Critics' Pick: Gary Naylor's Best of 2023 in Review

It should come as no surprise that theatre is showing some resilience in the face of crises heaped upon crises - there’s a reworking of Stephen Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here” from Follies simply begging to be written.

Each year, that spirit is tested more and more. Shows, especially on tour or in fringe venues, do betray tell-tale signs of tight budgeting and programming can often feel a little bit safe - but all these things are relative. More important than all that bean-counting stuff are the talents - the writers, actors, creatives and front of house (my nomination for Heroes of the Year) which keep pushing through insistently, compelling us to watch and to wonder. 

Is there enough talent? Yes. Is it reflective of the town, the country, the world in which we live? No. That’s a major challenge for the rest of the decade and there’s some genuine hope that our art is finally serious about making theatre by all for all, from the biggest houses to the smallest. Theatre, like so many of our institutions, must recover in the 2020s into a larger, more welcoming entity than ever it were in the previous decade.

That said, there was much to celebrate in 2023. 

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Guys & Dolls at the Bridge Theatre has been lauded by critics and public alike, a glorious starburst of entertainment, directed by Nick Hytner with verve and performed with panache. The only other show I saw as dedicated to the underrated art of unabashed entertaining was Danny Baker’s tour-de-force At Last... The Sausage Sandwich Tour, a torrent of anecdotes from the man’s extraordinary times told as only he can tell them - a rare insight into authentic working class life (and so much more).  

The finest new play I saw in 2023 was Kat Rose-Martin’s sparkling debut, £1 Thursdays, portraying a very different kind of working class life, but every bit as authentic and often as funny. The performances of Yasmin Taheri and Monique Ashe-Palmer as the two Bradford girls growing apart were as good as you get in fringe theatre, a stage on which there is no hiding place for faking.

At Hampstead Theatre, Magdalena Miecznicka’s, Nineteen Gardens, was also a very strong debut, another slice of 21st century life, this time set in London and stretching across the class divide. Smoke, at Southwark Playhouse, was another contemporary two-hander that thrived on magnificent acting, intriguingly from real-life husband and wife, Meaghan Martin and Oli Higginson.       

Few productions told their stories with the anger that Least Like The Other, Searching For Rosemary Kennedy brought to the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House. Part opera, part installation, it was a cri-de-coeur that did not just speak for the forgotten sister of the USA’s Kennedy clan, but for all individuals marginalised by society, tortured by bureaucracy, shut away and told to shut up.

Two Grenfell plays gave voice to its forgotten victims, leaving me, once again, torn between tears provoked by their fate and rage against those who visited it upon them. Grenfell: System Failure Scenes from the Inquiry tore into the cruel complacency that led to so many deaths, the perpetrators condemned, verbatim, out of their own mouths, a fine follow-up to the equally necessary Value Engineering Scenes From The Grenfell Inquiry. At The National Theatre, Gillian Slovo’s Grenfell: in the Words of Survivors allowed the victims to speak. It was indescribably moving to be sitting amongst them in the stalls on opening night - justice must, must come their way soon.

I was moved too by attending La Cage aux Folles at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in the aftermath of an appalling homophobic attack in Clapham. The cast had a personal connection to the location of the stabbings and that surely came through in the power of their performances that night, the old warhorse of a drag musical invested with new passion, new power. It was a genuine privilege to bear witness at the curtain call.

Another musical revival to delight (new musicals found it as tough as ever to succeed in 2023, but one lives in hope) was the touring production of 42nd Street, gorgeous to look at and superbly anchored by Nicole-Lily Baisden, a name to look out for in 2024. 

La Forza del Destino at the Royal Opera House was the best opera I saw, Verdi’s epic justifying its near four hour runtime, Sondra Radvanovsky going straight to 11 as Leonora and staying there. Leonard Bernstein’s short, sharp Trouble In Tahiti was the best boutique production, another triumph for the splendid Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre, an annual treat that never disappoints.  

Chichester Festival Theatre continues to produce West End quality shows at much keener prices. Their best this year was the disturbing, disorientating, dystopian Assassins, a flawed musical, but one that is gaining new relevance as the damaged personality types of the assassins of the past begin to appear amongst the politicians of the present. Oliver!, at Leeds Playhouse, also brought big show energy to an out-of-London audience and solved the 21st century problems of Lionel Bart’s musical masterpiece while retaining its songs, glorious songs. 

A damaged psychology was put to very different purpose in Dear England, James Graham’s play about Gareth Southgate, Except, as so many reviews insisted, it is more about how the England men’s football team manager has used his 1996 penalty miss trauma to assert a new form of masculinity on to his team, reflective of a changing society, but one that still has some way to go. 

Coming right back to where I began, Theatre’s best hope for the future was found in the electricity that sparked in the air of the Shaftesbury Avenue’s Apollo Theatre during For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, Ryan Calais Cameron’s astonishing play. Here was the Holy Grail of a show that spoke to an audience pretty much akin to the occupants of the tube carriage in which I travelled into the West End and told a story that had a relevance for all of them too, with wit, wisdom and a theatricality unmatched all year long. 

What a show - what a year!   

My thanks to everyone at BroadwayWorld, especially my wonderful editor, Aliya Al-Hassan, to my other colleagues at The Arts Desk, to the PRs without whom none of this happens and, most of all, to the remarkable people who choose to commit their lives to making theatre. All the very best to them and to you.

Main Photo credit: For Black Boys...Ali Wright


 

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