Pete suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Top drama at bargain prices

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 3rd September 2008

Lloyd Evans talks to the Donmar’s artistic director Michael Grandage about his Wyndham’s venture

It opens on 12 September with Ivanov, an early Chekhov play newly translated by Tom Stoppard and starring Kenneth Branagh. Over Christmas Derek Jacobi will appear in Twelfth Night, and in the spring Judi Dench is to star in Madame De Sade, an obscure play by the Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima. The season ends next summer with an irresistible attraction, Kenneth Branagh directing Jude Law in Hamlet. There’s a beautifully judged balance of interests here. By cramming the programme with A-list names Grandage has given himself the freedom to throw in a couple of esoteric thunderflashes that will generate a sense of adventure and offer audiences something unexpected. Opening with a half-forgotten piece by Chekhov seems risky until you add the stardust of Branagh and Stoppard. The Mishima play looks daring to the point of barminess but Judi Dench will make it commercially sound. And Jude Law’s Hamlet is pure box-office gold. Even if it’s a calamity it will still be a must-see calamity and its position at the end of the season gives the whole programme an upward trajectory, a destination.

I ask about Jonathan Miller’s recent complaint that his Bristol production of Hamlet featuring the unknown Jamie Barrie had been overshadowed by David Tennant’s Hamlet for the RSC and Jude Law’s at the Wyndham’s. ‘An ill-judged outburst,’ says Grandage. ‘He decided to have a go at people who have strong theatre pedigrees. I first saw Jude Law 20 years ago playing the lead at the Lyttelton and I’ve seen him twice at the Young Vic in hugely demanding classical roles. And it was slightly ill-timed given that Jonathan had just returned from directing Joanna Lumley in the Cherry Orchard at Sheffield, though I understand she was rather brilliant.’