2014 in Review: Theatre

Undoubtedly my favourite thing about 2015 has been the amount of fantastic theatre I've managed to cram in. But then I suspect you know that already, given the amount I blog about it.

This is definitely the most difficult year end post I've written. Although I knew instantly what my top picks would be, sorting out the rest of the fantastic (and not so fantastic) stuff I've seen this year into a rough order has been really hard. I feel like I need to apologise to the shows that narrowly missed the cut, which is clearly all kinds of ridiculous.

So, after much agonising, here are my top ten shows of 2015…

Macbeth (Park Avenue Armoury) 
There is no way that any other show was going to get a look at the top spot in this list. I travelled half way round the world to see this production at New York’s astonishing Park Avenue Armoury, which you'll recall I’d already seen in 2013 at the Manchester International Festival. With standout performances from Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston and jaw dropping staging (remembering the opening fight scene still gives me goosebumps), I genuinely believe that this is the best production I’ll ever see. And it’’s a complete privilege to have seen it (twice).

Wolf Hall/Bring Up The Bodies (RSC)
Ok, so having two shows as one entry is sort of cheating (get used to it, I’m going to do the same thing again in a few places time) but it’s kind of impossible to separate these two given they were staged on the same set with the same cast, and I saw them on the same day. I love these books so it was thrilling to watch them come to life, in a largely very faithful adaptation, with such a superb cast. Ben Miles as Cromwell is probably my London performance of the year (and Nathaniel Parker’s Henry VIII would also be on that list) but the whole cast was superb, with a fantastic script to work with too.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers (National Theatre) 
The first of many NT productions to make my top ten, I just loved this show. The script, the set, the fantastic sound and lighting effects (still not over that plane) were all fantastic. The NT’s first ever all Asian cast were fantastically strong, especially Shane Zaza in the (sort of) lead role. This one is still playing so if you haven't got tickets yet then, really, what are you waiting for?

Medea (National Theatre) 
Bleak but brilliant would be my three word review for the NT’s new adaptation of this Greek classic. Included so high on this list thanks to an absolutely stonking performance from Helen McCrory in the title role - such an underrated actress - this one was a really hard watch, but totally worth sticking with. Also without doubt the best use of music this year thanks to an electro tinged soundtrack from Goldfrapp.

My Night With Reg (Donmar Warehouse)
If Medea was all about one standout performance, then My Night With Reg was a masterclass in ensemble acting. Very funny, very poignant and very effectively staged, it was the acting from the small but perfectly formed cast that really made it something special. Also some of the best stage nudity of 2014 - looking at you Julian Ovenden. This production is transferring to the West End so no excuse not to check it out.

Great Britain (National Theatre)
Much hype and secrecy surrounded this savagely funny satire, which opened without previews just a few days after lawyers had finished checking the script in the wake of the phone hacking trial verdict. I'm always suspicious of anything that attracts hype, but this show certainly lived up to it. Very, very funny - if slightly preachy in the final third - and full of excellent performances, especially from Aaron Neil as the hapless Police Commissioner, I enjoyed this much more than I was honestly expecting to. Another one that has had a West End transfer and definitely well worth a watch.

The James Plays (National Theatre) 
Yes I am counting three plays in one. Definitely cheating. In this independence referendum year, the James Plays definitely felt like a proper theatrical event. Fantastically well written and acted throughout, it was the first two - the less outwardly political - that I found the most interesting, both in content and tone. That said, the third was definitely lifted by a fantastic star turn from Sofie Grabol. And some more great if completely gratuitous nudity, which always helps.

A Small Family Business (National Theatre) 
My first brush with Alan Ayckbourn was definitely a happy one. A very funny comedy with a pleasing amount of slapstick, there was a dark undercurrent to this that made it much more interesting. Another fantastic central performance too, this time from Nigel Lindsay. Also worth mentioning the brilliant set which saw the NT build a scale - largely working - model of a house on the huge Olivier stage.

King Lear (National Theatre) 
Another first for me, I didn’t know King Lear at all well before seeing this production. Not sure I'm a fan of the play, but I was certainly a fan of the phenomenal central performance (isn't that what Lear is all about, basically?) from the great Simon Russell Beale. If I never see Lear again I won't exactly be devastated, but I will be really glad that the Lear I saw was SRB.

