A sophisticated evening of quality entertainment, From Russia With Love is the latest in the popular Harry’s Bar series by Suffolk playwright Suzanne Hawkes.

Performed at Felixstowe’s Orwell Hotel, Harry’s Bar 6 contained all the hall mark comedy, wit, pathos, music and literary references Harry’s Bar audiences have come to expect.

This year’s Russian theme included contributions from a retired James Bond, a white cat stroking Blofeld, Russian spy and double agent Ivan Lendle – codename Nacton Foreshore, Chekov’s Three Sisters, a tortured Anna Karenina and fickle County Vronsky all played with style by the multi-talented cast.

Imaginative and full of humour, the Harry’s Bar format includes excellent music and vocals thrown into the cabaret mix of poetry and conversation all overseen and held together by barman and listening ear Harry himself – played with a definite tongue in cheek by Paul Pascall.

Bond girl Honey Galorsky – “Is she Russian?” “No she’s just talking her time” – persuades Bond out of retirement as her Faberge egg goes missing.

Babushka – the matronly mother of a Russian internet bride – takes her share of the comedy lines as she pontificates on the uselessness of men – “I was married twice. Once to a Marxist and once to a Leninist and neither could take the rubbish out.”

Add to the evening a vignette between journalist Anne Leslie and fictional spymaster George Smiley as the Berlin Wall crumbles and a memorable rendition of Ra Ra Rasputin and you get the idea.

Lots of fun.

JAMES MARSTON