'Land of Our Fathers', Theatre 503
The best new work to come from London’s fertile fringe this year was the debut play from Chris Urch, a soul-searching, soul-scorching drama about six Welsh miners trapped deep underground.
© Manuel Harlan 'My Perfect Mind', Young Vic
The veteran actor Edward Petheridge offered up a late career tour de force in this delightfully batty show from Told By An Idiot – part evening of odd ball raconteuring, part gleeful irony overload, wholly delightful, surprisingly moving.
'Old Times', Harold Pinter Theatre
Kristin Scott Thomas and Lia Williams alternated roles in Ian Rickson’s wonderfully unsettling take on Pinter’s most cryptic play. The big name cast helped, of course, but it was a treat to see something so gosh darned strange in the West End.
© Tristram Kenton 'Handbagged', Tricycle
The relationship between Maggie Thatcher and the Queen was most famously examined in 2013 via the West End smash ‘The Audience’, but ‘Handbagged’, Moira Buffini’s weirder spin on the two great ladies, was funnier, ruder and better.
© Richard Hubert Smith 'The Scottsboro Boys', Young Vic
Not exactly fun, but entirely brilliant, this searing vaudeville musical about the shocking mistrial of a bunch of young black men in ‘30s Alabama was the final work by legendary songwriters Kander and Ebb, and a fitting note to end upon.
© Johan Persson 'The Book of Mormon', Prince of Wales Theatre
The (self-generated) hype around Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s satirical musical was preposterous, and perhaps inevitably it didn’t quite live up to it, but it was still bloody funny, with some set piece dance scenes to die for.
© Richard Davenport 'Fleabag', Soho Theatre
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s monologue about the porn obsessed owner of a guinea pig-themed café deserves this place for filthiness alone – the fact it was also hysterically funny and strangely tragic was the icing on the cake.
© Johan Persson 'Edward II', National Theatre, Olivier
The National Theatre turned 50 this year, but you wouldn’t know it from this stupendously sprightly production of Marlowe’s ‘Edward II’, a cacklingly provocative Brechtian rollercoaster that proved just how much life there is in those old concrete walls.
'Let the Right One In', Royal Court Theatre
New Royal Court boss Vicky Featherstone capped a good year by calling up her former chums in the National Theatre of Scotland to bring this bloody, beautiful vampire story down to Sloane Square for Christmas.
© Johan Persson 'Chimerica', Almeida Theatre and Harold Pinter Theatre
As if there’d be any other winner. Lucy Kirkwood went from well-liked up-and-comer to major playwrighting talent with this dazzlingly witty widescreen thriller about an American photojournalist’s dangerous obsession with the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The 10 best theatre shows of 2013
The Time Out theatre team list the openings that impressed them most this year
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