Review Roundup: Donmar Warehouse's INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE

London's Donmar Warehouse is currently featuring Douglas Hodge and Karen Gillan in INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE, aso starring Karen Gillan, Esther Hall, Amy Morgan, Alice Sanders, Daniel Ryan, Serena Evans, and Al Weaver.

Bill Maitland, a middle aged lawyer, struggles to avoid the harsh truths of his life and keep a hold on reality. As those closest to him begin to draw away, he puts himself on trial to fight for his sanity. John Osborne's poignant, witty and intensely compelling portrait of loss, betrayal and defeat unleashes the author's characteristic soaring rhetorical venom to powerful effect.

For tickets, visit: http://www.donmarwarehouse.com

Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph: In this superb lacerating staging, with an extraordinary performance from Douglas Hodge as the tormented anti-hero who lashes out at everyone around him but hurts no one more than himself, one often seems to be inhabiting someone else's nightmare.

Michael Billington, Guardian: Even though the text is sensibly trimmed in Jamie Lloyd's new production, it is an overwhelming part for an actor; and, while Douglas Hodge gives a virtuoso display and triumphantly reaches his destination, I quibble about some of the paths chosen. In the Early Stages, his Maitland is almost too like the vaudevillian Archie Rice in his chipper ebullience and mimetic vigour. Hodge offers a range of voices from that of Harold Wilson to upper-class twits, impersonating his junior clerk's squirrel-like manner with merciless precision. And, when he quizzes his senior aide about his apparent "disgust" with a client accused of indecent assault, Hodge graphically demonstrates the emotion behind the word.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: With his busy hands and hyperactive features, Hodge perfectly conveys Bill's cringing narcissism. Whether fiddling with the phone, barking unreasonable orders, dozing fitfully at his desk or lunging for the whisky bottle, he is spectacularly unable to do his job, lacking any of the tact and discipline it requires. Engagingly and horrifyingly, Hodge suggests the way Bill weaves an angry web of rhetoric around his suffering.

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail: Extreme madness on stage is seldom instructive. It is all so overegged. So when, towards the end of the careering, sorry saga, Maitland shouts at his pretty daughter, we should perhaps not be surprised that she says absolutely nothing to him. Not surprised, but not satisfied, either. This tale has the didacticism of unhappiness. It is plainly the work of a mind cankered by choleric self-loathing. It fails to draw any secondary character to any convincing degree.

Photo Credit: Johan Persson

 

 

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