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North East Theatre in 2005Dateline: 27th December, 2005From the start I have to admit that the BTG has not covered North East theatre as thoroughly as it might have done this year, for we have reviewed very few productions from Teesside, although, of course, our news pages have carried numerous stories from the area. The reason is simple: there's just too much for one person to cover. Hopefully this is about to change: watch this space! The Customs House in South Shields has continued to encourage and produce new writing far more than one would expect of a theatre of its size and audience, producing no less than ten new works by local writers during 2005. Its annual February Drama Festival was given over to a new writers competition which was won by Jump, You B******! by Paul Buie. He is a real find: another of his plays, Influence, was produced as part of Threesome, three new plays by local writers from North Tyneside-based company Cloud Nine, and a third will be featured in the FebFest of 2006. The theatre also commissioned a new play from established Tyneside writer Peter Mortimer, based on a little known incident in the history of the town: Riot is undoubtedly Mortimer's best play to date. Among other new works seen at the theatre during the year were We Love You, Arthur, Fiona Evan's wonderfully funny and perceptive piece about two teenage girls with a crush on Arthur Scargill during the Miners' Strike. The theatre is also a receiving house and, for me, the highlight of the year was the beautiful (and I do not choose that word lightly!) production by the Guild of Lillians of Ann Coburn's Get Up and Tie Your Fingers - NE writer, producers, director, actors and singers - which was an absolute joy. In December, during the run of the panto, the first part of the theatre's planned developments came online. The Green Room is a new bar space which replaces Romano's Restaurant which will ease the congestion in the current bar/foyer. A few miles south, the Sunderland Empire opened at the end of 2004 after a major refit with Starlight Express, which ran into 2005, and ended the year with the first stop on a very long tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Empire has always been a lyric theatre: drama never does terribly well but it always draws an audience for music, whether it is a musical, opera (Ellen Kent's Opera International visits twice a year) or ballet (the Birmingham Royal Ballet always gets packed houses). A string of well-known, popular musicals visited during 2005 - some good, most enjoyable, and a couple disappointing - but the pick of the bunch, for me, was Miss Saigon. One theatre company, however, always does well at the Empire: the excellent Shakespeare4Kidz always draws packed houses and their version of The Tempest was no exception. Durham's Gala Theatre has had some hard times since it opened (and very nearly closed within months!), but 2005 was the year in which it really found its feet. It is a receiving house pure and simple and this year it got it right, with not a single artistic disaster. Three productions really stand out: the Kaos Moll Flanders was a most enjoyable romp, Pilot Theatre's Lord of the Flies caught the mood of the book perfectly, and theatre babel's Macbeth worked its magic as it did everywhere else. The programme also included ballet, contemporary dance and opera of a high standard. During the year the Gala apppointed a new general manager, Simon Stallworthy, who has interesting plans for the theatre's development which began with the opening of a new performance space, The Blue Room, during 2005 and will continue with a foray into production in 2006. Newcastle's Live Theatre is another new writing venue and its major coup was the first full length stage play for twelve years of Our Friends in the North writer Peter Flannery, The Bodies, based on Zola's Thérèse Raquin. My own particular favourite was Paul Sirret's wonderful evocation of the life of an Ella Fitzgerald tribute act, Lush Life. During the year, Live announced that funding had been obtained for new building and development work which should coms to fruition in 2006. Still in Newcastle, the Playhouse has been closed all year whilst an £8m development takes place which will completely transform the theatre, creating an extra performance space. Northern Stage, the resident company, went on the road, touring its productions to small scale venues (for example, premiering Julia Darling's last play, Manifesto for a New City, at the Queen's Hall Arts Centre in Hexham) and collaborating with Nottingham Playhouse, London's Albany Theatre and the Betty Nansen Theatre in Copenhagen in a new play 1001 Nights Now, the last production of the company's outgoing artistic director Alan Lyddiard. Newcastle Theatre Royal's programme was the most varied of them all, ranging from contemporary dance - a particular strength of the theatre, which has built up a tremendous following for the genre over the last few years - to the annual visit of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which this year brought three comedies (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night and a wonderful Comedy of Errors) which played at the Theatre Royal, the Ginpowder Plot season at the People's Theatre, and The American Pilot from the New Work season which played at Live. Highlights for me included Propeller's wonderful Winter's Tale, the Mark Morris Dance Group's 25th anniversary tour (although the comtemporary dance programme was so good that Morris earns mention just by a short head, ahead of Akram Khan's ma and Matthew Bourne's Highland Fling), two excellent National Theatre productions (The Pillowman and The History Boys) and the ever-excellent Carl Rosa's The Mikado. The saddest event of the year for NE theatre was the sudden death of the Theatre Royal's general manager and chief executive, Peter Sarah, under whose guidance the theatre achieved the highest seat occupancy of any theatre outside of London and whose funeral brought traffic to a halt between the theatre and St Nicholas' Cathedral and filled the cathedral to bursting point. A sad loss to theatre not just in Newcastle and the north east but nationally. Last month I asked all our reviewers to choose their top shows for the year, a touring and a local production, so now I must choose. There was so much that was good that it is difficult to make a choice. For the touring production I am torn between the NT's The History Boys, the RSC's Comedy of Errors, and Miss Saigon but, after much heart-searching, my accolade goes to Miss Saigon, although the difference between them (very different though the genres are) is minute. As for the local production, because it is so firmly rooted in the region and was just such a superb theatrical experience, I have to go for Get Up and Tie Your Fingers.
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