If you are familiar with Alan Bennett’s “Talking Heads” then you will know what to expect from Corin Redgrave’s Blunt Speaking. The time-scale of the fiftyfive minute play is a week in November 1979 straddling Margaret Thatcher’s announcement to Parliament that Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, had been a KGB spy in the 1930’s and 40’s and that M15 had been aware of the fact for the last 15 years.

The stage at the Minerva is dominated by an enormous broken gold picture frame set at a grotesquely cocked angle. Projected through this frame throughout the evening are various famous works of art emphasising Blunt’s position as Britain’s leading art historian and talent spotter.

The play opens with a rousing rendition of a German song against a backdrop of projected pictures of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia. Suddenly an alarm clock rings and Blunt, played by Corin Redgrave, in pyjamas, tumbles onto the stage and adds a dressing gown. The end of each day is marked with a darkened stage and a ticking clock. Day two starts with Blunt changing into day clothes which are hanging on a hall stand.

Each day Blunt, sitting at a desk with a glass of Vodka, although with initial hesitation at so early an hour, reminisces about various periods of his life, all the time trying to justify his spying activities. There is plenty of humour and Redgrave makes full use of the scant props and space keeping the audience engaged in the story. We hear tales about his nanny, both when he was a young boy and an adult, and the contradictions between political beliefs and actions in the way she was treated. We listen to discussions he’d had with students. We are told of his friendship with Guy Burgess and the background to a telephone call he takes from Peter Wright, his M15 interrogator, who is horrified that Blunt has been exposed despite the “guarantee” that this would never happen. We hear the voice of Margaret Thatcher denouncing Blunt’s activities and advising the House that Blunt would be stripped of his knighthood, but Blunt puzzles over why she should get involved so soon after becoming Prime Minister. In these scenes Redgrave portrays a man who displays no remorse but feels betrayed, and in a way that enables us to relate to him on a personal level.

In the programme notes Miranda Carter, Blunt’s official biographer, states that she envies Redgrave’s position as a fictional recreator, able to embroider his personal life with stories. I enjoyed Redgrave’s human portrayal of Blunt but was disappointed that the play didn’t investigate any of Blunt’s spying or artistic activities. No conclusions are drawn about why he did what he did. Redgrave admitted to Miranda Carter that he had ’taken licences’ and consequently appears to have conjured up a human story around a true character. Ms Carter admitted that in researching Blunt’s life she found him to be a mass of contradictions but this did not come across in the play. Instead we are presented with an amiable fellow who complains he has been betrayed by the government of the day.

The play ends by alluding to another side of Blunt’s make-up. The sartorial attire is completed as he dons a tie, a cardigan and a jacket for his only press conference during which, he tells us, his eyes meet those of a young French journalist who has stopped taking notes. © JMB

“Blunt Speaking” is at the Minerva theatre Chichester from the 23rd of July until the 10th of August, 2002.