A Covert Affair is a (mostly) two-person play, set in Budapest at the height of the Cold War. ‘Agent’ (he’s British), and ‘Comrade’ (she’s Russian), have been dispatched to meet up, exchange information, and, if necessary, seduce each other.
Charlie Turner plays the bumbling British Agent. He’s the exact opposite of the smooth and suave James Bond that we’ve come to expect British secret agents to be. He’s in fact channeling a roughly Four Weddings & A Funeral era Hugh Grant, all floppy hair and genuine befuddlement that he’s somehow here, in Budapest, Doing Espionage. You get the impression that Agent thinks this is all some sort of jolly prank, and any minute now, he’s going to get tapped on the shoulder, and whisked back to a desk job somewhere in dear old Blighty.
Elle Sherree is Comrade. More firmly aware of the consequences of failure, both for herself and her family, Comrade is much more competent than Agent at her job. There’s also the suggestion that, unlike her statements to Agent, she is in fact not new to this at all. She seems to always be focused on the task: extract information; report it to her bosses. By contrast, Agent seems to blunder around, unsure of what he’s supposed to do at any point.
Both of the performances are great, showing real nuance to difficult and differing realities. The actors are also called upon to eat during the performance, which is always a surprisingly tricky task. Turner as Agent also has some business with a crab that makes for a great moment of physical comedy. This is one of the points where the duo are joined by Alex Macfarlane, who makes the briefest of appearances as a waiter.
As a counterpoint to the slickness of Bond, and the sometimes seemingly unrelenting grime of Le Carre’s Smiley of ‘The Circus’, A Covert Affair presents a more comedic and chaotic vision of the 1960s, when, popular legend has it, every capital city in Eastern Europe was teeming with spies on every corner.
This is a great romp, and if anything, the script could stand to be extended. We’d like to see more of the back stories of Agent and Comrade – how did they get here? What are their home lives like? What is on the line for Agent, if anything?
It’s obviously difficult, with the high costs of bringing any production to the Fringe, to employ anything more than the absolute bare minimum of actors, or to provide any semblance of a full set. The creative team are to be commended for what they have achieved within their obviously restricted budget. The respective radios used by Agent and Comrade for communicating with their handlers are lovely pieces of set design.
A funny subversion of the usual spy tropes of ‘For Queen and Country’, this play has the potential for a great future.
A Covert Affair continues at The Space on the Mile, at 17:25 daily, until August 23
