A Splinter of Ice
TUE 13 JUL TO SAT 17 JUL 2021
Evenings 7.30pm | Matinees Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Running time (approx.): 1 hour 48 minutes (incl. 20 min interval)
KING'S THEATRE
BOX OFFICE: 0131 529 6000
So after over a year, my 1st visit to the theatre is to King's Theatre Edinburgh, audience members are asked to arrive 15 minutes before the performance to allow staff to check them in on Track and Trace and dispense hand sanitizer before they enter the building. Social distancing is in full effect but all this leads you to feel safe.
The play is A Splinter of Ice, Director Alan Strachan (assisted by Alastair Whatley) is lucky enough to have been blessed with a dream cast.
It's Moscow 1987 and the cold war is beginning to thaw. Novelist Graham Greene has traveled to the Soviet Union to meet his old MI6 boss, ' Lucky Kim ', of Philby , Burgess, and Maclean infamy. Philby has been living in Moscow for the past 35 years, and Greene is visiting his old friend after attending the aforementioned conference. The two men catch up on old times Under the watchful eye of Philby’s last wife, Rufa. Just how much did the writer of The Third Man know about Philby’s secret life as a spy and did Philby betray his friend as well as his country and how much can you still really have in common, when one man makes a living out of trivialising espionage through fiction, while the other has spent half a lifetime living the very real after-effects of espionage gone wrong. This is the tension that lies at the heart of A Splinter of Ice.
Against this backdrop, the two protagonists of A Splinter of Ice take to the online stage. Graham Greene (Oliver Ford Davies) Director Alan Strachan (assisted by Alastair Whatley) is lucky enough to have been blessed with a dream cast.
Oliver Ford Davies is a tentative but wry Graham Greene, while Stephen Boxer portrays Kim Philby as a man very much at home in Moscow , with few regrets about how he is viewed back home, instead, he enjoys the praise and welcomes the publicly because of his double life of a spy. He happily married to Sara Crowe’s archetypal housewife, Rufa his fourth wife. Despite his Russian affiliations, Philby struggles with the language and maintains many of his English predilections and tastes.
A novelist with a past in journalism makes for a perfect Inquisitor, Ford Davies selflessly teasing out the spy’s life story. Both do their very best with the back and forth of verbal tennis plus a dart of the eye, a rye smile. Sara Crowe’ Rufa joins in with word play, as the confessions are slowly revealed.
Not only is it great to be back at the theatre it was happily with a very entertaining play. 4 stars