About the work
An Englishman Abroad is a one-act play by the British playwright Alan Bennett. It derives from Bennett's television play of the same name, broadcast by the BBC in 1983 and directed by John Schlesinger; for the stage Bennett substantially rewrote the text and cut many minor characters. The stage version opened at the National Theatre in London on 1 December 1988, directed by Bennett himself, with Prunella Scales and Simon Callow. Since then it has formed the double bill Single Spies together with A Question of Attribution.
Plot
Moscow, 1958: the actress Coral Browne is on tour with an English company playing Gertrude in Hamlet when Guy Burgess turns up in her dressing room. The diplomat and Soviet spy from the Cambridge ring had fled to the Soviet Union in 1951 to escape arrest. He invites her to his flat and asks her to order new suits for him from his London tailor. Back in London she carries out the errand, although not everyone is willing to help the defector.
Cultural significance
The play is based on a real encounter that Coral Browne had described to Bennett, and it explores home, loyalty and betrayal. The television version had already won the BAFTA for Best Single Drama; the double bill Single Spies received the Laurence Olivier Award for Comedy of the Year (1989/90 awards).