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A woman stares into her computer, hoping to connect to another person. The connection fails. The Donmar Warehouse’s ‘Midnight Your Time’ looks for all the world like it is about lockdown. But this specially commissioned one-woman show written by Adam Brace and starring Diana Quick (‘Brideshead Revisited’) is set in 2010.
Retired lawyer Judy tries every week to have a video call with her daughter, who is in Palestine. Her frustrations – with technology, with a distant relationship, with isolation – will be familiar to all of us after the last few weeks. But they’re given an added poignancy because ‘Midnight Your Time’ was written, directed and acted under lockdown, with Quick performing the piece in her home.
It’s a great example of writers, directors and actors adapting to the crisis and mining it for emotional resonance. The Donmar describes the piece as ‘a wryly comic and ultimately heartbreaking exploration of what it really means to communicate remotely’. So I guess you should be prepared to blub a bit. But that’s cathartic.
‘Midnight Your Time’ is available for free on the Donmar’s YouTube channel from 7.30pm BST tonight (Wed May 13) and then for the next seven days.
Find more great London theatre to stream right now.
See Andrew Scott in the devastating one-man show ‘The Sea Wall’.
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