Our Man in Havana

Published Wednesday 12 September 2007 at 17:15 by James Green

With a cast of four playing 30 roles in Graham Greene’s 50-year-old novel, making its world debut as a stage play, it is something of an audience headache keeping up with the action.

The heroic four, also serving as scene and props shifters, are racing on and off like Olympic athletes and making token lightning changes of costume.

I confess that for the early scenes I wondered coldly what’s going on, who cares, and surely things can only improve.

Fortunately, they did. You need to get into the style and story of the satire and once adapting to the presentation, it is comforting to accept the approach.

Let’s start with the one actress in the show. That’s Kelly Adams. Naturally she has no trouble holding the eye whether playing a 17-year-old daughter, an air hostess, stripper, or, more importantly, a secret service agent.

She’s not only a fine representative of her sex but flies the flag as an actress also.

Simon Shepherd, who holds the story together as the inept and totally confused MI6 spy in Havana, is really a hapless vacuum cleaner salesman.

But he needs money to buy his daughter a horse so he idiotically accepts an unintelligent intelligence offer to become a spy. Is he a bigger fool than MI6 is?

Shepherd succeeds in his characterisation of the stereotyped simpleton Englishman, and has solid support from Clive Francis as his pathetic Whitehall spymaster, and as a German doctor.

Leaving Hywel Morgan as the last of the four, changing his roles constantly but making his main impact as the ominous police chief, Captain Segura.

Graham Greene knew his truths - he served in the Secret Service. What a fiasco.