the Cold War. David is one of our foremost contemporary playwrights, whose work includes Beginning and Middle, the first two plays in his trilogy for the National Theatre, and his award-winning adaptation of Festen (Almeida, West End and Broadway); it’s a great pleasure to welcome him to Chichester. We also warmly greet the return of director Jeremy Herrin whose memorable productions here include This House, Another Country and South Downs, alongside innumerable London successes including People, Places and Things. He has assembled an outstanding cast: some, such as Rory Keenan, Gunnar Cauthery and John Ramm returning to our stages, and others making their debuts. We wish them all an enjoyable run. We are well into the second half of our Festival season; but still to come is another world premiere in the Festival Theatre, Charlotte Jones’s Redlands – a riotous tale inspired by the famous Rolling Stones trials, which shows a very different aspect of the 1960s; and finally, to end the season in the Minerva, The Cat and the Canary: a deliciously terrifying tale in a new co-production with Told by an Idiot. We hope to see you again soon and that you enjoy today’s performance.
Justin Audibert Artistic Director
Kathy Bourne Executive Director
Kathy Bourne and Justin Audibert Photograph by Peter Flude
These kids – they’re taking over the world – they’re the new aristocracy, man and the old guard don’t like it.
Redlands Festival Theatre 20 September – 18 October Sending the season out with ‘a bigger bang’ in the Festival Theatre, Charlotte Jones’s new play Redlands catapults us back to the Chichester of the 1960s and a moment of local history: the trial of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. CFT Artistic Director Justin Audibert is at the helm, and tells us: ‘This is a local story with national resonance. It tells the dramatic story of the drugs bust at Keith Richards’ house in the Witterings, and explores how Michael Havers QC manages to get the Rolling Stones acquitted; and how for his young son, the esteemed actor Nigel Havers, the experience changes his life forever.
‘As a dedicated Rolling Stones fan myself, it gives me enormous ‘Satisfaction’ to be directing this colourful, vibrant piece of ensemble theatre which will be supported with a live band onstage and some absolutely brilliant R&B songs.’
One minute to midnight. It’s time. Ladies and gentlemen, take a seat and I shall begin...
The Cat and the Canary Minerva Theatre 27 September – 26 October The Cat and the Canary, adapted by Carl Grose from the play by John Willard, is a hilariously chilling mixture of Agatha Christie and gothic horror that will have you shrieking with laughter and fear in equal measure. And there’s nobody better than the genius shape-shifting company Told by an Idiot, and director Paul Hunter, to tell it. Justin Audibert says: ‘Who doesn’t love a brilliantly scary ghost story as the nights get darker and chillier? This will be a physically entertaining piece of storytelling which centres around a motley group of characters who gather in a remote house in Cornwall to hear the reading of a will.
‘It has the perfect mixture of spooks, belly laughs and thrills to end the season.’
Making an imp We are delighted that Chichester District Council has granted planning permission for The Nest, a new 120-seat studio theatre created to be a vibrant hub for innovative and community performances from 2025. The news comes as two reports commissioned by CFT on its local impact are published. An Economic Impact report examining the monetary impact that Chichester Festival Theatre has on the economy of Chichester District shows that, in 2023, our net economic impact was almost £26 million – compared with £17.5m in 2014 and £20 million in 2016. This is substantially due to the expenditure (excluding tickets) by audiences attending the Theatre’s performances and events, but also the goods and services bought by the Theatre, its staff and artists from local suppliers. Meanwhile, a Social Impact Report has measured the social outcomes and longer-term impact of the Theatre’s performances, outreach and participatory
programmes – particularly the work of our LEAP (Learning, Education and Participation) programme, which provides over 80,000 participation opportunities annually for people of all backgrounds, abilities and ages. Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of participants, audiences, partners, visitors and staff, the Social Impact Report used robust social impact indicators to measure the effectiveness of the programmes. Among the findings were that 98% felt welcome and included; 93% reported a positive impact on their mental health and wellbeing; 90% reported improved knowledge and skills; and 96% of trainees and apprentices improved their career opportunities. Kathy Bourne, Executive Director of Chichester Festival Theatre, points out that ‘2024 marks the 10th anniversary of ‘Renew’, the major project to restore and upgrade the Grade II* listed Festival Theatre; our plans for The Nest show we’re not resting on our laurels.
