The Philanthropist

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Play Opened 13 September 2005, Closed 15 October 2005

Donmar Warehouse Earlham Street, London

"David Grindley's sharply etched and highly entertaining production" The Independent

The Prime Minister and his cabinet have been assassinated and England's most treasured writers are being murdered one by one. Back at the university, a bachelor don tries hard to please his academic friends as he anguishes over sex, marriage, anagrams and the meaning of life. Written by Christopher Hampton as a response to Moliere's The Misanthrope and first performed at the Royal Court in 1970, this biting 'bourgeois comedy' examines the empty, insular lives of college intellectuals. The Philanthropist features Simon Russell Beale.

"A ravishing tragi-comedy of sexual manners and morals" The London Evening Standard

"David Grindley has revived The Philanthropist at the Donmar and it is very nearly perfect. When Christopher Hampton wrote this play in 1972 his idea was to turn Moliere's The Misanthrope (1666) on its head. In an experiment contrived to prove that the end result would he the same for both types of men, he replaced the intolerant Alceste with Philip, a compulsively nice fellow who spends his days in a permanent state of sweetnatured dither. Simon Russell Beale is very, very good as Philip, the pappy, fearful Oxford professor of philology who is determinedly nice to the point of being obtuse. He displays such urgent symptoms of extreme, raw agitation, fidgety ties and mad blinking, you daren't take your eyes off him lest he self-combust." The Sunday Telegraph

"Russell Beale's performance ranks with his very best" The Guardian

"Christopher Hampton's 1970 play - subtitled A Bourgeois Comedy - is subtle to the point of evaporation... It is Simon Russell Beale who gives a slight play a real sense of solidity, however, capturing Philip's donnish demeanour with twitchy accuracy. A mass of fluttering neuroses, he has the startled, threadbare look of a stuffed owl in a provincial museum, as British as an umbrella in July. His fiancee comes and sits next to him, and he flinches. When the leggy Araminta (Siobhan Hewlett) attempts to seduce him, he looks as if he has a gun at his head. In a tough world. it's eat or be eaten, and Philip needs to learn to face the truth. David Grindley's elegant production reveals that The Philanthropist is an anagram of a great play - it might be A Bourgeois Comedy brittle with wordplay, but human nature lies somewhere inside. In its own way, it's quietly shocking." The Sunday Times

"See it for its wit, verve and, from Russell Beale, a touching wistfulness" The Times

"It's Russell Beale who makes the evening, but Hampton who enables it. Even if you're braced for the theatrical coups that top and tail the action, you get a carpet-from-under-your-feet sensation when they happen. Even if you know the verbal fizzing off by heart, there are still the sleeper jokes that creep up. Who else would dare to call the philanthropist Phil? Or the don - well - Don?" The Observer

"I was continually gripped, amused and touched... don't miss it" The Daily Telegraph

"The Philanthropist, with Simon Russell Beale playing the titular spineless don, is a brilliantly entertaining and startlingly poignant evening - surely one of the best productions of 2005... While David Grindley's production is scrupulously in period, the piece stands the test of time in its portrayal of moral weakness, decadence and people's unsettling mix of caring and disengagement... The tragicomic sharpness is intensified by Grindley's fine-tuned cast... Terrific." The Independent on Sunday