1. © Johan Persson
    © Johan Persson
  2. © Hugo Glendinning
    © Hugo Glendinning |

    Josie Rourke (artistic director)

Donmar Warehouse

This Covent Garden studio attracts a 'Who's Who' of big theatre names
  • Theatre
  • Seven Dials
  • Recommended
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Time Out says

Perched on the edge of Seven Dials, the 251-seater Donmar Warehouse can more than hold its own against the West End big hitters that surround it. This ultra bijou space had a reputation for slumming celebrities and impossible-to-get-hold-of tickets during the tenures of its now famous first two ADs Sam Mendes and Michael Grandage. Third boss Josie Rourke shook things up a bit: there were still big names in small shows, but also much more modern work. Talented current director Michael Longhurst has shifted the programming still further towards the avant garde; Caryl Churchill revivals sit alongside new work with an international outlook.

Details

Address
41
Earlham Street
Seven Dials
London
WC2H 9LX
Transport:
Tube: Covent Garden/Leicester Square
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What’s on

Backstroke

How do you take two national treasures and make them really quite awful and annoying? Well, like this. Celia Imrie is Beth, the strong-willed, callous, possessive mother of Tamsin Greig’s meeker, milder Bo. After Beth has a stroke, slices of their lives together unfold repetitively in Anna Mackmin’s exploration of motherhood, which seems desperate to be unconventional but plays out with a plodding realism from the opening medical crisis to the inevitable end.  After an accomplished career as a director, Mackmin has added writing to the mix more recently, and she does both here. Maybe that explains the feeling of a production that’s always trying to do too much – from its washed out projections to an undercooked adoption subplot – often to too little effect. A hospital bed raised centre stage at the back (blue, clinical) bleeds into a cosy kitchen set at the front (earthenware, Aga), while Imrie and Greig shunt between the two spaces. Imrie gets to enjoyably scene-steal as Beth (always Beth, never ‘mum’, you see), with long dyed hair and a frankness about sex that revolts Bo. She’s the kind of person that you’d call bohemian if you actually believed in the Eddie-from-Ab-Fab broad brushstrokes of her character. Still, floating round in billowing robes she provides some nice comic moments. ‘I had a one night stand’, 22-year-old Bo reveals. ‘Finally!,’ Beth replies. ‘Did he have a nice cock?’ Much of the play she spends mutely in bed while completely unconvincing medical...
  • Drama

Dealer’s Choice

At the start of 1995 Patrick Marber was almost solely known as a comic, having been part of the writing team responsible for Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge and The Day Today (in which he memorably played half-arsed news reporter Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan). But things would soon change with Dealer’s Choice, his acclaimed debut as both writer and director that follows one extremely tense game of poker in an out of hours restaurant. It had a major revival in 2007, and now – for its thirtieth anniversary – here it is again, in a heavyweight revival from Matthew Dunster that will serve as the final play in Timothy Sheader’s first season at the Donmar. Alfie Allen – brother to Dunster’s usual muse Lily – will lead the cast, alongside Hammed Animashaun, Theo Barklem-Biggs, Brendan Coyle, Kasper Hilton-Hille and Daniel Lapaine.
  • Drama
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