THE new season at the Birmingham Rep is proving very much a matter of two halves.

While The Door has hosted acclaimed new productions like The Clearing and Silence, the main auditorium has opted for far less-adventurous fare - Naked Justice, Hobson's Choice, long past its sell-by date, and now Single Spies, a double bill by Alan Bennett staring Robert Powell and Liza Goddard.

Well-received in some quarters of the press, both An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1988) centre on former spies.

In the first, a touring actress meets Guy Burgess, fled to Russia after betraying his country where he is eking out the remainder of his life in obscurity and relative squalor.

Based on real-life, the play proves better theatre than A Question, in which "fourth man" Anthony Blunt (Powell), curator of the Queen's art collection, talks and talks, variously with HM - a rather stiff impersonation by Goddard - and an MI5 agent who is debriefing the soon-to-be disgraced ex-spy.

The lines are witty, Powell is enjoyable, but the poor turnout on the night I saw the play suggests there may be an audience for more demanding theatre.

PW