GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
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.
Although this production was in rehearsal before the playwright’s death, it allows us to pay homage to his life, suggests MARY CONWAY
JOHN GREEN welcomes a remarkable study of Mozambique’s most renowned contemporary artist
In this production of David Mamet’s play, MARY CONWAY misses the essence of cruelty that is at the heart of the American deal



