Midlands
Colin Davison
Midlands / South West Reviewer
With less time for rehearsals during the pandemic, the year took its time to get into its stride. Looking back, it was often the smaller companies that were able to spring back into life with greatest vigour.
It proved for me a particularly disappointing time at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where it seemed that diversity and inclusion thrived without a concomitant excellence of performance. In a series of below-par productions, even Greg Doran’s Richard III did not quite attain the glory I wished for his departing production as artistic director.
It remained for a revival of A Christmas Carol to light the candles at Stratford at the end of a fairly dismal year. I’d not thought much of the original show in 2017, but either it was the terrific performance of the new Scrooge, Adrian Edmondson, or my earlier misjudgement that occasioned a change of view.
Touring theatres fared rather better, with the Royal & Derngate’s production of The Two Popes bringing together two stage greats at the top of their form, Anton Lesser and Nicholas Woodeson in the title roles. But my vote for actor of the year would go to the multi-talented Molly-Grace Cutler for her barn-storming performance in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.
My greatest pleasure in the theatrical year however was to be had with small companies, whose work I discovered for the first time.
The mini Here to There Productions came up with a lively performance of David Hare’s still relevant The Permanent Way about rail privatisation at the tiny Coach House Theatre, Malvern, while the Barn Theatre, Cirencester mounted a series of first-rate shows. It remains a mystery to me why other venues do not take up more of their productions.
Back in February, it staged Murder for Two, with the amazing Sam Denia who gave a virtuoso musical display in the American killer comedy transported appropriately to the backstage props room of a small theatre in Gloucestershire. At a time when theatre was seeking recovery from shutdown, it was the perfect show, and gets my vote for Best Show of 2023.
Steve Orme
Midlands Editor
What a memorable year for theatre in the Midlands. It’s been 12 months of hard graft to encourage audiences—not always successfully—that theatres are a safe environment; those who have returned have benefited from seeing some tremendous performances.
Nottingham was the place to go in 2022: the Playhouse under the artistic directorship of Adam Penford continued to raise eyebrows with some excellent work. It peaked with its production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Mark Gatiss, who adapted the story, played Jacob Marley and Nicholas Farrell was Scrooge. It was shown on BBC Television as part of the Corporation’s Christmas schedule.
It was the first time a Nottingham Playhouse production had been chosen to be part of the BBC Christmas line-up. Weeks earlier the show had been shown in cinemas nationwide.
The Playhouse hosted one of my top five shows of the year, Adrian Scarborough’s adaptation of Alan Bennett’s novella The Clothes They Stood Up In. Scarborough retained Bennett’s “sparkling wit, authentic and observational use of dialogue and a propensity for the absurd” in a clever adaptation. Scarborough also played dour solicitor Maurice Ransome, a “commendable” performance, while Sophie Thompson was “magnificent” as his wife Rosemary.
Nottingham also commemorated a major anniversary in 2022: it was 70 years since Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, the world’s longest-running play, premièred at the city’s Theatre Royal. Fittingly, the venue welcomed back the queen of crime’s most well-known whodunnit at the start of a new tour.
While I enjoyed The Mousetrap, it didn’t reach the heights of another of my top five which visited the Theatre Royal, Shaun McKenna’s adaptation of the Peter James crime novel Looking Good Dead. Although it took a while to warm up, it developed into a “twisty, shocking journey through murder, kidnap and betrayal” until its unexpected ending.
Over in north Staffordshire, the New Vic at Newcastle-under-Lyme celebrated its 60th anniversary of theatre-making. One of its successes which made my top five was Marvellous, the true story of the county’s living legend Neil “Nello” Baldwin. He knew royalty, was a circus clown and a kit man for Stoke City Football Club and was associated with Keele University for more than 50 years even though he didn’t have a degree or even an official position with the educational establishment.
The bonus for the New Vic was that Marvellous transferred to the West End and opened Nimax’s new theatre @sohoplace.
While some of the larger Midlands venues celebrated becoming Art Council England national portfolio organisations for the first time or were awarded extra funding, many smaller companies continued to present their work without being subsidised.
Two of the most successful were Derbyshire-based Rumpus Theatre Company and Tabs Productions, run by husband-and-wife team John Goodrum and Karen Henson. Together they were responsible for a spring season at Chesterfield’s Pomegranate Theatre and Tabs as usual produced the annual Classic Thriller Season at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham.
The fourth of my top five is Rumpus’s presentation of Tudor Gates’s play Who Killed “Agatha” Christie? which took to the road in 2022. Goodrum revelled in the role of slightly unhinged writer John Terry, while David Gilbrook became “an upset, jealous, humiliated mess” when he feared he was going to lose his life. The pair retained the audience’s attention throughout in this clever two-hander.
For my final show of the year, I have to confess that it wasn’t a Midlands production but the new Aaron Sorkin adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird at the Gielgud Theatre. My wife and I saw it on a rare trip to London.
We were treated to Richard Coyle’s portrayal of Atticus Finch and some other excellent performances. While the BTG’s reviewer thought it was too long, I was gripped throughout.
A friend of mine from Derbyshire may be appearing in the play in the next few months. That could mean another trek to the capital to see it again. But there will no doubt be many other highlights here in the Midlands in 2023.
Sally Jack
Midlands Reviewer
Looking back at the shows I’ve seen this year, I notice they have almost all been musicals. I’m not complaining, although I’d like to see more plays and am really looking forward to the touring productions of The Ocean at the End of the Lane and An Inspector Calls coming to my region in the early part of 2023.
The disruptive spectre of COVID continued to cast its shadow during 2022 with cancelled and delayed performances, but as the year progressed—and I will whisper this just in case—the shadow is now feeling more like a memory than an ever-present entity.
Most surprising show of the year for me was School of Rock, which also served as a reminder to me not to bring too many preconceptions to a performance. I loved its energy and humour, but mostly I loved the performances from the brilliant young cast.
My stand-out production of the year was Akram Khan Company’s Jungle Book reimagined. Using a variety of media to catapult an old story into the future, the haunting images and ideas stayed with me long after the performance. I also admired the company’s commitment to sustainability in terms of the whole production and hope this is something which becomes the norm over the coming years.
I rounded off 2022 with Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker!, filmed last year at Sadler’s Wells, broadcast on Christmas Day 2022 on BBC2 and viewed a few days later via iPlayer. As always with a New Adventures production, this was a hugely enjoyable visual treat: innovative, cheeky and fun. I appreciate the opportunity to see this show without the upheaval and cost of travelling to London, however, the trade-off for this convenience is you see what the director wants you to see. For example, I would have loved to have focused more on the rather wicked Knickerbocker Glory, but even live, there’s so much to absorb, one performance is never enough.
My hopes for 2023? More plays, definitely, therefore my resolution is to make a concerted effort to seek out a wider variety of productions wherever I can find them.