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Donmar Warehouse

  • Theatre
  • Seven Dials
  • Recommended
  1. © Johan Persson
    © Johan Persson
  2. © Hugo Glendinning
    © Hugo Glendinning

    Josie Rourke (artistic director)

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Time Out says

This Covent Garden studio attracts a 'Who's Who' of big theatre names

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

The Human Body

  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Drama

This starry drama from Lucy Kirkwood is a period piece about the foundation of the NHS…  and also a full-on homage to Noël Coward’s ‘Brief Encounter’. The year is 1948, and Iris (Keeley Hawes) is a doctor living in south Shropshire during the final months before the launch of the NHS. She’s also a Labour councillor, who travels to London once a week to serve as a parliamentary aide. Plus, she’s got domestic duties:  times being what they are, she is expected to devote a seemly amount of attention to her daughter Laura and husband Julian (Tom Goodman-Hill) - an injured, embittered former navy doctor who is dubious about the government nationalising his practice. Genuinely believing in all these causes, Iris rises to them uncomplainingly. But her life is changed by a (what else?) brief encounter on a train, where she meets dashing minor-league Hollywood actor George (Jack Davenport), a local boy made good who has come home to visit his mother.  Although there is a fair amount of scene-setting for the NHS side of the story, once George shows up it’s difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the first half of ‘The Human Body’ feels like a stage remake of ‘Brief Encounter’. While Iris and George have different biographical details to the film’s Laura and Alec, their love unfolds similarly. Moreover, Michael Longhurst’s production plays explicit homage by using live black and white video to film the couple during their scenes together, their damnably attractive faces blown up on

The Cherry Orchard

  • Drama

Aussie director Benedict Andrews’s 2012 Young Vic production of Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters’ was a swooningly uninhibited, hugely inventive masterwork, and by all accounts his 2011 Sydney production of ‘The Seagull’ was no slouch. Somewhat over a decade later and he’s finally returning to wistful Russian titan Chekhov with a take on ‘The Cherry Orchard’ that will drop into the bijou confines of the Donmar as part of Michael Longhurst’s final season. Andrews’s take on the story of a Russian landowner who revisits the estate she loves dearly only to sell it off comes with some intriguing initial casting: German star Nina Hoss – a regular in Berlin’s many prestigious theatres until her screen career took off – will make her UK stage debut as Ranevskaya, while acclaimed Brit actor Adeel Akhtar (pictured) will return to theatre for the first time in almost a decade to co-star as Lopakhin.

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