@sohoplace

It’s one of those Fringe successes people dream of mimicking. Since debuting in Edinburgh in 2014, Duncan Macmillan Every Brilliant Thing – co-written with its original star Jonny Donahoe – has earned rave reviews, been translated into numerous languages, including Spanish, Greek, and Mandarin, and performed all across the globe. Last year, it returned to the Fringe  for a triumphant victory lap marking its tenth anniversary. But until now, this strangely uplifting show about depression had never received a West End run — perhaps because it was always deemed too intimate to upscale. If there’s any larger venue fit to house Macmillan’s mini masterpiece, it is @sohoplace. In a co-production between Macmillan and Jeremy Herrin, the play is once again performed in-the-round, with the audience on all sides encouraged to join in and play their part. Over the course of its three-month stint, Donahoe, Ambika Mod, Sue Perkins and Minnie Driver will all take the lead role, but tonight’s performer is Lenny Henry. Dressed in a colourful patterned shirt, he sends smiles soaring across the crowd from the outset. Still, in the larger space, it’s harder to build the same rapport. With a much greater capacity and the audience spread across three tiers, creating the world of the play feels less like a communal endeavour and more the responsibility of a select few. Henry is a gentle guide: first as the seven-year-old boy desperate to show his mum – who has depression – all the goodness in...

John Le Carré’s landmark Cold War novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold has a huge reputation but is relatively under-adapted compared to the later, connected Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. There was a critically acclaimed but now largely forgotten Richard Burton film in 1965 (two years after the novel was published), and not a lot since, although a TV adaptation has been in the works for years, seemingly without much progress. Well, here’s a theatre version, transferring to London after an acclaimed run at Chichester last year. Written by David Eldridge and directed by Jeremy Herrin, it stars Rory Keenan as battle weary British intelligence officer Alec Leanas, ready to ‘come in from the cold’ but pressed into one more job by spymaster George Smiley (John Ramm). Posing as dishonourably discharged in an effort to be recruited by East German spy Hans-Dieter Mundt (Gunnar Cauthery), he sets off a dangerous chain of events after falling for well-meaning lefty librarian Liz Gold (Agnes O’Casey).