Donkeys' Years * * *
at Malvern Festival Theatre
Review by Terry Grimley
Evidently, there's some logistical reason why an unscheduled interval has been added between the first and second acts in this revival of Michael Frayn's 1977 comedy hit.
It's a pity, because it makes a bit of a meal of a slender piece, particularly as the first act does little but set up the characters. It would make a punchier impression if it was all done and dusted in two hours, as promised in the programme.
Basically, Donkeys' Years is a low farce about a group of respectable pillars of society who revert to undergraduate misbehaviour when they are lured back to their old Oxbridge college for a weekend reunion. There is a government minister and one of his senior civil servants, a surgeon and a freelance writer who, it belatedly occurs to his friends, might or might not have connections to tabloid newspapers.
Then there is the fantastically shortsighted master's wife whose middle-aged dignity is threatened by the prospect of being reunited with an old flame. And finally there is the man from Birmingham - a pharmacist who, despite having obviously earned his place as an undergraduate on merit, was cheated out of his year in college and is no more welcomed into its bosom 25 years on.
Does it matter that most of the characters are so hard to like? It does a bit, but the fact that the government minister spends almost all of the third act with his trousers round his ankles gives you an idea of what kind of comedy this is. Its frenetic rushings-in and out and synchronised door slammings are almost a parody of mechanical farce.
Mark Hadfield, memorable recently as Geoffrey Chaucer in the RSC's Canterbury Tales, manages to make a comic tour-de-force out of playing this not very appealing politician, Jamie Newall is positively creepy as his civil servant and Norman Pace, half of comedy team Hale & Pace, does a creditable Brummie accent as the implausibly gown-struck pharmacist.
* Running time: Two hours, 20 minutes (two intervals). Until Saturday.
