Another country

Loosely inspired by the spy Guy Burgess, who appears here as Guy Bennett, this play explores how Bennett's sexuality and his exposure to Marxist ideas shape his life. It also turns a sharp eye on the hypocrisy and social snobbery of England's elite boarding schools.

The action unfolds in a 1930s public school modelled on Eton. Bennett and Tommy Judd become friends because each is an outsider in his own way: Bennett is openly gay, and Judd is a committed Marxist.

One night a housemaster catches Martineau and a boy from another house alone together in a darkened room. Overcome with shame at being discovered in an embrace with another boy, Martineau takes his own life. Teachers and senior pupils then scramble to keep the scandal from parents and the wider world. Meanwhile, the affair hands Fowler, the house captain obsessed with the army and openly hostile to both Bennett and Judd, a welcome opportunity to plot against them.