The best has arrived as the stages come back to life after the easing of Covid regulations. Theaters lit up like beacons of hope and relief, and actors, singers, and musicians, freed from slavery, went that extra mile to remind audiences of what they had lost.
For a while, it was a glorious rebirth. The worst came at the end of the year with a series of funding cuts which would have a severe impact on the theatre’s environment, especially new writing.
The year started with a sumptuous spectacle Moulin Rouge!the musical based on Baz Luhrmann’s outrageous entertainment.
Later this year, it was produced Oklahoma! The Young Vic was a revelation.
This thrilling revival exposed the dark spirit of the original and catapulted it to the stage with fresh arrangements of classic songs. My Music of the Year
The play’s revival of the year was Mighty Butterworth Jez Jerusalemwith Mark Rylance returning as Rooster, the wild and savage jungle-dweller obscured by his chaotic hippie lifestyle but somewhat glorified in his suburban paganism.
A rare showing of Ionesco’s surreal comedy The Chairs at the Almeida featured the fantastic husband-and-wife team of Catherine Hunter and Marcello Magni. This was their last appearance together as Magni died just six months later.
Comedy of the Year was undoubtedly the National Theater production of Richard Bean and Oliver Creese Absolute Jack flies againa zany and funny version of Sheridan’s The Rivals set on a country farmhouse during World War II.
Three plays for one person prove that you don’t need a large cast to let your imagination run wild. Prima Vase Jodie Comer stars as a defense attorney who changes her mind about rape victims when she herself is assaulted, and it is proven beyond doubt that there is life to her after killing Eve.
Dame Maureen Lippman has nothing to prove, of course, and her performance as an elderly Jewish woman reminiscing about her life in Martin Sherman’s Life. Has risen He was funny, touching and wise.
More in Young Vic, the one-man performance by Dutch actor Hans Kesting as a man trying to reconcile with his dead father in the Who killed my father It was nothing short of incendiary.
Bruce Norris Claiborne Park He got a terrific revival—at the Park Theatre, appropriately enough—and booted into American liberal hypocrisy in a way that was brutally funny, including the most outrageous joke heard on stage all year.
So it was Eureka day At the Old Vic with American actress Helen Hunt as a teacher desperately trying to run a post-hippie school whose “inclusivity” rules don’t offend anyone, not even a “transracial adoptee.”
When it came to new plays, three of them stood out – Tom Wells Big Big Sky In the Hampstead Theater studio, a groovy Four St was set in a seaside café on the Norfolk coast, while Joe White’s Blackout Songs He was very excited about young alcoholics.
In The Almeida, Peter Morgan’s Patriots is a timely examination of how Putin came to power through financial and political support from oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
Finally, the sheer spectacle will be hard to beat My neighbor Totoro At the Barbican, to bring Japanese anime to life with the biggest, most lovable dolls ever.
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