Tell you what did happen in AD2024 though: I saw a number of shows including but not limited to those listed, categorised, and occasionally rewarded/scolded below.
A SERIES OF WORDS AND PICTURES CONCERNING NEW PLAYS THAT I SAW THIS YEAR
Fantasy also turned up mixed into science in The Earthworks, while Gunter brought to light a true story of witch-hunting that didn't go down as they usually all seem to.
Theatre fans can be hard to please when we get to like a performer: We spend years grumbling that the likes of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Daniel Kaluuya and Andrew Scott aren't more widely recognised, and then when they do become global stars we're not happy because tickets to their shows get more expensive and harder to get. So far personal favourite Irfan Shamji hasn't had that kind of breakout (although at least the most recent season of Industry figured out what they had and actually used him this time,) so you could still catch him up close at the Bush, having a devastating breakdown in The Cord.
As will probably be pretty evident when we get to my Top 10 shows, 2024 was not a year that spread my favourites out evenly: After a strong start, there were a lot of perfectly fine but not strikingly memorable shows until everything kicked right off again in October, almost every show of which was a winner. But we did get a couple of nice little outliers in June and July, as first up the RSC and Kiln co-produced the excellent English.
That was a Pulitzer-winning show whose use of comedy to cut through genuine sentiment I really loved; another US import I enjoyed was I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire, a very bizarre show that was sadly overshadowed a few months later by the death of cast member Kyle Birch, whose performance had been one of the reasons for its surreal success.
Alma Mater was pretty successful despite a number of problems with cast illness, while ECHO started what would later turn into a double bill of Nassim Soleimanpour plays when White Rabbit Red Rabbit got a West End run. Later in the year Sharon D Clarke would promote her TV show Mr Loverman by saying more work needs to be done to make the black queer community feel seen; the National Theatre had already made a contribution in that regard, with Katori Hall centring comedy-drama The Hot Wing King around a welcoming chosen family.
Of course there was another show that dealt with race and sexuality that came over from the States and you might have heard of. Slave Play lived up to much of its hype, although one element of that hype overshadowed all others. Do I think it's fair that the audience should be discouraged from taking photos of the actors on stage naked? Yes of course, they're trying to do a job. Do I think the big publicity drive about the draconian measures to stop people taking photos of Kit Harington's genitals overshadowed the actual, pretty serious subject matter? Yes. Do I think the fact that after all that, his nudes did appear online the day after the show closed, is kind of hilarious? Also yes. Do I think Kit Harington calls his penis Christopher, because he can't think of anyone he knows by that name? Probably.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR THEATRICAL EVENT OF THE YEAR:
Slave Play at the Noël Coward Theatre
(and the accompanying fuss about naked photos)
I actually liked Kit Harington's performance in this a lot more than anything else I've seen him in, but he'll have to make do with everyone else getting hot under the collar about his (let's face it, disturbing, there's nothing that's meant to be sexy there) nude scene. Instead, tickets also sold like hot cakes when casting was announced for the Orange Tree's summer show. But I already had mine - call me psychic, I just had an inkling there might be something worth seeing in a show called Red Speedo.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR BEST NIPPLES:
Finn Cole for Red Speedo at the Orange Tree
September saw the Royal Court's new artistic team have their first big, and deserved hit in Giant; it's also the month where the Globe traditionally debuts a new play: Princess Essex was fun for all the family. Well, for the most part. I mean I know Edward VII had a reputation as a bit of a goer, but I don't think any of us were expecting this:
THE PIPPIN MEMORIAL AWARD 2024 FOR ENDEARING WHATTHEFUCKERY:
King Edward VII singing a song about fisting in Princess Essex at Shakespeare's Globe
Oh, it's going to be one of those, isn't it, where even the traditionally not-filthy awards somehow end up filthy.
As mentioned earlier, Hampstead Theatre went a long way to making up for a duff 2023 this year: Not everything they staged was for me, but the majority of what I saw there made a good impression, including Double Feature, Out of Season, Between Riverside and Crazy, The Harmony Test, and most recently King James.
