With a cast of ‘playhouse’ actors and a host of debutantes, the outcome of Donkeys’ Years was never certain. Previous St Benet’s Garden Plays have brought reviews of delightful amateurism and elongated vowels. And much continued along this seam. For where else could the bastion of old college boy behaviour be more appropriate than in situ at one of the last institutions of all male academia.
Frayn’s farce was a perfect medium for this kind of production. The cast’s own direction kept a dynamism and fluidity between the characters and one cannot help to feel the energy they gained from each other. The relationship between Quine and Rev. Sainsbury was playful but not lacking sincerity. Alex Hatvany slipped into his role naturally and Ulmann’s performance was eye opening in its conviction despite this being his Oxford debut.
Overall, the play was light-heartedly humorous. Iona McLaren played Lady Driver well, stringing out masterfully the series of awkward encounters with the advancing men, even with her sighs of exhaustion falsely hidden behind the trellis as she turned her bicycle and with a few impromptu comments.
A worry of the play was that the extended sections of inebriation could lead to simplistic and tiresome humour, but thankfully Leigh-Pemberton, booming and with far-reaching eyes, kept the audience guessing for more and the contrast to the awkward Snell (Tom Turner) was a fantastic dynamic.
Turner too was stellar throughout the performance. Dr Taylor was played well by Pietro Rocco, though his youth was hard to see relative to the others, hard given the puerile actions of all the men on stage. Aitken came into his own in the second half of the play, as one would expect from a media hound in that situation, and Draper likewise played both the panicking quasi-lover and embarrassed politician with ease.
A few inside-jokes were left unexplained to the general public, but given the intimate setting of the play, most present knew the cast and enjoyed all of the humour. Concerning script manipulation more could have been made of Quine’s sleaze and Taylor’s position in college but credit must be given to the use of Birkett (and Oliver Jones himself) whose role as host, both to the audience and as a porter was crucial.
Given the lack of stage lighting, costume and scenery, much rested on the actors and for that matter – the weather. Fortunately it was jolly good.
FOUR AND A HALF STARS
