Force Majeure - Donmar Warehouse

Well, that was ambitious! They've only gone and transformed the Donmar stage into an actual ski run! Down which the cast actually ski! Ok, so they don't go very fast, but it's impressive in such a tiny auditorium nonetheless.

The consequence of this is that all the action, including indoor scenes, takes place on a stage perilously inclined at a ten-degree angle. Chairs and tables are not afforded shorter rear legs, so there is fun and jeopardy aplenty as you wonder what will topple over first. At last night's first preview, nothing did. A duvet trapped in a rotating bed mechanism was the only hiccough.

I didn't know the Swedish movie Turist (released here as Force Majeure) on which this play is based. As with most tales, not knowing what is to come makes the exposition all the more delicious. All you need to know is that it's a comedy drama centred around a Swedish couple and their teenage kids on a somewhat reluctant vacation in the Alps. Some interesting points about familial and gender relationships are made along the way, but that's secondary to the action.

The cast acquitted themselves admirably given this was their first public outing. Henry Hunt as the teenage son was particularly good I thought. Rory Kinnear, as the beleaguered father, was on good form as usual, but it's not a rôle to stretch him. A few cast members struggled to project their voices and were difficult to hear over the soundtrack of ambient crowd noise and wind.

I wasn't entirely won over by the movement direction. Sometimes it works (the nightclub scene), sometimes it doesn't quite capture the mood it is seeking to recreate. Companies like Frantic Assembly do these things better.

The lighting designer has done no favours to the audience seated downstairs stage right: prepare to be blinded periodically by lights that traverse the thrust stage.

Also noteworthy from a seating perspective is that the first three seats of row B downstairs (far stage left) have been raised six inches, so there is no rake for seats C1 to C3 behind, which are on the same level. Seats C4 onwards on that side are unaffected.

With the honing and refinement that flow from previews, I expect this production will grow into a solid four-star entertainment. Right now, its a strong three, and makes a good choice if you fancy some snow-filled fun over the festive season.

Act 1: 19:43-20:56
Act 2: 21:19-22:11

Press night for this, as with HEX and MOULIN ROUGE, now pushed into January

...and now cancelled until 29 Dec. Wow, this is really destroying Christmas theatre trips (which means associated business at West End bars and restaurants will collapse too)

Yes, there seems little point in these screen to stage adaptations unless the director of the play is herself/himself an auteur or at least has a strong and original take on the original material. The whole thing had an air of pointlessness about it.

This was good overall but I prefer the film. Top marks for the set but the actual play is almost just a copy of the movie as pointed out by other posters here.

It's still an enjoyable night out, even more if you are not familiar with film. 3.5 stars

Very good. Hadn't seen the film so it was all new to me. Many laugh out loud moments and thought it worked well on stage. Very clever use of the space, certainly one of the most elaborate stages I've seen at the Donmar.
I think you'd certainly have a restricted view from the far sides of the stalls due to stage height and lots of tables/chairs. My row C circle seat right in the corner was surprisingly great with no restrictions

Grumpy going in as my lovely front row centre stalls seat went in the cancellations before Christmas, and I ended up in a side stalls seat where the choreography really didn't work, and in the climactic final scene had a very minor character directly in my sightline. And no points to the Donmar for tonight being a Director's Circle benefit, pushing all the regular punters into the upstairs bar which really wasn't designed to cope. So I wasn't in a great place to start with.

And the play didn't really win me around. Rory and Lindsay acted their socks off with virtually nothing to work with, but I found the play horribly episodic and the frequent scene changes were incredibly clunky and broke up the drama. I had some sympathy for both of the lead characters but neither of their reactions to the events felt real, the kids are bloody pains, the friends in the foursome scene felt sit-com-ish, almost pantomimic, the whole thing felt very under-developed and the shifts in tone utterly undeserved. I'm keen to see the film now to see if that manages things a bit better, but this was a fail for me.

My social media tells me that 11 years ago tonight I saw Jacobi in Lear in the same space.