An Englishman Abroad
An Englishman Abroad | |
---|---|
Written by | Alan Bennett |
Directed by | John Schlesinger |
Starring | Alan Bates Coral Browne Charles Gray |
Composer(s) | George Fenton |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language(s) | English |
Production | |
Producer(s) | Innes Lloyd |
Running time | 60 min. |
Production company(s) | BBC |
Release | |
Original network | BBC 1 |
Original release | 29 November 1983 |
An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama film, based on the true story of a chance meeting of an actress, Coral Browne, with Guy Burgess (Alan Bates), a member of the Cambridge spy ring who spied for the Soviet Union while an officer at MI6. The production was written by Alan Bennett and directed by John Schlesinger; Browne stars as herself.
The film is set is Moscow in 1958, after Burgess had fled to the city following MI6's detection of his treason. Burgess barges into Browne's dressing room in the interval of a touring Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (which became one of the bases of the Royal Shakespeare Company) production of Hamlet, in which she portrayed Gertrude, and charms her. Later on she is invited to his Moscow flat, finding it with some difficulty, to measure him for a suit that he would like ordered from his London tailor.
Rather than film in the Soviet Union, Schlesinger used several locations in Scotland. The Caird Hall and Whitehall Theatre in Dundee stood in for the Moscow theatre, and the grand marble staircase of Glasgow City Chambers played the part of the British Embassy.[1][2] Additional filming was done at Glasgow's St. Andrew's Suspension Bridge ("luckily, in a snowstorm" Bennett later wrote)[2] and the Moss Heights flats in Cardonald, which represented Burgess' Moscow apartment.[1]
Both Browne and Bates were winners of the BAFTA awards for acting for their roles in this production.
Bennett gives the date of Browne's meeting with Burgess as 1958 in the introduction to his Single Spies, which contains the text of An Englishman Abroad in the stage play version and the text of A Question of Attribution about Anthony Blunt.
The play was also adapted for radio on the BBC World Service in 1994 starring Michael Gambon as Burgess and Penelope Wilton as Coral Browne. It was subsequently re-broadcast on BBC Radio 7 and BBC Radio 4 Extra, most recently in 2013 as part of BBC Radio 4 Extra's Cambridge Spies season.
Film cast
- Alan Bates as Guy Burgess
- Coral Browne as herself
- Charles Gray as Claudius
- Harold Innocent as Rosencrantz
- Vernon Dobtcheff as Guildenstern
- Czeslaw Grocholski as general
- Matthew Sim as boy
- Mark Wing-Davey as Hamlet
- Faina Zinova as hotel receptionist
- Douglas Reith as Toby
- Peter Chelsom as Giles
- Judy Gridley as Tessa
- Bibs Ekkel as scarf man
- Alexei Jawdokimov as Tolya
- Molly Veness as Mrs Burgess
- Denys Hawthorne as tailor
- Roger Hammond as shoe shop assistant
- Charles Lamb as George
- Trevor Baxter as pyjama shop manager
See also
- Cambridge Spies, a 2003 BBC TV play about the Cambridge Ring
References
External links
- Use British English from July 2014
- Use dmy dates from November 2012
- 1983 television films
- 1980s LGBT-related films
- BBC television dramas
- British LGBT-related television programmes
- British television films
- British films
- Film scores by George Fenton
- LGBT-related films based on actual events
- Films directed by John Schlesinger
- Films set in 1958
- Films set in Moscow
- Films set in the Soviet Union
- Screenplays by Alan Bennett