‘So many people, with so many different views and so many different voices. And inside each of us so many more people still, all struggling to be heard’

West Germany, 1969. Willy Brandt, the first left-of-centre German Chancellor for nearly forty years, begins the tangled political struggle for reconciliation with East Germany and Russia that will, in the following two decades, lead to the end of both the Cold War and the whole Soviet empire. Always at his side, as taken for granted as the office furniture, is Günter Guillaume, his hard-working and devoted personal assistant – and no less hard-working and devoted in his other role, spying on Brandt for the East German intelligence service.

Michael Frayn‘s Tony Award-nominated play exploring power, party politics and personal alliances receives its first major London revival. Director Jeremy Sams makes his Hampstead debut, having established his long relationship with Frayn’s work with his National Theatre production of Noises Off (also West End and Broadway), which he followed with West End productions of Benefactors and Donkeys’ Years.

“One of those rare dramas that don’t just dare to think big but that fully translate their high aspirations to the stage, with sharp style and thrilling clarity.” The New York Times