The Downstairs studio also kicked off my very satisfying run of shows throughout October, with Daisy Hall's dense but hugely entertaining absurdist piece Bellringers.
Other interesting new plays in that run were The New Real, BRACE, BRACE and Statues, while the National Theatre decided to mark the autumn with a trio of very good, but incredibly bleak shows, including Meera Syal heartbreakingly succumbing to dementia in A Tupperware of Ashes.
Finally, November started to sneak some optimism into the dark subjects of miscarriages of justice and crypto scams in The Fear of 13 and Wolves on Road respectively, before the lighter December fare turned up.
NOW I ATTEMPT TO SOUND KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT HOW REVIVALS AND ADAPTATIONS HAVE DEALT WITH THEIR SUBJECT MATTER
Five years after its successful UK premiere S. Asher Gelman's Afterglow returned to the same venue at Southwark Playhouse in a different production. If anything my reservations about the play itself were more pronounced than before, but regular readers will both know I'm a big believer in giving understudies their due for all the important work they do, so:
THE CAPTAIN TIGHTPANTS AWARD 2024:
Paddy Cavendish for Afterglow at Southwark Playhouse
Zoe Cooper has been a fixture at the Orange Tree ever since the unforgettable Jess and Joe Forever, and struck gold again this year with an adaptation - although this queered-up Northanger Abbey skilfully explored multiple avenues Jane Austen is unlikely to have ever dreamed of.
Spymonkey's efforts to process their genuine real-life grief with their traditional slapstick style made The Frogs a mixed success, An Enemy of the People's attempt to give Matt Smith another Astonishing Coup de Théâtre at the Duke of York's was a bit too pleased with itself to do the trick for me, while Roy Williams brought a sense of optimism to the often harsh story of The Lonely Londoners. Another adaptation with a lighter touch came from someone not always known for it: Trevor Nunn's version of Uncle Vanya not only got some comedy into the most misanthropic Chekhov play but, contrary to what the veteran director's known for, it came in under three hours.
The Globe would come in for a lot of criticism this year for its able-bodied Richard III, and whatever the issues around that it's a shame that it overshadowed the way the venue uses actors with disabilities in a more than tokenistic way: Francesca Mills and Arthur Hughes leading The Duchess of Malfi never made their bodies the focus, but nonetheless were skilled enough to make them add nuance to their characters, and how others treat them in the play.
After an early entry in January from Kim's Convenience, more stories best known for their screen versions dominated April and May: Minority Report and Spirited Away didn't quite live up to my expecations, but James Graham's version of Boys from the Blackstuff was a hit both with me and in general. The Cherry Orchard got a lot of comments on its more gimmicky elements but I found it a fresh take that kept the play's heart, while a more traditional-looking A View From The Bridge lived up to the challenge of coming to London a decade after an era-defining production.
Kicking off the strong autumn run from the point of view of revivals and adaptations, one of my favourite modern plays got probably the best revival I've seen in a slightly rewritten and rejigged Our Country's Good.
It was followed at the Lyric Hammersmith by a chance to finally see A Raisin in the Sun, a seminal play so many writers have riffed on, while Eurydice at Jermyn Street proved how a more lo-fi production can hit the right notes for me better than what I'd seen before.
I ended the year with Rebecca Frecknall's latest visit to Tennessee (Williams, that is,) and though long her Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was the most coherent production of the play I've seen.
JUST LIKE THE GOLDEN GLOBES, I SHALL NOW LUMP MUSICALS AND COMEDY INTO THE SAME CATEGORY
Although unlike the Golden Globes, musicals will by far outnumber the straightforward comedies (what can I say, it's Dame Theatre, we like to mix up our LOLs with some serious shizzle.) Not in the case of this year's musical opener, though. No, Unfortunate just went straight for turning The Little Mermaid's subtext into smutty text, and while pretty much any part of "Where The Dicks Are" was a highlight, one lyric from the reprise became the most memorable:
"COME GET YOUR CAT SPAYED IN DAGENHAM"
MEMORIAL AWARD 2024 FOR BEST LYRIC:
"Take me on a beach, take me on a boat
Ain't got a vagina but I've got a throat"
From Unfortunate at Southwark Playhouse
Most of the major musicals I saw this year were premieres: All power to Cable Street for its success, but I did spend most of it wondering if they didn't so much owe Lin-Manuel Miranda a debt of gratitude for the inspiration, as owe him some royalties. Making few claims of originality were the usual adaptations of beloved movies - Cruel Intentions: The '90s Musical took the jukebox path, as well as remembering that the main thing everyone remembers about that film is Ryan Philippe's arse coming out of the pool.
