Our Man in Havana is based on Graham Greene’s classic spy satire. Set in pre-revolutionary Cuba in 1958, it’s the story of vacuum cleaner salesman James Wormold who is unexpectedly offered a job by the MI6. Despite having no spy skills, he accepts the role as a way to pay for the extravagances of his daughter Milly.
To keep the pay cheques coming, the bumbling spy creates fictional reports to send back to London and invents a fake network of agents. Chaos then ensues when a man with the same name as one of his pretend agents is killed and Wormold is informed that his own life is threatened.
Our Man in Havana is a fast-paced and funny show with 30 characters played by just four actors.
Leon Ockenden is James Wormold throughout, leaving Jack Ashton, Bob Barrett and Jodie Steele to play the rest. They do that with aplomb thanks to quick costume changes ranging from putting on a new hat to full on complete outfit switches. There are also a wide variety of accents, most notably from Jodie Steele.
The set is an impressive one, with scenes smoothly switching between Havana streets, bars, apartments and cars. The music and period costumes also add a lot to recreating the atmosphere of 1950s Cuba.
Despite all this and it being an entertaining show overall, we did find it quite drawn out. Some of the scenes felt overlong and unnecessarily wordy, and the actors regularly breaking out of character to narrate the story interrupted the flow of the play.
Our Man in Havana is an inventive version of Graham Greene’s classic novel and there are some laugh out loud moments, but it isn’t the best thing we’ve seen in Bath this year.
⭐⭐⭐
Our Man in Havana is at Theatre Royal Bath until 8 August.
Images by Jack Merriman
