GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
Cell Mates
Hampstead Theatre, London
HERE'S a jigsaw piece in the story of 95-year-old former MI6 officer George Blake, now living in a dacha close to Moscow, who recently gave interviews saying that he held fast to his communist beliefs and remained optimistic.
Double agent Blake, sentenced five years earlier to 42 years in prison, was helped in his “comic-book” escape from Wormwood Scrubs to the Soviet Union in 1966 by petty criminal Sean Bourke.
Newly revealed documents reveal that MI5 taught Brazilian secret police the techniques deployed by the 1964-85 military dictatorship in horrific prisons like Rio de Janeiro’s House of Death. SARA VIVACQUA reports
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
GEORGE FOGARTY is captivated by a brilliant one-man show depicting life in HMP Strangeways
JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist


