West End Plays

To start near the end, perhaps the biggest news in 2015 was the advent of the Kenneth Branagh Company. Their first outing featured a triple bill of contrasting plays.

In the manner of an old-time actor manager, Sir Kenneth chose to take the stage himself both playing Leontes in The Winter’s Tale and the leading man in Terence Rattigan’s Harlequinade. Rather than completing the set, he permitted Zoe Wanamaker to deliver a minor solo tour de force in All on Her Own, also by Rattigan.

The leading man enjoyed himself as Leontes giving a solid rather than sensational performance. In this, he was rather overshadowed by the presence of Dame Judi Dench playing usually unfashionable Paulina. If the stage had equivalent to the Oscars’ Best Supporting Actress award, the octogenarian would win it by a street.

Harlequinade had its fans but seemed to be little more than a very lightweight comedy.

There were also two other companies led by enterprising directors performing in the West End during 2015.

After his first foray a couple of years previously, Michael Grandage returned to the West End with Photograph 51 starring Nicole Kidman.

This was a serious scientific drama by Anna Ziegler retailing the tragic biography of Dr Rosalind Franklin. Without her, it could be argued that our knowledge of DNA today would be lessened or at the very least it would have taken longer to get to the same place.

While Miss Kidman proved that she was far more than merely a sex symbol and won the Evening Standard Best Actress award, some of the other parts were significantly underwritten.

In different style, Grandage also directed Thirty Million Minutes, the solo debut in the West End of Dawn French. This was a strange but beautifully presented mixture of stand-up comedy and harrowing autobiography.

At Trafalgar Studios, for his own company, Jamie Lloyd continues to show great adventure in his programming.

His taut, imaginative direction presented a worthy Golden Jubilee production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming. He was helped by a strong ensemble company led by Ron Cook, John Simm, Keith Allen and the very seductive but steely Gemma Chan.

James McAvoy starred in The Ruling Class, a satire by the now unfashionable Peter Barnes, a playwright of high quality, although this piece about class would have seemed dated to many viewers today.

These days, it is hard for straight plays to succeed in the West End without big names for the marketeers to utilise. Perhaps the hottest ticket of all during the summer was for The Elephant Man, entirely because it starred Hollywood heartthrob, Bradley Cooper.

Those that spent (an awful lot of) hard earned cash would probably have drooled over the actor but been disappointed by a formulaic play.

David Mamet’s American Buffalo seems dull on the surface and requires considerable mining to get to its underlying attack on The Great American Dream. However, with a star cast comprising John Goodman, Damian Lewis and Tom Sturridge under the direction of Daniel Evans, once again the major attraction was not necessarily going to be the writing.

Leading up to Christmas, there was a welcome return to the West End stage for Jim Broadbent in Patrick Barlow’s version of A Christmas Carol. The movie and TV star made a memorable Scrooge for his old collaborator at the National Theatre of Brent.

The seasonal theme was also taken up by the team behind The Play That Goes Wrong in Peter Pan Goes Wrong. The comic formula was very much the same and the laughter quotient remained at appropriately high levels.

Inevitably, the year contained a number of transfers from smaller London theatres, many of high quality.

Farinelli and the King by Claire van Kampen starred Mark Rylance in a fascinating tale that had much in common with The Madness of George III. In this case, the King was Philippe V of France and his road to redemption and sanity was discovered through the offices of the great castrato Farinelli.

30 years on from its original appearance, Kevin Elyot’s My Night with Reg remains a poignant and defining play about AIDS in this country. It richly deserved a sensitive Donmar revival under the direction of Robert Hastie that then moved up the road to the Apollo on Shaftesbury Avenue.

Nick Payne’s Constellations had already been a success both at the Royal Court and in New York. The latest touring incarnation made a brief but enjoyable London stop with Joe Armstrong and Louise Brealey taking over very effectively from the original cast.

Di and Viv and Rose by Amelia Bullmore, who is currently taking a leading role in A Christmas Carol, took some time to make its way from Hampstead to the Vaudeville. Tamzin Outhwaite reprised her performance as Di alongside Samantha Spiro and Jenna Russell in a piece that still had the power to move.

The other great source of West End transfers is Chichester Festival Theatre. Amongst other productions littered across these pages, Taken at Midnight by Mark Hayhurst was a worthy tale of Nazi oppression that featured a standout performance from Penelope Wilton.

The stage version of Harvey, best remembered for the iconic film performance by James Stewart, made a reappearance in a Lindsay Posner production starring James Dreyfus and Maureen Lipman.

If there is one thing is certain as death and taxes, it is the West End presence of at least one revival of plays by each of Noël Coward and Oscar Wilde.

Lindsay Posner who had a busy year also directed Hay Fever with a cast that was headed up by Felicity Kendal, while Adrian Noble’s version of The Importance of Being Earnest was built upon an eccentric if workable piece of casting allowing another popular favourite, David Suchet to take on the role of Lady Bracknell and “a handbag”.