Daniel Bravo made a play for king of these teen movie adaptations, going straight from Sebastian Valmont to Aaron Samuels in easily the best of them this year: Mean Girls got the balance exactly right between giving us the familiar original and a fresh new version.
Why Am I So Single? didn't replicate the success of its predecessor Six, but while due to close early it still managed a decent West End run; that wasn't the case for the show most obviously attempting to replicate the historical girlband formula, as Cake: The Marie Antoinette Playlist had technically not even opened when it closed. Your Lie In April was sweet but also had a truncated run, while I was personally underwhelmed by the likes of Fangirls, A Face In The Crowd, and The Lightning Thief. A lot of musicals this year tried something different in terms of style or genre, and for my money only Passing Strange really pulled that off.
But while Just For One Day was a fun nostalgia trip and gig, a coherent musical it was not; and London Tide would have been a hard-going proposition even without songs which just made it harder. It's tempting to single out the sheer "WILL THIS DO?" cash-grab of The Devil Wears Prada, but ultimately one of the most trying experiences in a musical this year has to be the show meant to be Sheridan Smith's big comeback: The story of a woman who watches a child being mown down by a car, and she's the asshole because she doesn't want to go get dinner straight afterwards. At least Opening Night had a little bit of so-bad-it's-good entertainment value, although not while you were actually watching the damn thing.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR WORST MUSICAL:
Opening Night at the Gielgud Theatre
As for the best, we have to go right back to the start of the year:
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR BEST MUSICAL:
Unfortunate at Southwark Playhouse
It's been a rough year for many of us so it would be nice to have more straightforward, utterly stupid comedy like Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle to distract us. At least the creators of my 2023 Show of the Year revived their more lo-fi Police Cops In Space, for a short run. Sod it, I'll even throw Dr. Strangelove in here: The actual subject might be the bleakest of satires, but the execution of the adaptation was just relentlessly funny.
And coming in as both musical and comedy is another incredibly silly show. Sorry, I mean a completely serious one about how a certain musical impresario only revived The Wizard of Oz so he could sniff the ruby slippers. This award is stretching the definition a bit as the creator/musicians did actually have speaking parts, but as Flo & Joan called their show One Man Musical that opens a bit of a loophole.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR BEST SOLO PERFORMANCE:
George Fouracres for One Man Musical at Soho Theatre
OK, I PROBABLY ACTUALLY CAN CALL MYSELF GENUINELY KNOWLEDGEABLE ON SHAKESPEARE, GIVEN I SEEM TO KNOW BETTER THAN MOST DIRECTORS THAT NO, THEY'RE NOT ACTUALLY THE FIRST PERSON TO NOTICE THAT LINE IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
YOU KNOW THE ONE.
So how refreshing for the year's first AMND to reject that interpretation entirely. The cast of the latest RSC Dream, including star draw Mat Baynton, were all good, but I'll personally remember it for director Eleanor Rhode allowing Bally Gill and Sirine Saba to actually interpret Theseus and Hippolyta as something other than an abusive relationship. I wish I could say anything as positive about the second version of the play this year, but Flabbergast would have had to engage with the text in any way whatsoever for that to happen. Instead, and for the first time since theatres reopened in 2021, I couldn't make it past the interval.
THE EARLY BATH AWARD 2024 FOR BEING MARGINALLY
LESS ENTERTAINING THAN WATCHING PAINT DRY:
A Midsummer Night's Dream at Wilton's Music Hall
The main thing I'll remember from this year's big Macbeth is that Blogger decided my review was adult content and put it behind an age-restriction warning. Why? Still no clue. The other big celebrity Shakespeare of the year was Robert Icke's Player Kings, which I managed to catch just before Ian McKellen had to drop out due to an accident. The Olivier's contribution to the National's autumn of misery was the bloodthirsty Coriolanus, in what might have held my attention better than any production of the play I've seen before.