mpact ‘We’ve always put our community first, whether that’s people who have lived and breathed Chichester all their lives, or the new community – whether students at the University or Chichester College, or those who’ve recently moved here. As Chichester regenerates post-Covid we want to be part of its future, building the audiences of tomorrow. ‘The Economic Impact report is a result of that commitment. The financial contribution is obviously meaningful, but we believe very strongly that commitment to our community is what powers our drive to ensure we sit at the heart of Chichester and all that it delivers. We’re determined to keep growing the artists and audiences of the future, and strengthen the remarkable work of our LEAP department, led by the indefatigable Dale Rooks whose exceptional vision was recently recognised with her well-deserved MBE.’ The Social Impact Report will also ensure that LEAP’s work will continue
to grow and evolve, says Dale Rooks. ‘For example, we are developing a Youth Theatre skills framework which will outline the progression of creative knowledge and skills from Year 6 to Year 13. Our ongoing evaluation processes will ensure that we are always reflecting on how we can further improve outcomes to strengthen the impact of our work.’ She acknowledges that measuring social impact ‘is not like marking maths with a right and a wrong answer. What can you put in place to measure how somebody’s confidence might have improved? Hence we brought in an external consultant to devise a framework of impact measures and to compile the report; but more importantly, worked with the participants and the people who gave their feedback to ensure there was a high degree of transparency and objectivity. It’s a comprehensive, detailed report that covers every aspect of our work. ‘What’s really lovely are the comments from the young people, parents, carers, teachers and supporters, so there’s a cross-section of people’s honest views of what they believe the value and impact of the work is. The stats are not always 100% and that’s how it should be; if you’re hitting 100% in everything, where’s the journey? Where’s the learning? We have to digest the Report and use it as a platform and foundation to look at the areas where we might improve. It’s a demonstration not just of the value of what we do for the community, but what we do to achieve that.’
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John le Carré’s
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
Adapted for the stage by David Eldridge
John le Carré Nick Harkaway traces his father’s journey from young spy to gentleman author
As my father told it, the story begins with Willy Brandt, speaking in early August of 1962. David Cornwell, a junior diplomat (for which read ‘an up-and-coming spy’) at the British Embassy in Bonn, had been sent to observe. He was a curious figure for the role: the son of a convicted felon, a former runaway and now a counterfeit gentleman pretending to be a legitimate foreign servant. Brandt, young Cornwell recorded, had ‘Fingerspitzengefühl’. Something was happening, he said, there was something in the air. ‘By the pricking of my thumbs’, my father repeated in Stockholm in early 2020.
By his telling he was at best a mediocre spy, unskilled or perhaps unlucky, sometimes clumsy to the point of obvious. Today I find that the translation is contentious. ‘Fingerspitzengefühl’ is the diplomat’s sense of the appropriate – an emotional intelligence. Perhaps, at a stretch, it is the craftsman’s fingertip understanding of the work. Maybe the usage in 1962 was broader, or perhaps his usually perfect German failed him in this one respect. Either way, the prophecy was immediately fulfilled. Cornwell returned to the embassy in the small hours to find all the lights on. The Berlin Wall was going up, and the Iron Curtain was descending. The next weeks were frantic, as he went back and forth along the border between East and West, receiving defectors and looking for the very few who might not have been missed who might return as British agents under cover of their own lives. Here, as often in his recounting, the narrative becomes contradictory. By his telling he was at best a mediocre spy, unskilled or perhaps unlucky, sometimes clumsy to the point of obvious. Somewhere along the line, someone told me he had actually been fast-tracked for promotion – though whether that is a recommendation or evidence of John le Carré, 1982. Photo by Stephen Cornwell.
institutional desperation is unclear. Equally, it’s likely – if not certain – that he had already been betrayed by the Cambridge spies, so perhaps he was very lucky indeed.
The first draft of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was written in two months, as he spied and commuted for Britain. He had by this time written two novels: A Call for the Dead is a short, almost Waugh-like tale of espionage and detection. It concerns the death of a civil servant who was under not-very-serious suspicion of spying. The first George Smiley novel, it’s something of a minor classic of British mid-century life among the governing class and makes me think of Seicho Matsumoto’s gripping Japanese crime novels as much as of Graham Greene. His second book, A Murder of Quality, is exactly what it sounds like: a savage dissection of life in and around a minor British public school – he had taught at Eton, and run away from several such places as a boy – by way of a brutal murder, again investigated by Smiley in a Poirot-like mode. The raising of the Wall unleashed something in him that was both timely and timeless. The first draft of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold was written in two months, as he spied and commuted for Britain. It was much longer than the version we have, but a surgical editing process yielded a book which is still utterly gripping: noirish, curt and seething with rage, it’s a story of decline and betrayal, of unholy alliances and unwholesome necessity. Or perhaps, in the rearview mirror, what happens is not necessary and serves no purpose beyond being a proxy war between two empires. Noir stories, in the jargon, are those where the protagonists and the antagonists are morally similar, and good and evil can be hard to distinguish even when Us and Them are not. No gaudy romp