Donkey' Years Still gives a good luck


DONKEY'S YEARS
Comedy Teatre

CONTRARY to popular opinion, the lives of senior government ministers have not historically been all work and no play.
Many, I can reveal, are prone to sleaze and have fallen by the wayside through very public scandal.
Considering the recent disembowelment of John Prescott’s career in the press, Michael Frayn’s brilliant farce Donkeys’ Years – which lays bare the past, present and uncertain future of a government minister – could scarcely be more prescient.
Twenty-five years after graduation, six former students are reunited in their old university college. They have had varying degrees of success, but all are connected by a common past. Once locked in college for the night, the graduates begin to relive their youth, old friendships and feuds.
“You haven’t changed a bit, old boy,” is the familiar salute – and it is certainly easy for them to fall back into their student ways. Their juvenile behaviour is played off against the young professor Dr Taylor (Chris Moran). The modern day prude, with a doctorate in Mythopoetic Structures in the Metonymy of Two Jacobean Children’s Rhymes, and will not credit any rollicking on the grass or drunken raids of the master’s cellar.
The Minister for Education, the Rt Hon C D P B Headingly MA MP (David Haig), is the first among equals. Haig’s performance, spent mostly with his trousers around his ankles, is priceless.
Desperately trying to cover up his drunken antics from his old friend turned reporter, he is driven steadily toward insanity as his career implodes. He ruptures his back in the process, jerking and joggling about the stage in mental and physical agony. So convincing was his pained expression that I winced when he took his final bow – I think they call that a Pirandellian moment.
Lady Driver, here played by the Samantha Bond of Miss Money Penny fame, succeeds in attracting the attentions of all the men.
From the moment she breezes in on her bicycle in a striking red dress, she grabbed the attention of the audience. In traditional farce style, she causes mayhem – with timely entrances and exits, and clever word plays.
Frayn’s brand of humour is a cross between Shakespeare and Bennett – he lampoons the upper classes with slapstick direction and wit. Hysterically funny, the phone number is below.
Until July 29
0870 060 6637