2025: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

Middling is a bit of a harsh word to describe an entire year, isn't it? And having now written my roundup of 2025 it doesn't really feel accurate either, but it's what came to mind when I first looked over my reviews of 133 new productions. There were plenty of shows to get excited about, but unlike some years when I'm having to ruthlessly cut shows that almost made my Hit List but not quite, this year's Top Ten shows pretty much assembled themselves, with only the order I put them in to be determined. On the other hand the Bottom Five wasn't hard-fought either, so it's not like there were an inordinate amount of disasters either. I guess there were just a few too many shows in the middle, that I pretty much forgot immediately upon leaving the theatre.

2024: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

Halfway into the decade that started with the Covid pandemic, and I can't be the only one whose perception of time continues to be pretty screwed by that extended pause, can I? I've definitely had a mental block that divides everything into "the before times" and "last week." AD2024 might be the year that I started to get a grip on that again, ish - maybe 2025 I'll actually get my concept of time back, but for now I'm still relying on this blog to help me remember when stuff happened: When I'd been writing it for a year and decided that, for 2013, I'd come up with a new annual theme for my thumbnail images, it was mainly so that I felt like I was giving the thing the occasional spruce-up without actually having to bother properly redesigning anything. Now, whatever crop or filter I've started a review with is a handy little clue to my brain on whether it was as recent as I thought, or if the adorable child cast are now drawing their pensions. I'm old, is what I'm saying, and you probably are too. Both of you.

2023: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

Oh, hello. It's this again, the bit where I look back at the last twelve months of theatre in and around That London (and by "in and around That London" I obviously mean "just London and very occasionally Stratford-upon-Avon, which isn't particularly near London") and really get to grips with the news, trends, shocks, horrors, highs and lows of one of the world's great cultural hubs. And then I tell you which actor has the nicest bottom. I've got a Drama degree, you know. I always divide this review of the year into different sections, and in recent years I've started giving the chapter headings a bit of a running theme, with half-hearted puns based on the Spider-Man movie titles or last year's biggest non-theatrical obsession, The Traitors. In other words I've made a right rod for my own back when another December comes round and I've got to try and be clever.

2022: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

Here we are then, for the last two years I haven't wanted to call my annual roundup a "Theatre Review of the Year" because for most of 2020 and half of 2021 live theatre wasn't really a thing. 2022 hasn't felt quite back to normal in that respect, and I continued to have a number of shows cancelled because of illness or injury, Covid-related or otherwise - the Donmar and Almeida seemed to have been particularly unlucky on that front. And that's before we get to the week or so of shows I had to reschedule or miss entirely because I had Covid. Where shows did go ahead, swings and understudies continued to be more important than ever, so seeing someone other than the star name step up to the plate, usually with impressive results, became another recurring theme of the year. But overall things were sufficiently back on track for me to present, once again: A confusing and bloated roundup of shows I saw, loved, hated or forgot instantly, followed by a bit of light perving over actors who were just trying to do their job, bless'em.

2021: Almost a Theatre Review of the Year

This round-up post for 2021 makes it ten full years of me writing reviews nobody asked for and calling it Partially Obstructed View, and it would be nice to have a bumper year to look back on and celebrate (I did consider doing a ten-year retrospective post but honestly who could be bothered; it would only be me pitting ten Shows of the Year against each other before picking Jumpers for Goalposts in the end anyway.) Of course nobody got that, but at least while 2021 started as a continuation of 2020 (and didn't end that differently to be honest,) we did end up with a good six months' worth of live theatre, new and old. So this won't be quite as extensive a post as usual, but it should be a bit closer to it than last year's cut-down version. A few more of my traditional dubious awards will get a chance to come back, and while I still won't do a full Top Ten and Bottom Five, I am planning on two Shows of the Year and one Stinker.

2020: Sort-of a Theatre Review of the Year

In January, You Stupid Darkness! imagined a world assailed by an invisible, unknowable enemy, where we couldn't leave the house without protective equipment. What will these crazy playwrights think of next? No really, tell me, I could do with the warning.

I usually end every year with a review of the best and worst theatre I saw, interspersed with me being a bit smutty about men who got their kit off, and giving out some dubious award to people or shows that amused or horrified me. Well, I think we all know why 2020 might not be too much fun to recap in any great detail; with theatre all but shut down from mid-March onwards it should also be obvious that I don't have many shows to pick from, and there's something vaguely patronising about trying to make up a Top Ten, never mind award an earth-shatteringly important title like Best Nipples, out of the 42 live shows I did manage to squeeze in. That said, a couple of shows in those first two-and-a-half months did make strong entries in certain categories, and theatres' attempts to keep something going both for audiences and their own survival were downright heroic.

