Tonight, thanks to the magic of Immodium, I went to the Comedy Theatre with Owen to see the revival of Michael Frayn's 1976 comedy DONKEY'S YEARS starring one of my favourite actors David Haig.

Written before his best known comedy NOISES OFF (more on that later) this farce centres on a group of men returning to their Oxbridge College for a 25th anniversary reunion. Life has been good to this group of men as they number a Junior Education Minister, a civil servant, a doctor, a vicar and an author. However over the course of one drunken night all decorum is thrown to the wind as alcohol and the fun of being in their old rooms turns them into anarchic tearaways again.

The catalyst for the misunderstanding is Lady Driver (hoho) now a magistrate and wife of the college head but who 25 years ago was one of the few girls there so had liasions with most of them. However there was only one she still carries a torch for and she later confronts him in his rooms. The trouble is she has taken her glasses off and can't see that the man she is talking to is a complete stranger. He knows her however, he was a student at the same time as the others but because he had to live in the town in digs rather than in the college he has been totally forgottten by everyone. When the men discover her in his room all hell breaks loose - cue dropped trousers, hiding in bedrooms and behind curtains, slammed doors and wrong conclusions jumped at.

The production is directed by Jeremy Sams who also directed the National Theatre production of NOISES OFF. Now whether it was an off night for me, an off night for the cast or his direction all I know is I sat in the Lyttleton stoney-faced while all around me rolled on the floor in hysterics. I must admit I am no particular fan of farce - if they all stayed in the same room for 5 minutes all the misunderstandings would be cleared up - but I look in puzzlement at people whose theatrical knowledge I admire go into reveries about it. The trouble with me is that I also don't believe Michael Frayn's comedies show a man with a sense of humour, it's like he has written them knowing that this piece of business will make an audience laugh... almost like it's a clinical exercise.

However despite all that DONKEY'S YEARS was good fun largely thanks to some exceptional comedy performances. Michael Simkins as the doctor, Edward Petherbridge as the seen-it-all college porter, Paul Raffield as the campy vicar and Hamish Clark as a snotty civil servant all delivered fine support to the two best performances, Janie Dee as Lady Driver and David Haigh as the Government Minister. Janie Dee is always watchable and her scene confronting the man she thinks is her long lost love only to realise he's a total stranger was great, her knowing seductive poise turning to sedate mortification.

Ever since first seeing David Haig on stage in '84 as Maurice, the uber-upper class twit in TOM AND VIV, I have admired him enormously. Here he plays a part made for his comedy talents, the seemingly affable Minister who when drunk turns into a posturing windbag who in the cold light of day is thrown into a frenzy of rising panic as his career looks like it will be ruined by scandal. The whole second act almost becomes a master-class in controlled hysteria as, crippled with a bad back, he hops around his room with his trousers around his ankles sending the others running off in all directions while trying to hide a woman in the adjoining bedroom - not knowing that she has in fact already escaped.

The production also pointed the fate of the college outsider - the way that the character who, because he never lived with them in college, is still a non-man to them 25 years later with no one remembering his name even after him just telling them it. He tries to tell them of his job in pharmaceuticals and they don't understand him and his excitement in finally doing things after hours with fellow-students in rooms is taken as mania and he is tranquilised and led off to an ambulance.