Donmar Warehouse

The Maids

June 7, 2026

Part of the play is an eye-filling fashion show with Solange and Claire trying on Madame’s gowns or taking them out of her closet to ogle them. However, what is most remarkable about Williams’ production is his use of technology as he did in his "Picture of Dorian Gray" with Sarah Snook on Broadway and his recent "Dracula" with Cynthia Erivo on the West End. The video technology used in "The Maids" is startling, almost overpowering at times. The mirror-lined closets and doors become giant screens that show us Madame’s online posts as well as her live footage of Solange, Claire and herself (from video designer Zakk Hein). Using Tiktok filters and effects she turns them grotesque or changes their face or features. Eventually in a dream sequence, Solange leads Claire through Madame’s closets and they visit a hallucinatory world of fantasy that we see on the screens. The fact that the screens are 13 feet high adds to the power and the effectiveness of these images. [more]

The Wild Duck

September 21, 2025

The latest revival has been directed by Simon Godwin, artistic director of Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, in a co-production with Theatre for a New Audience. This revival uses the contemporary version by David Eldridge, first seen at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2005 which combines some of the minor characters, shortening the cast list. While the text is clear, the uneven acting and interpretation of the characters undermines the play’s powerful and tragic resolution. [more]

Blindness

June 9, 2021

Read by unseen British stage star Juliet Stevenson, "Blindness" is as timely as Albert Camus’ "The Plague" with its story of an epidemic which affects first a community, then a city and finally an entire country. With the audience sitting in socially distanced pods of two, and listening on binaural headphones, the space has been equipped with bars of light both horizontal and vertical which turn either red, green, amber, blue or white and are raised and lowered at various times. However, since the story takes place in a city in which the inhabitants are struck blind, much of the play is performed in total darkness. [more]

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

November 9, 2016

Josie Rourke, artisic director of the Donmar Warehouse, understands the game’s complexity and what adroit moves need to be made throughout to maintain a psychological cohesiveness. Her deft hand is evident in her light touch so that the production is not weighed down by nastiness. Where Rourke falls down is casting Schreiber, who is known for his charismatic masculinity and not for being a jocund bon vivant. Valmont needs to be more calculating, as well as, effete. [more]

Privacy

July 26, 2016

Playing his most mature role to date, Radcliffe, late of Harry Potter, is charming as he begins as an introverted, reticent Englishman and then slowly panics as he realizes the extent to which his obsession with the Internet has left him vulnerable to outside forces. He is particularly fine in the computer dating sequence in which he must do a great deal of quick thinking and ad libbing as the participants change nightly. The mainly British production team includes set designer Lucy Osborne who has created a witty New York apartment for The Writer made up almost entirely of boxes made to look like iconic skyscrapers, and the clever projection design of Duncan McLean. [more]

Nine

September 28, 2003

or all the handsome production values contributed by Scott Pask's handsome silvery unit setting and Vicki Mortimer's ravishing and revealing costumes, it is the presence and performance of Antonio Banderas, in the role of director Guido Contini (originated by the late Raul Julia), that pilots the action to perfection. Banderas, who is making his Broadway debut, proves an excellent choice both dramatically and vocally. That the Spanish-born actor was a member of the National Theater of Spain before he was discovered by Hollywood, accounts for his accomplished stage presence and the authority that he brings to both his singing and his character. [more]