Stephen Ward (West End) 
Yes I am taking the piss a bit here, but this was without question one of the most fun nights at the theatre I had this year. Utterly terrible in every way, this turd of a show was the embodiment of the phrase ‘so bad it’s good’. And given the amount of time I've spent laughing at its expense since seeing it, it seemed rude not to include it on this list.

Review: Great Britain

"Don't buy your drill bits from Poundland - that's suicide."

"My parents were Guardian readers, which is to say they were wrong about everything all the time."

"A clue is one thing I've not got."

Just a smattering of my favourite lines from Richard Bean's new play Great Britain which opened at very short notice at the National to a huge amount of hype.

The show - a satire on phone hacking scandal - could only be officially announced after the verdicts in the trials of Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and friends were handed down. Even then the National still had to employ a team of lawyers to check the script wouldn't get them sued. There were no previews. Tickets went on sale a week before opening night. From a marketing perspective, does it get much better than that? Buzz was coming out of this show's ears.

So, does it live up? Absofuckinglutely.

If you've been following the phone hacking mess (and if you haven't, then I assume you must be my first Martian reader) then I don't need to explain the plot as the play replicates it almost to the letter - tabloid newspaper finds out how to hack the voicemail of any mobile phone, does so with gay abandon (great phrase) to celebrities, the Royal family, politicians and victims of a high profile crime, is eventually found out. The police are by turn complicit and inept and the politicians don't care because they need the paper's support and are too busy fiddling their expenses anyway.

The characters will also be very familiar: there's the ambitious, young, female news editor who's the darling of the paper's aging, foreign proprietor; the posh leader of the opposition who becomes Prime Minister with the paper's help; the unethical wide boy editor who becomes the PM's director of communications... Well, you get the picture.

Subtle this play is not. Hilarious it very much is.

As the quotes that start this post hopefully suggest, its humour is a fantastic mix of the satirical, the straightforward and the pleasingly bizarre. Basically, if you enjoy The Day Today - and if you don't then get the hell off my blog - then this show is very much for you. I laughed from start to almost finish. Properly laughed too. Like, painfully laughed.

The excellent material is played joyously straight by an excellent cast. Billie Piper is perfect as news editor Paige Britain - 100% unsympathetic as a character but depressingly believable all the same. She's in almost every scene and so has a hell of a lot of work to do but maintains a kind of manic energy right through the show. She also has a lot of soliloquys which are all delivered exceptionally well. (Also her accent is way more believable than the awful Irish she attempted in Penny Dreadful recently.)

Of the rest of the cast, the reliably great Robert Glenister (by far the superior Glenister brother for my money) is on top form as delightfully awful editor Wilson delivering bespoke swearing in a manner even Peter Capaldi would be proud of. But my personal highlight was Aaron Neil who is muffin-top-wobblingly hilarious as completely inept police commissioner Sully Kassan; by far the least believable character of the piece but also by far the funniest (he even gets the autotune treatment in the second act, twice). He gets all of the best lines - his act one speech about how his force has shot disproportionately more innocent blacks than innocent whites and he intends to redress the balance is the best pieces of comic writing I've heard in some time - and his delivery is straight as a die. Which is frankly quite remarkable. I hope he gets am American TV style spin off. I'd so watch that.

The play does get serious sometimes and this is when it's at its weakest for me. It's not that the points it makes about how it's the public's desire to read the stories that phone hacking generated that fuelled the practice aren't valid, they clearly are. It's just that the way these points are delivered - by and large in soliloquy by Paige Britain at the very end of act two - just come off as a lecture and an unnecessary one at that since the whole rest of the play has made the same points implicitly. The play is also completely uncritical of the Labour Party, which seems rather unfair given how close they were to Rupert Murdoch whilst in government - and how little they did to take any action to curb the excesses of the press and police (who also get off very lightly) that the play rails against.

That aside, this is a great show and one I'd highly recommend everyone see, but especially my readers of a political bent. It's on at the National for the summer before transferring to the West End so you've got no excuse not to. Go see.

Posted with Blogsy