Mendes Escapes Film Pressures with Theatre???

Outgoing Donmar Warehouse artistic director Sam Mendes has been at the Venice Film Festival this week promoting - and defending - his second screen release, The Road to Perdition, starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. The Depression-era gangster flick, soon to be released in the UK, impressed American critics but has failed to win over their European counterparts who, in Venice, reproved Mendes for the film's perceived immorality and box office underperformance Stateside. In response and under fire, the director professed his desire to get back to theatre. "Theatre is freeing, a chance to escape into something organic. I want to go back," he said, according to the Times. Mendes achieved multi Oscar-winning success with his debut film American Beauty and announced his resignation after ten years building the Donmar up into a theatrical powerhouse. His final productions for the theatre - a sold-out, star-studded double bill of Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night - open this month.

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