IS another production of Alan Bennett's Singles Spies necessary? After all, they have come not as single spies but as battalions over the past 20 years.

Then again, look at the timing of York Theatre Royal's repertory production, coming as it does in the wake of the Cambridge Spies television series and the ongoing Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.

Single Spies, two plays, one about Guy Burgess, the other about Sir Anthony Blunt, will be staged in the main house from next Friday.

In An Englishman Abroad, actress Coral Browne is on tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1958 in Moscow when she visits double agent Burgess, only to find him desperate for English gossip, suits and even false teeth.

Ten years on, in A Question Of Attribution, Blunt is being investigated for his involvement in the spy ring. While he is working as Keeper Of The Queen's Collection, HMQ herself happens upon him replacing a painting, but could her servant really be the so-called fourth man?

"This year there has been an emergence of a lot of information about the spy ring, like the serialisation of the Cambridge Spies," says director Tim Welton. "Everyone has started talking about them once more and there is this climate where people have begun to think again about what the historic role of these men is, perhaps in the light of us spending the last few years surrounded by war and secrecy."

Tim came on board for Single Spies after chief executive Ludo Keston and artistic director Damian Cruden had decided where it should stand in the autumn season.

"The decision was down to Ludo and Damian but I think it is now rather fortunate timing, especially with the case of Dr Kelly bringing into focus the themes of responsibility, attribution and national security," Tim says.

"It's also good that we continue to discuss the Cambridge spies because to many people they are the last bastions of English treachery."

Earlier this year, in May, Tim directed the Theatre Royal production of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting in The Studio. Given that, like Trainspotting, both An Englishman Abroad and A Question Of Attribution have only small casts, these plays could have been presented in The Studio too but Tim is pleased that they have been granted a run in the main house.

"I think the element that you would lose in The Studio is the overarching intellectual level; you would be drawn instead to the lower levels of the piece, the characters and the dialogue.

"One of the things that I am looking for, especially in A Question of Attribution, is that these men are discussing big questions, and it is just like you would lose that sense of loneliness in Lear if you put King Lear in a small studio."

Single Spies, York Theatre Royal, September 19 to October 11. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:53 Friday, September 12, 2003