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Review Round-up: Frayn Farce Remains Funny at 30

Michael Frayn’s Donkeys' Years is revived at the Comedy Theatre, 30 years after it was first seen in the West End. Many of the critics who attended the press performance last night (9 May 2006) found much to enjoy – and reminisce about - in the farce, given a fresh topicality thanks to coverage of John Prescott’s adulterous affair and other recent Government media crises.

Twenty-five years after graduation, six former students return to their university college for a reunion dinner. While their lives may have had varying degrees of success, all are connected by a common past. Locked in college for the night, the graduates begin to relive their youth, with all its chaotic friendships and feuds.

During the weekend’s antics, a cabinet minister (David Haig) attempts to cover up a possible career-ending scandal, a priest (Michael Fitzgerald) becomes a nun and the master’s wife (Samantha Bond) may – or may not – have been murdered. The Donkeys' Years ensemble company, directed by Jeremy Sams, also comprises Mark Addy, James Dreyfus, Edward Petherbridge, Michael Simkins, Jonathan Coy and Chris Moran.

** DON’T MISS our Whatsonstage.com Outing to Donkeys’ Years - including a FREE programme & FREE drink at our exclusive post-show reception with the cast! – on Thursdsay 6 July 2006 – sorry, this event is currently sold out - click here to join the waiting list for extra tickets or cancellations! **

Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail - Letts declared the show “a real belter …. Donkeys' Years is as fine an example of the genre as written in the last century. How merrily topical it suddenly seems, too. It features a government minister caught with his trousers round his ankles.” He particularly enjoyed the performances of James Dreyfus as an “Alan Rickmanesque misanthrope of a civil servant” and Samantha Bond as the school mistress who he described as “a cross between Judi Dench and Celia Imrie”.

- by Caroline Ansdell

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	Donkeys' Years Listing Page

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	Donkeys' Years - 10th May 2006 reviews