Donkeys' Years

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Comedy Closed 16 December 2006

Comedy Theatre Panton Street, London

Revival of Michael Frayn's Donkeys Years set at the reunion dinner at a 'lesser college' of an 'older university' in the UK.

In Donkeys Years a number of graduates - now in their early forties and mostly in responsible, influential positions - gather together for their reunion. Everything starts out smoothly, their are the usual conventional greetings and the old-boy reminiscences, but a slightly discordant note being struck by Snell, a man of such insignificance that everyone has forgotten him, and continues to forget him from one moment to the next.

As the night goes on, however, the college port causes behaviour surprising in those in positions of political, academic or spiritual authority. Into the resulting bear-garden stumbles Lady Driver, the Master's wife, short-sightedly searching for the lost love of her youth. The insignificant Snell sees in her the chance to make up for all the opportunities of undergraduate life he missed before.

Directed by Jeremy Sams the cast for this major revival includes David Haig, Michael Simkins, Edward Petherbridge, Chris Moran, Jonathan Coy, Janie Dee, Karl Theobald, Hamish Clark and Paul Raffield. (Casting subject to change).

"Delicious, blissful" The London Evening Standard

"It's funny, you know. Alan and I sit up there in London all week, talking about education in the abstract. And sometimes it all seems very remote and theoretical. You wonder whether it's really worth making such a song and dance over. Then you come back here, for an occasion like this, and suddenly you see what education is all about... The thing is we can sit down here and discuss whether we ought in fact to be sitting here or not in a perfectly friendly way. This place is a melting-pot. Different viewpoints - different creeds - different races - different classes - they come here, they sit down together over a jolly good dinner" - Headingley, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science, in Michael Fryan's Donkeys' Years.

Michael Frayn's Donkeys' Years was originally seen in London in 1976.

"Jeremy Sams' inspired production" The Guardian

"This is one of the most brilliant revivals in the West End in years, and Jeremy Sams's production takes the stage with all the confidence of a serious comic masterpiece. Michael Frayn’s play seems richer, funnier and more cunning than ever. The point about Frayn is that he can combine the intellectual bravura of Stoppard, the farcical dash and inventiveness of Ray Cooney, and the hard-edged observation of Ayckbourn, ruthlessly ironical and utterly without malice... Unmissable" The Sunday Times

"English comedy at its classic best - A deliriously enjoyable evening... it becomes physically impossible to stop laughing" The Daily Telegraph

"Silly walks! Musical doors! Cross-dressers of both sexes! Exaggerated myopia! Camp curate! Yikes, there's a woman in my room! Michael Frayn's Donkeys' Years ticks all the classic farce boxes... Jeremy Sams's production is a slow starter, but when full-blown farce erupts in the second act a terrific cast pulls off a symphony of perfectly timed slapstick. David Haig turns in a star performance as Headingley and Jonathan Coy's 'Auntie Norman' is a treat." The Sunday Telegraph

"Heavenly fun! Perfection" The Daily Mail

"Michael Frayn has perfect comic pitch. And there is a lesson in Donkeys' Years. When meeting someone you have not seen for years, do not exclaim incredulously that they haven't changed... Director Jeremy Sams has to work hard to get the dialogue going at the sober start. But later, drunken disorderliness keeps the play on its feet." The Observer