Donkeys' Years is a play by English playwright Michael Frayn

Michael Frayn

Michael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...

  that premiered at the Globe Theatre

Globe Theatre

The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...

, London, in 1976.

The play is a West End farce

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

, a genre that Frayn parodied five years later in his play within a play "Nothing On" from Noises Off

Noises Off

Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...

.

In Donkeys' Years six former students spend the weekend at their old university college for their 25th year reunion. The wife of the Master of the college becomes locked within its walls for the night, supplying the material for a classical bedroom farce

Bedroom farce

A bedroom farce or sex farce is a type of light comedy, centered on the sexual pairings and recombinations of characters as they move through improbable plots and slamming doors...

. A cabinet minister is placed in a series of embarrassing positions.

The play was revived in 2006 at the Comedy Theatre.