The West End’s hottest playwright….

Michael Grandage’s new production of Othello, which features Ewan McGregor as Iago, opened officially at the Donmar Warehouse last night, but had already sold out long before today’s notices appeared. In fact, as The Times noted in a recent profile, “From the speed with which all the tickets for Othello at the Donmar Warehouse in London have gone, it would be quite possible to argue that Ewan McGregor is bigger box office than Nicole Kidman or Gwyneth Paltrow. Both actresses have starred at the small but influential venue in the past decade; both packed it out and received glowing reviews (Kidman’s performance being famously described as “pure theatrical Viagra”). But neither show shifted seats as fast as this one, which sold out in less than six hours.”

Mind you, with only 250 seats available at the Donmar, it would be a surprise if it wasn’t a hot ticket. But in a story that would make Mel Brooks green with envy, no doubt, the Evening Standard reported two weeks ago that tickets are now exchanging for it for more than £1,200 each — according to ticket exchange company Viagogo, it is proving more popular than the one-off Led Zeppelin reunion gig and the Spice Girls tour.

The Ian McKellen King Lear also attracted big prices when it was seen in LA earlier this year, as I noted here; and it has, in turn, also entirely sold out long in advance of its current West End run at the New London Theatre. As Louise Jury reported in an interview feature in yesterday’s Evening Standard, it is part of a remarkable turnaround for the RSC under her subject Michael Boyd: “A company that was in the artistic doldrums with a £2.8 million deficit when Boyd succeeded Adrian Noble as artistic director can now boast the headlinegrabbing sell-out production of Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear and a near sellout run of Chekhov’s The Seagull at the New London Theatre. There are strong sales at the Soho Theatre, too, for a new work by Anthony Neilson that didn’t even have a title until a month or two ago and, in coming months, the complete Shakespeare Histories will be seen at the Roundhouse, while other work will arrive at the Tricycle. It is the biggest programme that the RSC has brought to London since Boyd took the job in March 2003 and follows the equally triumphant year-long Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival that ended in Stratford in the spring.”

Louise also reports that “both the reviews and the box-office receipts must have made sweet reading for Michael Boyd in the past week.” As long as he wasn’t reading the Evening Standard or Independent, that is: of King Lear, the Standard’s [Nicholas de Jongh declared], “Although praise was heaped by most critics on Ian McKellen’s King Lear at its Stratford premiere in June, I remain unconvinced of its greatness and unmoved by its performance”. He went on to say of McKellen, “The high emotional states of rage, outrage and grief through which Lear passes on his road to self-discovery are registered by Sir Ian in a low-key, flatly delivered, sentimental performance that tends to restrict Lear to doddering affability and charm, with second childhood fury shading into the twilight world of senile confusion. As a result of this clever, technical acting, the elemental moments of ‘Howl’ and ‘Never’ carry no tragic resonance.” De Jongh is even more cutting of its companion piece: “Time and a world-tour have been unkind to Trevor Nunn’s Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Seagull that I admired at Stratford-upon-Avon. It alights in town all torpid and lethargic, looking distinctly blue and bird-fluish. It takes three hours and 20 minutes of hard theatrical labour to bring Chekhov’s study of unrequited lovers in the world of the idle, modestly-landed gentry to its suicidal finale. Nunn’s production is hampered by monotonous langour, conceptual vagueness and melodramatic pointing, such as the vulgar interpolation of Konstantin’s suicide attempt.”

In The Independent, Rhoda Koenig was similarly unconvinced when she reviewed both productions on Monday, saying of King Lear that is is “not so much a fiesta of enjoyment as a test of endurance”. Her review, however, is a fiesta of well-turned barbs, even for actors who are not actually in the production who have obviously irked her in the past: of Romola Garai’s Nina, Rhoda says she “plays all but the last scene in an unbroken fit of squeaks and gasps. Is she perpetually approaching orgasm? Is she imitating Lisa Dillon or a young Imogen Stubbs? Or is her corset just too tight?”

It’s one thing to get bad reviews for a show you’re in; but Dillon and Stubbs must be wondering what they’ve done to deserve the comparison.