This production was credited as “Donmar Warehouse at the Albery” and everything about it was Donmar Warehouse, but playing away from home. This production had received glowing reviews and awards the year before at the Donmar. We missed out then but were not about to miss out on it now.
Excellent cast, Nigel Lindsay, Sarah Woodward, Stephen Dillane & Jennifer Ehle leading, with David Leveaux directing.
Our “Donmar Warehouse at The Albery” experience was a more relaxing evening and a very fine production. Janie doesn’t really warm to Stoppard, but she did warm to this one.
I won’t overdo the reviews, as they are from the original production 9 months earlier, but here’s just a couple of examples of the raving – the first from our friend Michael Billington in The Guardian…
I think Janie must have sourced these tickets, because her diary notes that we’ll be sitting in the fifth row. Great diary detail, 25 years on, that one.
I’ve long been partial to a bit of Potter, as has Daisy.
I had seen the original TV film of this one and to some extent had my doubts about it, as I have never much enjoyed the conceit of adult actors playing the role of children.
Still, the chance to see a National production of a Potter won the day. Many members of this fine cast went on to bigger and bolder things. Steve Coogan, Nigel Lindsay, Debra Gillett, Geraldine Somerville. Patrick Marber directed it.
Whereas Michael Billington wrote highly of it, finding it more translatable from screen to stage than most Potter and describing it as “Potter at his best”:
We were both ambivalent about it. It was clearly a fine production. It pleased me more than the TV version. But that “adults playing children” thing still didn’t really work for me.
Below is an excerpt from the original 1979 TV film:
