Theatre

The theatre is a good place to escape the gloomy prognoses of Robert Peston, and the West End should seize its opportunity. Strong meat and fluff are what people are said to require in a recession. Michael Grandage has provided the meat both at the Donmar and at Wyndhams as well as some fluff with a lighthearted ‘Twelfth Night’, while the Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of ‘La Cage aux Folles’ is a wonderful chance to forget financial woes. Douglas Hodge allows you to see both the bloke and the woman as he sinks his painted talons into the role of would-be mother Albin. On the other hand, ‘Imagine This’ could hardly have got it more wrong. It was not, as the producer believes, that the critics felt a musical could never be created out of the Holocaust. It was rather that we knew it would be near impossible to pull such a thing off with integrity in a commercial setting. And so it proved. Feature continues

The RSC would have closed on a high had it not been for David Tennant’s bad back. Nevertheless, Michael Boyd’s spectacular staging of ‘The Histories’ at the Roundhouse was the event of the year, providing a new generation – Geoffrey Streatfeild, Lex Shrapnel, Chuk Iwuji, Jonathan Slinger – with a chance to establish itself at the same time as bringing David Warner back as a rueful, seedy Falstaff. While that company’s new writing policy wobbled, the National Theatre has continued to roll out new plays (many of them biographical) including Simon Stephens’s ‘Harper Regan’ (with a luminous Lesley Sharp), Lee Hall’s ‘The Pitmen Painters’ (in a joint production with the Live Theatre), David Hare’s ‘Gethsemane’ and Howard Brenton’s ‘Never So Good’. Best to forget ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Fram’. The Royal Court endlessly reinvented both its spaces, but its most potent image was of Nadine Marshall on a practically bare stage in Debbie Tucker Green’s one-woman play ‘Random’. The Young Vic made the discovery of the year when it staged ‘The Brothers Size’ by Tarell Alvin McCraney, even if designer Miriam Buether, in a rare failure, created an uninviting environment for the same playwright’s ‘In the Red and Brown Water’ in the main house. Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum should receive a joint award for their lethal performances as the panic-stricken hustlers in Matthew Warchus’s revival of David Mamet’s ‘Speed-the-Plow’ at the Old Vic.

Jane Edwardes
Best West End show
‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’, directed by the multi-tasking Rupert Goold.

Most memorable moment
Douglas Hodge in ‘La Cage aux Folles’ stomping out of the theatre and on to the street wearing full drag and carrying his wig in his hand.

It’s been a good year for…
Men in frocks and Chris Goode.

Tip for the top
Bijan Sheibani.

Tamara Gausi
Best off-West End show
‘The Only Girl in the World’ at the Arcola Theatre.

Most memorable moment
Clint Dyer’s mesmerising turn in ‘Michael X’ at the Tabernacle.

It’s been a good year for…
Tarell Alvin McCraney and the Union Theatre.

Tip for the top
Andrew Keatley, who wrote ‘Colourings’ at the Old Red Lion.

Andrew Haydon
Best West End show
Thomas Ostermeier’s production of ‘Hedda Gabler’ at the Barbican.

Most memorable moment
The look of unalloyed delight on the face of a six-year-old girl brought on stage during the party scene in Filter’s ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Tricycle.

It’s been a good year for…
Site-sympathetic theatre. Soon every theatre will be putting on performances in underground car parks and office spaces and using the main stages for storage.

Tip for the top
Chris Goode. Someone give the man a building to run. Now.

Caroline McGinn
Best West End show
‘The Histories’ presented by the RSC at the Roundhouse.

Most memorable moment
Seeing a cast of 27 actors play 400-odd roles in a script with 0 words in Peter Handke’s modern classic ‘The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other’ at the National Theatre.

It’s been a good year for…
The Donmar Warehouse, successfully flying the flag of quality drama in the West End at Wyndham’s.

Tip for the top
Yorkshire-based theatre company Slung Low, the unusually promising and hugely charming winner of this year’s Oxford Samuel Beckett Award.

Robert Shore
Best West End show
‘Ivanov’.

Most memorable moment
When the words ‘Never Forget’ were written in a curtain of rain in the Take That-inspired musical ‘Never Forget’. I’ll never forget it.

It’s been a good year for...
Lovers of mad musicals.

Tip for the top
Tarell Alvin McCraney.

Bella Todd
Best West End show
Enda Walsh’s ‘The Walworth Farce’ at the National Theatre.

Most memorable moment
The unexpectedly chilling ending of ‘The Walworth Farce’ when Sean turns his back on the outside world and reveals a face blacked-up with shoe polish.

It’s been a good year for…
Unlikely revivals including ‘Witchcraft’ by Joanna Baillie and a great production of Susan Glaspell’s ‘Chains of Dew’ at the Orange Tree.

Tip for the top
Dean Stalham, who wrote ‘Sporadicity’/‘If the Cap Fits’ at the Hen and Chickens.