I usually find focusing on the melancholy in Twelfth Night to be a cop-out for people who can't get the jokes to work, but the Open Air Theatre's version was the most successful, genuine attempt to engage with that idea for a long time. Does the amount of times the phrase "Nicholas Karimi as a sugar daddy in a low-cut top" appears in my review have any bearing on anything? Who can tell? Meanwhile the reason I give creatives who don't quite connect with me so many chances was apparent again when Yaël Farber took on King Lear at the Almeida, a production that despite its length made a play for my favourite Shakespeare of the year.
But the two major companies specialising in Shakespeare did much of the heavy lifting, and both indoors and outdoors the Globe was mostly on a roll. In recent years they've been really good at actually pulling off a high concept, and in relocating the action to the Met and having two actors play different aspects of the title role, Ola Ince's Othello pulled off two.
If the summer season includes Much Ado the venue can be relied on to provide a fun one, and later in the summer the venue's commitment to diverse casting and accessibility paid off when Antony & Cleopatra was presented as a bilingual, English/BSL production.
Which kind of makes it amazing quite how much heat Michelle Terry took for casting herself as an able-bodied Richard III. On the one hand, I appreciate how much work has been done to have this viewed as akin to blackface, and that it's very early in this process to challenge it; I also don't think it should set a precedent of the idea that because Terry has foregrounded disabled actors since she took over the Globe, it's bought her a "pass" on a plum role. On the other hand I agree that this reclamation of the role has made the character be viewed more sympathetically, and if you strip him of his disability it allows the pure horror of his actions to be seen with no extenuating circumstances. I also think it's worth bearing in mind how the right-wing press have had an issue with the Globe's inclusive casting for a while now, and that fanning the flames on this story would have seemed like an opportunity to have those working for inclusion take each other down. In any case, once the production opened and people actually saw what it was trying to say, the furore seemed to die down.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024
FOR WEIRD THEATRICAL FEUD OF THE YEAR:
Seemingly Everyone vs Michelle Terry's Richard III
Meanwhile a lot of attention was on the other big Shakespearean institution as, in the Spring, the new artistic team of Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey presented their first season at the RSC. This turned out to be full of comparatively low-key choices, although Luke Thompson as the lead in Love's Labour's Lost is, thanks to Bridgerton, no longer only a draw to thirsty theatre fans. It's a script that needs a bit of help to get laughs, which here included Thompson's Berowne having a running gag where he stripped off to prove how earnestly he made an oath. For purely comic reasons, obviously. In fact over the last decade I've seen Thompson's clothes fall off on stage so often there's no way it's a coincidence: It's him, he's doing it, and we thank him for it.
SPECIAL AWARD FOR ENDURING COMMITMENT
TO FULL OR PARTIAL ONSTAGE NUDITY:
Luke Thompson, most recently in Love's Labour's Lost at the RSC's RST
Go on lad, be the first Bridgerton male lead to whip it out on screen.
The (theatrical) good work continued with The Merry Wives of Windsor and Pericles, only to fudge it when it came to first of the big hitters: After starting the year with the Swanamaker's fresh take, I found this latest Othello to be an unwelcome throwback to a dusty performance style I've never enjoyed.
