![]() ![]() And Owen, like the privileged bunch in Donkey’s Years, doesn’t develop. (This impression was furthered when I noticed that Nigel Hawthorne played the character during the play’s first run: Hawthorne is most famous to the British public for his role in the BBC sitcom Yes Minister.) The most notable characteristic of sitcom characters is that they never develop – if they did the basic situation that is necessary for the comedy would be destroyed. At first the play seems as though it is going to satirise the smugness of the character, but after a while you realise that Owen is getting the best lines: he is one of those loveably grumpy characters that inhabit sitcoms. He is cynical and negative, putting down his inexperienced fellow journalist Mara who is on the same mission for a rival newspaper Owen reminds me of the privileged graduates returning to their Oxford college for a reunion in Frayn’s previous play Donkey’s Years. I think it is to do with Owen, the journalist writing a story on Cuba. If they were novels I would have given up long ago, but a play only takes a couple of hours or so to read – so I carry on reading Michael Frayn because there are a lot in the town library. I’ve recently been reading early Michael Frayn plays and not really enjoying them. ![]()
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