It was ultimately a year about women, with Herstory Festival and Bechdel Testing proving that there was plenty of excellent new writing from women, despite Hampstead Theatre claiming otherwise.
Carole Woddis rounds up 2017
With the demise of the repertory system, it is the fringe and alternative theatre that has stealthily and often in unrecognised ways provided the apprenticeship and forcing house in recent years for all that is best in our theatrical, cinematic and televisual life.
My Top 5 Productions of 2017
2017 has been a bumper year for Break A Leg, we’ve literally been all over the place in as many theatres as possible and loving every minute.
HOW TO WIN AGAINST HISTORY – Young Vic Theatre ★★★★
Seiriol Davies’s How to Win Against History is not quite like anything I’ve ever seen before. But then again, it is. A pastiche, a satire, a brilliant piece of aesthetic campery on a par with some of the best, wackiest shows of the alternative, gay scene of the late 1980s and ‘90s.
EUGENE ONEGIN – Arcola Theatre ★★★★
Something very exciting is happening in small-scale opera. This is the third one I’ve seen in as many months, all striking in their own ways but Eugene Onegin is by far the most enjoyable.
THE RAKE’S PROGRESS – Wilton’s Music Hall ★★★
This was a labour of love, Selina Cadell and Eliza Thompson’s inaugural production for their newly formed OperaGlass Works for which they raised all the funds, a cool £145,000.
THE SECRET THEATRE – Sam Wanamaker Playhouse ★★★★
What with the BBC’s Gunpowder Plot and now Anders Lustgarten’s spymaster drama, we really seem unable to quite slough off our fascination with those grisly times when terrorism came in Catholic terms and we were once again at daggers drawn with our European neighbours.
TRESTLE – Southwark Playhouse ★★★★
Stewart Pringle’s Harry and Denise fortuitously keep meeting over the trestle table in the local village hall rented out for evening classes and meetings. Harry is one of the backbone-of-the-community types. Denise runs the zumba class.
#ntNetwork – National Theatre ★★★★
Whoever decided to revive Chayefsky’s film via a stage production made an astute choice. Network could hardly be more topical or timely in an era that has become infamous for false truths, ‘fake news’ and where ideas have become truncated and traduced by social media.
THE RETREAT – Park Theatre ★★★
With Kathy Burke’s imprimatur attached as director, my expectations were high for Sam Bain’s The Retreat although everything else about the writer was unknown to me.
CORIOLANUS – Barbican Centre (RSC) ★★★★
Coriolanus may not be the most frequently staged of Shakespeare’s political Roman dramas although it nearly always gets included when a series of them are run together as here with the latest RSC season, under the banner title of Rome MMXVII.
POISON – Orange Tree Theatre ★★★★
There is something exquisitely philosophical and European about Lot Vekemans’ approach, at once logical and precise as she moves her two-hander from a point of unresolved conflict and outright hostility to, if not complete reconciliation, at least a peace-making.
MACBETH – Bussey Building ★★★
Devil You Know theatre company director Paul Tomlinson describes his setting as ‘post apocalyptic’ and certainly Peckham’s Bussey building lends itself to such a concept.
SUZY STORCK – Gate Theatre ★★★★
Some of the most viscerally shattering productions I’ve seen in recent years have turned up at the tiny Gate Theatre, Notting Hill. Magali Mougel’s Suzy Storck is no exception.
SUZY STORCK – Gate Theatre ★★★★
Some of the most viscerally shattering productions I’ve seen in recent years have turned up at the tiny Gate Theatre, Notting Hill. Magali Mougel’s Suzy Storck is no exception.
THE SEAGULL – Pushkin House ★★★★
What extraordinary actors the Russians produce and what a revelation is this newly filmed version by Moscow’s Satirikon Theatre uncomfortable, disturbing, unsettling though it also is.
ANYTHING THAT FLIES – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★★
When I read that Anything that Flies was her debut play by writer, Judith Burnley, I naturally assumed it was a young playwright being given a big chance by Jermyn Street’s new artistic director, Tom Littler.
BITCHED – Tristan Bates Theatre ★★★
Raizada’s dialogue is unflinching in the way she captures speech that symbiotically interweaves between everyday conversations and those portrayed on TV as if both were entwined and feeding off each other.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE – West End ★★★★
It’s all elegantly if slightly laboriously done in studied anachronistic style, delivered facing out to the audience as if emphasising precisely its decorative home.
ALBION – Almeida Theatre ★★★★★
Rupert Goold’s previous, James Graham’s Ink, went on to enjoy its present run in the West End. For sheer entertainment value, I’ll be amazed if Mike Bartlett’s stirring eulogy for a disappearing but not completely gone England and Englishness doesn’t go the same way.