Hampstead Theatre Company, Geoffrey Streatfeild, Emmet Byrne, Philip Bird, Cara Horgan, Danny Lee Wynter

Wormwood Scrubs Prison, London, 1961. One of Britain’s most notorious double agents, George Blake, is serving a 42 year sentence – that is, until he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Irish petty criminal, Sean Bourke. Both men are eccentric outsiders, and each sees the possibility of escape – and not just from prison - through the other. But once on the outside, can their mutual dependence survive the mounting pressures they face from MI5, from the KGB - and indeed from themselves?

Simon Gray’s absorbing and deftly funny play, unperformed since 1995, explores how personal freedom is an illusion and even friendship must have carefully circumscribed limits in a world where deception is a reflex response.