DONKEYS’ YEARS opens at the Rose
The Rose’s revival of Michael Frayn’s 1976 farce, DONKEYS’ YEARS, has now opened, in a production directed by Lisa Spirling, with designs by Polly Sullivan, and sound design by Gregory Clarke.
The perfect summer’s day, and at one of the older universities solidly successful middle-aged men are getting into their dinner-jackets for a reunion dinner. No women, of course, because in the far-off days of their youth even the passing glimpse of a woman in college was an event to remember. But everyone’s coming! Even Roddy Moore, their elusive hero. As the moon rises and the wine goes down, middle-aged men become young again, with only too predictable results. And, in the midst of the battlefield, hidden in Roddy Moore’s old rooms waiting for a quiet word with her lost love, that very woman they all once glimpsed and never forgot…
The production will now run until Saturday 22nd February and tickets can be bought here.
One of the delightful things about Michael Frayn is that this sometimes dauntingly highbrow writer has such a gift for low comedy …a farce with a heart.
Lisa Spirling’s alert production, neatly designed by Polly Sullivan with some particularly naff Seventies costumes, finds all the strength of a farce that offers a good deal of human wisdom amid the unbuttoned hilarity.
The Telegraph ****