FRAM OF THE YEAR FOR MOST AGGRESSIVE COMMITMENT
TO CAUSING AUDIENCE TEDIUM:
Othello at the RSC's RST
It could have been my worst Shakespeare of the year if there hadn't been something at the opposite extreme making a flashier claim to the title: Icarus Theatre's reinterpretation of Julius Caesar as an AI had one scene that worked very well, but pushed it out to the whole play despite the conceit (and the costume budget) being visibly stretched well beyond breaking point.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR WORST SHAKESPEARE PRODUCTION:
Julius Caesar at Southwark Playhouse
As for the highlight of the Shakespearean year, I have to go for the flipside of this: Over the years I've seen so many high concepts applied to Shakespeare that fall down as soon as you look too hard at them. So it's incredibly satisfying when someone comes up with one that works on every level, at every point of the story, and helps bring new light to every plot point and character around it. Add the fact that this involved Chelsea Walker finding a whole new, moving queer story hidden in All's Well That Ends Well, and you've got a winner.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR BEST SHAKESPEARE PRODUCTION:
All's Well That Ends Well at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
AND NOW A COUPLE OF PARAGRAPHS ABOUT SHOWS THAT COULD HAVE FIT INTO ANY OF THE ABOVE CATEGORIES, BUT THAT I THOUGHT HAD SOME INTERESTING, PROBABLY MEANINGLESS, LINKS BETWEEN THEM
Yes, it's the occasional feature on theatrical memes of the year. Some aren't exactly new but seemed to crop up more than usual in 2024 - for instance The Comeuppance was the first of some excellent plays that dipped their toes into the ghost story.
The Bounds and Bellringers also toyed with taking us into spooky territory, and a film version of The Piano Lesson showed that August Wilson was another writer tempted by ghosts, but once again it was someone I'd toyed with giving up on that most typified this trend, as Richard Bean gave us fireside chillers to help his characters face their trauma in Reykjavik.
Joining Spirited Away and Your Lie In April for an East Asian mini-season was the Korean in origin, but not-very-Korean in style Marie Curie. Pink became a very literal theme in The School for Scandal and The Importance of Being Earnest, while in the last few months I noticed actors seemed to want us to know they weren't as worried about social distancing anymore: Whether it was Emma Darcy spitting in Tobias Menzies' mouth in The Other Place, Álvaro Morte cleaning Lily Collins' toes with his tongue in Barcelona, or William Robinson sucking Emilio Doorasingh's pissy fingers in All's Well That Ends Well, it seems that bodily fluids were back in.
Lionel Bart learned the hard way that one exclamation mark would make Oliver! a perennial hit and two would get Twang!! buried forever in unhallowed ground, but this didn't put people off flinging punctuation at show titles this year: Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder Exclamation Mark opened the floodgates to the likes of Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp Exclamation Mark Exclamation Mark, Hello Dolly Exclamation Mark, Silence Exclamation Mark The Musical,Why Am I So Single Question Mark and The Duchess Open Square Brackets of Malfi Close Square Brackets.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR MEME OF THE YEAR:
Punctuation in show titles
IF I HAVEN'T MENTIONED A SHOW SO FAR MAYBE IT DIDN'T MAKE THAT MUCH OF AN IMPRESSION OR MAYBE... IT MADE AN IMPRESSION FOR THE WRONG REASON. THE NEXT SECTION IS ABOUT THE SHOWS I DIDN'T LIKE, IS WHAT I'M SAYING
If I thought for a while there weren't going to be enough outstanding shows to put together a Top Ten, 2024 also wasn't a year with a particularly high amount of outright disasters; but it did have its share. Billy Crudup had charmed Broadway with the accuracy of his English accent. Unfortunately, instead of letting him rest on those laurels, some producer decided to bring him and Harry Clarke here, where people who know what an English accent is meant to sound like might see it. In fact he split most of the show between two different English accents, neither of which exists outside of the minds of American sitcom producers.
PARTIALLY OBSTRUCTED AWARD 2024 FOR WORST ACCENT(S):
Billy Crudup in Harry Clarke at the Ambassadors Theatre
Sappho had rather spuriously sold itself as an international hit, proving very much otherwise by the time it got to the Elephant & Castle. In fact, now that it's got three auditoria in two buildings, Southwark Playhouse does have a lot of performance slots to fill so it's understandable if some of them miss the mark, even from usually-reliable creatives like simple8: If John Wilkes Booth's assassination attempt had been as garbled as his story in Land of the Free, Lincoln would have had a pretty standard night at the theatre. And the main house closed the year with a show that was, in theory, doing the same thing as the one that opened it, but it turns out even smutty song parodies need some actual wit to make them work. A Very Naughty Christmas even fudged most of the attempts to be sexy, although it did provide a couple of fun, theoretically accidental, flashes of front bottom.
