A Splinter of Ice

By Ben Brown
Directed by Robert Graydon

Monday 18th - Saturday 23rd March 2024 at 7.45 pm

On February 15 1987, Graham Greene – one of the most highly-acclaimed English novelists of the 20th century – attended a star-studded peace conference in Moscow (glasnost, remember?). Greene took the opportunity to visit his old friend Kim Philby: the double agent who, in 1963, was revealed to be the ‘third man’ in the infamous ‘Cambridge Five’ spy ring (Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess being men one and two, with Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross coming in at four and five.)

By the late 1980s, Greene, himself a former MI6 agent, had forged a massively successful career largely by fictionalising espionage-related subjects, while Philby had spent some 35 years living in exile in Moscow following the exposure of his own real-life adventures in that world. Do you wish you could have bugged the room to listen in on their reunion? Ben Brown’s new play A Splinter of Ice offers the closest we’ll ever get to that, by imagining the conversation that took place.

A lifelong interest in the Cold War drew me to this play – and it won’t be the first time we’ve aired this period on the Swan stage. In 2011 we presented Single Spies by Alan Bennett, a double bill depicting 2 other members of the Cambridge Spy Ring, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. The 2 one-act plays have similar themes to A Splinter of Ice; and they are based on known relationships but with invented dialogue.

Doors open 7:15 pm, show starts 7.45pm. Tickets £12.50 (£8 on Thrifty Thursday)

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

The charity night will be on Monday March 18th supporting Yeo Vale Rotary. Please email Roger Crouch on roger_crouch@btinternet.com or phone 07414 845884 for charity tickets.