The famous oversized Bengal tiger snarled personally in my face. I had wanted to see the puppetry, of course.
‘Genius programming for winter 2022’: FORCE MAJEURE – Donmar Warehouse ★★★
Inspired programming here. You’d find a decent overlap in any January Venn diagram of regular Donmar audiences and people who wish they were skiing.
‘There’s a truthful dramatic core to the whole venture’: FOLK – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
There’s a lovely serendipity. The main theatre is running Peggy for You while the little downstairs space has Nell Leyshon’s rather lovely new play imagining Cecil Sharp collecting folk-songs in Somerset.
‘Coward’s classic fits the quarrelsome exasperated affections of middle age perfectly’: PRIVATE LIVES – Touring ★★★★
May as well tell you, I had the ultimate pensioner experience, and it was a blast. A midweek, senior-price matinee for the new touring production of Private Lives.
Looking back on the last two plague years: Part 2, The Repeat
In the months from May to December 2021, it was, once again, possible to see live shows and review them in London and across the country: for me Birmingham, Sonning, Lowestoft, Ipswich, Norwich, Colchester, Northampton and elsewhere.
Looking back on the last two plague years: Part 1, The Onset
I set out to chronicle and celebrate the return of live theatre since May 2021. And this will follow. But when I totted up the 2021 score – 60 theatre nights, 30 being completely new plays and 19 brand-new productions – it seemed to me only decent to pause, look back at the year before.
‘If you love plays, this is an invitation not to miss’: PEGGY FOR YOU – Hampstead Theatre ★★★★
Lounging in the small hours on her office couch, under a wall of posters for her many clients’ shows – both famous and forgotten – Peggy is fresh back from bailing out a client.
‘Worth a pilgrimage to the shrines of comedy gods’: THE PLAY WHAT I WROTE – Birmingham & touring ★★★★
Do you need to be of a generation to remember Morecambe & Wise, to which this play is a loving tribute-cum-amiable-ripoff? Probably not. They are stamped on the national memory, probably genetically.
‘A big show in an edgy time’: THE BOOK OF DUST – La Belle Sauvage – Bridge Theatre ★★★★
First things first: this is the most wonderfully evocative, romantic and dramatic bit of set-projection you will see all year.
‘The human magic of this show still holds’: COME FROM AWAY – West End
Just thought I should mention to readers how wonderful this show is. I saw it twice before the pandemic, nipped back to a matinee a week or so back.
‘An entertaining, instructive, questioning, honest play’: BEST OF ENEMIES – Young Vic Theatre ★★★★
James Graham’s mission might seem unfashionable: trawling 20th-century history and public culture, looking not for villains and heroes but for the nuances of human behaviour.
‘This bijou, quirky production has made me see new things in the play’: THE TEMPEST – Jermyn Street Theatre ★★★★
One of the interesting, rewarding quirks in Tom Littler’s small-but-perfectly-formed Tempest is that Tam Williams doubles as Ferdinand, the ultra-virtuous shipwrecked Prince, and as a particularly farouche bare-breasted Caliban.
‘Reaching out for the meaning of those moments of eternity’: FOUR QUARTETS – West End ★★★★★
This is wonderful. Sometimes a simple short performance can shake, rouse, even change you.
‘Roars of joy from the crowded floor’: LA CLIQUE – Leicester Square Spiegeltent ★★★★
Ah, Christmastime! There’s nothing like a buff chap in spike-heeled patent thigh-boots somersaulting in the air to make you feel festive.
‘The peerless Janie Dee is at her most comically assured’: VANYA & SONIA & MASHA & SPIKE – Charing Cross Theatre ★★★
Vanya and Sonia are siblings – though she is adopted – and have led dull dutiful lives in a remote country house surrounded by cherry trees and an orchard.
‘The fun they’re all having absolutely includes & invites you’: THE WIFE OF WILLESDEN – Kiln Theatre ★★★★
Zadie Smith humbly refers to her first play as more like “homework” than the novelist’s usual dread of a blank page. Chaucer, after all, laid down its tale, framework and attitudes 600 years ago.
‘The dance has a dizzying, hypnotic effect on everyone’: TOP HAT – The Mill at Sonning ★★★★
How does Irving Berlin’s musical do on a smaller scale? Excellently, not least because the extraordinary percussive mass tap-sessions are even more exciting right up close.
‘How does the magic work onstage? Brilliantly!’: BEDKNOBS & BROOMSTICKS – Touring ★★★★
This show, which I had the joy of seeing in a packed auditorium alongside many small thrilled children, knows exactly how to get their attention first thing.
‘A new retelling of the most ancient of true legends’: THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE – West End ★★★★
Sometimes a violent rip occurs in the thin veil of materialism, commonsense, morality and law. Children know this.
‘Innovative, clever but highly accessible theatre’: PRIDE & PREJUDICE (SORT OF) – West End ★★★★★
Universally acknowledged to be a hoot! It had to happen: someone had to notice that in the comfortable upper-middle and aristocratic worlds of Jane Austen’s novel, nothing could happen without the servants.