THE SCHLONG FROM FAR AWAY AWARD 2024:
Shay Debnay in A Very Naughty Christmas at Southwark Playhouse
A few of the classics got a good mangling: Regular readers will both know I don't like The Taming of the Shrew but I do like how creatively directors try to reinterpret it for 21st century audiences. Not so much in the latest Globe production, which as far as I can tell attempted to throw so much weirdness at the play that its worst elements might go unnoticed. Unsuccessfully. Elsewhere, Zinnie Harris did a rewrite of Webster's most famous tragedy. Now retitled The Duchess Open Square Brackets of Malfi Close Square Brackets, it ended up less revelatory than most productions that use the original text, but asked one major new question: Why bother?
One-person stage tellings of Charles Dickens go back as far as, well, Charles Dickens, so when Eddie Izzard did Great Expectations in 2023 that fit into a long tradition. Her return in 2024 to play all the characters in Hamlet on the other hand, despite having a few positives, couldn't convince me it wasn't first and foremost a vanity project.
THE SELF-ADMINISTERED PROCTOLOGY EXAM AWARD 2024
FOR SELF-INDULGENCE:
Eddie Izzard for Hamlet at Riverside Studios
THE SHIT LIST 2024:NICK'S BOTTOM 5 SHOWS OF THE YEAR
5 - The Devil Wears Prada at the Dominion Theatre
4 - Opening Night at the Gielgud Theatre
3 - Othello at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
2 - Julius Caesar at Southwark Playhouse Borough's Large Theatre
For the most part I'm not angry with 2024's Shit List, I'm just disappointed. So the bottom spot has to go to the show that just made me the most embarrassed for everyone in the room, including the audience:
STINKER OF THE YEAR 2024:
Sappho at Southwark Playhouse Elephant
At the other extreme, I ended up with a shortlist of 13 for the best of the year. Just edging out The Comeuppance, Mean Girls and I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire for the Top Ten are:
THE HIT LIST 2024:NICK'S TOP TEN SHOWS OF THE YEAR
10 - Giant at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
9 - All's Well That Ends Well at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
8 - Dr. Strangelove at the Noël Coward Theatre
7 - Unfortunate at Southwark Playhouse Elephant
6 - Northanger Abbey at the Orange Tree Theatre
5 - Our Country's Good at the Lyric Hammersmith
4 - Reykjavik at Hampstead Theatre
3 - Cowbois at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
2 - English at the Kiln Theatre
Sure, I don't like Beckett, but that doesn't mean a play heavily influenced by Beckett can't sweep me off my feet if it works, and this one definitely did. Possibly set in the future, possibly set in the past, eerie, atmospheric, equally good at being sombre and silly, a beautifully constructed bit of world-building and one line so haunting I had to quote it in my review so I could be chilled to the bone by it over again, this'll be a Marmite choice but for me was an electric evening, and not just because it was a story about lightning.
SHOW OF THE YEAR 2024:
Bellringers at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs
This makes Daisy Hall only the second female playwright to get a nod for Show of the Year since I started picking one in 2009 (in my defence I'm as likely to award it to a classic revival as to a new play, and that canon's obviously male-skewed; plus she might only be the second female playwright, but Alecky Blythe's won it twice.) As for THEATRE OF THE YEAR 2024, Hampstead Theatre gets to top off the redemption arc by sharing the honours with The Royal Court, with two top ten entries each.
And this has been going on for so long now, that if anyone actually makes it to the end of this review, I'm probably already at my first outing of 2025. Cheerio then.
Photo credit: Ali Wright, Henri T, Marc Brenner, Manuel Harlan, Richard Davenport, Helen Murray, Johan Persson, Alex Brenner, John Armour, Pamela Raith, Brinkhoff/Mögenburg, Jan Versweyveld, Avalon, Michael Lynch, Mark Douet, Adrian Warner, Carol Rosegg, Mark Senior, Amanda Searle,
👍👏👏👏
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