Last 10 things seen at the theatre: #140

29th June to 13th July.

Last 10 things seen at the theatre: #124

25th May to 30th June.

2017 round-up

Welcome to my third annual "I have nothing interesting to say about my favourite shows this year so I dressed up as them instead" theatre round-up. Below the link you will find pictured my fifteen favourite shows of 2017, as they would have looked if they had starred me.

Hytner's National - a brief retrospective

A little Twittery bird has pointed out that today is Nicholas Hytner's last day at the National Theatre. Although I didn't really start regularly attending the National until 2008, five years into his tenure, I've nonetheless seen a fairly respectable 111 unique National Theatre productions in seven different spaces in the NT complex (and a few outside), and have spent an absolutely incalculable number of hours besides in that lovely great concrete block. I've seen trends come and go - remember how great the Lyttelton was in 2010? And how tippety-top the Cottesloe was in its dying days? - and I've experienced a FULL range of emotions in that building, for better and for worse.

People with more knowledge and eloquence than I have will be producing proper articles about the great things that have been achieved since Hytner took the reins in 2003 so I'm not even going to try. What I have done instead is quickly bash together my top ten NT productions from the Hytner regime. And my bottom five, because I'm a massive proponent of the idea that our theatres should have the freedom to fail. It's always better to be able to take risks that sometimes go horribly wrong than to trundle along respectably but unremarkably, and it's worth celebrating that even if I'm doing so by producing a short list of tedium and rage. The fact I have some productions to actually rank as bottom rather than just "nothing special but okay" is one of the many things I love about the National Theatre.

2013 round-up: 25 - 6

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then there's a beautifully smooth dual carriageway leading directly from my house to the pit of eternal despair. I've been meaning to write up my 2013 in theatre, but there are two problems. On the left, my 30th birthday present to myself. On the right, my Christmas present from my sister.

On the one hand, I'm getting pretty good at 'Greensleeves'. On the other hand, with this deadly combination forever within arm's reach, I'm never going to take the time to rank everything in categories and scribble a witty paragraph about each. What I have managed to do is pick my 25 favourite productions for the year and rank the top 5. Behind the break: my 6th to 25th favourite productions of 2013, in no particular order, and lumped into arbitrary groups.

2011 retrospective - the plays

I've been procrastinating like a lazy thing with my round-up of things I have enjoyed most at the theatre this year. My old format of picking one winner per category left a lot of wonderful things unsung, and my attempts to come up with a top 5/10/15/25 list are better left uninvestigated. Seeing as choosing a format for praising theatrical excellence was proving such a trial, I ultimately decided to ignore formatting all together and just get on with it. As things currently stand, there'll be five posts in the end: plays I have loved, musicals I have loved, Shakespeares I have loved, performers I have loved, and creatives I have loved. So if you want to check out the twelve plays I have loved the most this year, read on: