Aristocrats

Overview

Ballybeg Hall once played host to grand balls, musical evenings, tennis parties: its rooms busy, bursting with painters, poets and politicians. And presiding over all of it, the imposing figure of Judge O’Donnell.

Now, on the eve of a wedding, the O’Donnell children return to their ancestral home to find that the rot has set in.

Lyndsey Turner returns to the Donmar following Faith Healer and Philadelphia, Here I Come! to direct Brian Friel’s haunting play about a generation whose past threatens to obliterate its future.

Critic reviews

David Dawson is particularly impressive as Casimir, all restless hands and anxious eyes and Eileen Walsh finds a resonant calmness as Judith

⋅ WhatsOnStage

Despite the freshness of her approach, a kind of pensive minimalism, Turner’s cast never really master the delicate music of Friel’s text

⋅ Arts Desk

This overly abstract production is lifted by first-rate performances in an engrossing tale of decaying culture and rocky relationships

⋅ The Guardian

Sleepy production of Brian Friel’s 1979 play never quite manages to move beyond being a fascinating lesson in Irish history

⋅ The Stage

This portrait of a dysfunctional Irish family is elegant, eloquent and moving

⋅ The Times

A once-grand Irish family faces an uncertain future in Brian Friel’s absorbing play

⋅ Financial Times

Lyndsey Turner directs a beautiful revival of Brian Friel’s drama

⋅ Time Out

Compelling and powerful story of life in decay

⋅ Evening Standard

I was particularly taken with David Dawson as Casimir, the wayward, rather fey only boy of the family, who admirably controlled the wilder eccentricities of the character

⋅ The Telegraph

Brian Friel's stock has certainly been soaring this summer. First, the superlative Translations at the National; now this

⋅ The Independent