Tonight for the first time in ages I went to see a straight play - and they don't come much straighter than Ibsen's JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN which I saw with Owen at the Donmar.

I have seen the play twice before at the National Theatre with to-die-for casts.

The first time was Peter Hall’s 1975 Old Vic production which my English class were taken to see a mid-week matinee of with the lead roles being played by Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft and Wendy Hiller. I won't pretend I understood everything that was said on the stage but I remember being hooked on the melodramatic turns of the plot and also being aware I was in the presence of great actors - no more so than when Richardson turned and stared at the talkative school kids in the circle and shouted WILL YOU BLOODY WELL SHUT UP during his first scene. There wasn't a peep out of them after that as I recall.

Then in 1996 I saw Richard Eyre’s production at the Lyttleton with the equally amazing cast of Paul Schofield, Vanessa Redgrave and Eileen Atkins – Schofield’s final speech was one of the greatest theatrical moments I have experienced, him standing at the edge of the stage almost whispering to us the visions of a dying man. So Michael Grandage’s production had a lot to live up to, and although it didn’t quite scale the heights it still proved to be a rewarding night.

In this version by David Eldridge – who did an excellent version of Ibsen’s THE WILD DUCK at the Donmar two years ago – Ian McDiarmid plays Borkman, the disgraced financier who 13 years before the play’s opening, had been sentenced to five years in prison for his swindling of the bank he ran. Since his release he has lived as a recluse on the first floor of his house only visited by one of his former employees and the man’s teenage daughter who, to assuage his guilt over ruining the family, Borkman has helped to educate. Deborah Findlay plays his bitter wife Gunhild who, despite living in the same house, has refused to speak or see her husband for the eight years since his release from prison. She has devoted her life to getting their son Erhart to one day make the family name respectable again. Penelope Wilton plays Gunhild’s estranged spinster sister Ella Rentheim who had, during Borkman’s trial and imprisonment, taken in and cared for the young Erhart and who appears out of the blue at the start of the play and sets in motion a series of revelations that rock the foundations of the household.

Findlay and Wilton’s scenes together crackled with tension and anger as both strove to claim Erhart as their own and Wilton’s Act Two scene with McDiarmid was wonderfully anguished as she reveals the real reason behind her visit while also exploding in rage at him for cynically spurning her love when they were younger as a business colleague offered him the promotion to running the bank if he passed her on to the colleague.

Unfortunately Ian McDiarmid didn’t quite manage to conquer the role. No one can do withering put-downs and cutting, sarcastic posturing like him – one reason why his performance as Bertolt Brecht was so memorable in Christopher Hampton’s TALES FROM HOLLYWOOD at the National – but the ultimate redemptive, poetic side of Borkman seemed to allude him which was a real shame. The two best supporting performances were the ever-reliable David Burke as Foldal, Borkman’s faithful old employee and Lolita Chakrabati as Mrs. Wilton (bet they had fun with that at rehearsal), the worldy, divorced woman who lays claim to Erhart along with the sisters.