Donkeys' Years at the Rose Theatre

I tried to like Donkeys' Years but despite some good laughs we never really got on.

I went to see it as part of my concerted campaign to fall in love with the Rose, I've been 17 times but not managed it yet, which meant buying tickets for four shows in the current season. The first, Fallen Angels, was brilliant.

I was in almost the same seat as the last time, A35, which meant a good central view of the stage. Row A was again preceded by four rows (AA to DD) so my front row seat was some way away from the stage.

Donkeys' Years tells the tale of an Oxbridge 25 years reunion. The scene is set very slowly as each of the former students arrives at the college in turn and talks for a while with the porter who was there in their student days. We also meet the young (academic) doctor who lives in and supervises the student house and the wife of the master of the college who was a student with the group having the reunion.

This is a mixed group with, amongst others, a junior cabinet minister, a senior civil servant who works in the same department, a journalist, a research biologist, a surgeon and (possibly) a vicar.

After the slow start the characters were my second problem. They were all fairly shallow and exaggerated, almost stereotypical.That was a disappointment but not necessarily a great problem as farces do not usually rely on complex characters for their laughs.

The jeopardy that defines the farce is the master's wife's attempt to pick up on a relationship from 25 years ago but he does not come to the reunion and she find herself hiding in the minister's bedroom instead.

And that was my third problem, a good farce needs some real jeopardy and being found with a woman in your bedroom during a reunion never seemed serious enough.

That said, once the situation was set, there were a lot of laughs albeit from fairly simple and obvious sources. At times it felt a little like an old ITV sit-com in that there were jokes that you could see coming but they were still jokes and jokes can make you laugh despite your better instincts.

Of course Donkeys' Years is quite a bit cleverer than an old ITV sit-com but it never quite escapes the farce-by-numbers feeling. The happy feeling generated is ephemeral and I left thinking that I had enjoyed myself but with no interest in seeing the play again.

On the plus side, the acting was wonderful. Jemma Redgrave stood out from the crowd, possibly because she was the only woman and she was certainly the most complex character, but whatever the reason, she sparkled.

To try and summarise all this, Donkeys' Years was funny but I expected something more from a play written by Michael Frayn and with an established cast.

Anton Chekhov's Vaudevilles at the Jermyn Street Theatre

I nearly missed this treat.

I got an email promoting something else at the Jermyn Street Theatre and when I went on to their website I found this. The Anton Chekhov name would have been enough for me to book it and this also had Michael Frayn's name too. I feel a sense of local loyalty towards Frayn, he lives just up the road and went to the same local school as my younger son, and he writes good plays as well.

I was a little surprised that the theatre had allocated seating (it did not the last time that I was there) but pleased that my seat was in the middle of the front row (A5). Even more so as the Indian meal took longer than hoped/expected and I did not get to the theatre until about ten minutes before the show started by which time the place was pretty full.

This was a different Chekhov from the one that I am used to that usually ends with a gun shot off stage and the former peasants moving in to the family mansion.

This was funny. Very funny and funnily done.

There were, I think, four short plays and two short stories.

In the first a famous writer was interrupted by a woman who had written a play that she wanted to read to him. All of it. Then. He made excuses but she was determined and refused to leave or to let him leave on any of his pressing appointments. He got more and more desperate and finally resorted to extreme measures.

In another a man inherited a country estate (familiar Chekhov territory) and went to visit his new neighbour only to find her a widow dressed in mourning and determined to spend the rest of her life in her house, wearing black and thinking about her husband, even though we learnt that he had not been good or faithful to her. The visitor is attracted by her feisty determination to maintain her way of life, falls in love with her and proposes.

In the final play, a man called to ask a young lady to marry him having first cleared it with her father. Before he proposed they made small talk about their respective estate and he said that he had plans for a wood only for her to say that the wood was part of her estate. They had a furious row. Then they had another furious row over whose dog was the better. The father then appears, the lady learnt the purpose of the man's visit, her mood softened and she agreed to his proposal. And then they rowed about the dogs again.

It was all very charming and wonderfully acted. I laughed a lot at the pig-headed and pathetic characters and their silly words.

Here at the Rose Theatre

First a confession. This poster is for another production of Here at a different Rose Theatre, I've used it simply because the Rose Theatre in Kingston does not put images of its posters on-line for reasons that escape me.

The big pulling power for the play comes from the name Michael Frayn who is enjoying a surge in popularity at the moment mostly thanks to a west-end revival of Noises Off.

I also like it that Frayn is a local guy, he went to Kingston Grammar School and lives just up the road from me in Petersham. I've been in his garden on open days and have seen him around locally including a recent shared journey on a 371 bus.

And it's a local theatre too which gives it a sense of homecoming for Frayn and makes the travel easy for me.

This was the first time that the Rose was set out as I always expected it to be with the stage thrust out towards the bench seats, filling "the pit" where people usually sit on cushions. The whole point of the Rose was to have an exciting stage, not to have exciting seating.

The play is set in an apartment within a house and begins with a young couple viewing it. They were just passing, saw the sign and thought that they would take a look.

The mood of the play is set immediately by the couple's dialogue. She likes the place but cannot really explain why and he wants to explore the decision making process between them to see if they have reached a decision on the flat and, if so, when and how they made it.

And so it goes on. They are clearly deeply in love and there is never a row, or even that much friction between them, but there is an incessant good natured battle of words.

Adding to the mix is the old woman who is letting the room. She appears at intervals to regale them with tales of former inhabitants and her family.

I'm not quite sure what the point of this character is. She adds nothing to the plot and adds little to our understanding of the couple who are the centre and purpose of the play. It does not help either that this is played by a known actress, Alison Steadman, as this risks making it a cameo role further deflecting from the play's mission.

So let's get back to the couple.

It's no surprise that they move in to the flat and they stay there for some and then leave when she becomes pregnant.

The four stages in their story are decision, arrival, settled-in and departure.

The third scene scene seems a little pointless, the story does not progress and we learn nothing new about the couple from their dialogue. I was definitely drifting off at times, not helped by the half-time bottle of Becks.

The middle sluggishness aside, the play fizzes through its dialogue. It's not quite the relentless one-liners of American sit-coms but it's heading that way, and in a nice way.

The play needs a convincing couple and this production has one. Alex Beckett is pedantic, awkward and a little intense while Zawe Ashton balances this with her enthusiasm, patience and good humour. Together they make the play work.