[Editor's note: Dame Judi Dench has suffered a sprained ankle and is currently out of the production. She is expected to return during the week of March 23.]

The Japanese playwright Yukio Mishima's 1965 drama Madame de Sade, the third production in the Donmar Warehouse's ambitious year-long residency at Wyndham's Theatre in the West End is, despite the presence in the cast of Dame Judi Dench, probably the riskiest. The play is composed of three acts and while it rarely lags, it also fails to involve. Instead, it holds its audience at arm's length.

Mishima is perhaps better known for the manner of his death -- a botched ritual suicide -- than for his work. Spanning a period of eighteen year[...]