2019: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

It's the end of another year in theatre, as well as the end of the decade, and the trend on both professional and amateur sites has been to do a post rounding up ten shows that defined the decade in theatre. Well nobody can say I follow the herd because I won't be doing that; although I've been reviewing theatre online since the late noughties I didn't actually start Partially Obstructed View until 2012, so the blog only covers eight of those ten years. Much more importantly, I honestly can't be arsed. I mean, do you know how much effort it is to do a detailed, smutty, rambling and confusing roundup of the last year's highs and lows, spending hours over Christmas writing thousands of words so that regular readers (both of them) can skim-read it to look at the photos and see if there's any decent nipples this year, let alone doing that for an actual decade? Well you know now so we might as well get on with it.

2018: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

Wow, my end-of-year roundup of London theatre seems to come round quicker every year doesn't it? And don't you hate how commercial it's become? It's like people don't even remember the true meaning any more. (The true meaning is nipples.) No really though, this has been another of those years when theatre seems to have largely forgotten to programme shows entirely based on thirst-traps tailored specifically to me. I mean, I'll manage to horribly objectify some men, don't worry. But we'll get to that, first as always I'd like to thank those of you who've kept coming back and reading my reviews regularly, you've both been very loyal. If this is your first one of these you've read, have a seat, I go on a bit. I also give out a few awards along the way. They're not quite in the same categories everyone else gives out awards in.

Once I've rounded everything up I'll be doing my usual best and worst lists: In my 2017 review I decided only three shows were horrific enough to deserve a place on my Shit List, will this year have had enough badness to go back to the usual five? We'll see, it's a real mystery. But yeah, totally, there will be.

2017: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

BABY BABY BABYthat's another year done with in London theatre, which means it must be time for me to pass judgement on it. I have to say that in all the years I've written one of these roundups, this is probably the least idea I've had starting out, what the Top Ten is going to look like by the time I get to the end of it. It feels like a pretty solid year in terms of what's actually ended up on stage, with two categories in particular coming out very strong and likely to dominate my list. It probably helps that I've tried to be more selective with what I go to see, it's amazing how much less crap you see when you deliberately avoid things that sound terrible. If you look at the total number of blog posts for every year since 2012, you'll see that managing to keep it under 200 shows is, by my standards, something of an achievement in handling my theatre addiction.

2015: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

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2014: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

I don't know if you noticed, but 2014 was the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. I know, you'd have thought some theatre or other would have at least mentioned it. So yes, there was one big overarching theme to a lot of this year's theatre, some productions coming up with moving and fresh reactions to the centenary, others treading familiar old ground. But as with any year you never can tell what unexpected subject matters will crop up to make for the best or worst shows, and as usual I'll be listing my 10 favourite and 5 least favourite theatrical experiences this year - including what follows 2013's Jumpers for Goalposts as my Show of the Year, and Barking In Essex as the worst of the worst. But before we get to that, I'm going to babble on about what's caught my eye this year. Don't worry, there'll be pretty pictures to keep you from falling asleep.

2013: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

Hello! My name is Elder Nick,
And I would like to share with you the most amazing year.

Here we are again then with another review of my theatre year in London and... thereabouts. Thanks for coming along and reading what I've had to say. I say reading, judging by my blog hit stats most of you are just here to look at the pictures, which is fine, it's what "The Internet" is mainly for. Later on I'll be listing my most loved and hated shows, and announcing what's following 2012's Shivered as my 2013 Show of the Year. But before that let's see what was new, what bizarre theatrical memes kept coming back, and what awards I feel like giving out along the way, pretty much arbitrarily. Seriously, I can barely get excited about the likes of the Olivier or Evening Standard awards any more, with their old-fashioned Best Actor or Best Actress type gubbins, when I've got the likes of Best Nipples to announce.

2012: Nick's Theatre Review of the Year

First and foremost, thanks everyone who's visited this blog and made 2012 a busy first year for Partially Obstructed View. I hope you found something worth reading here, and maybe even the odd recommendation for a show you ended up loving. Like most bloggers, I can't resist the temptation to inflict my own judgement upon the year just gone, like I did for the last three years on my old blog. So if you haven't had quite enough reviews of 2012 yet settle down for another one. At the end I'll be doing my usual Hit List and Shit List, with my Top Ten and Bottom Five productions, and I'll decide which is my Show of the Year 2012, joining 2009's Our Class, 2010's Romeo and Juliet, and 2011's London Road. But in the meantime here's some of the hits, misses, and unexpected running themes of the year, and I might chuck in a few non-awards along the way.