Midlands
Steve Orme
While 2022 was a year when many theatres worked hard to encourage audiences to return after the pandemic, 2023 was more a year of consolidation in the Midlands.
Venues were keen to present works which would appeal to their core supporters as well as any new theatregoers they had managed to attract. So it was inevitable some theatres programmed productions guaranteed to get people through their doors.
My first favourite of the year was in February when Newcastle-under-Lyme’s New Vic staged Amanda Whittington’s Ladies’ Day. It features a group of women who work in a fish-packing factory who get the day off to go to the races.
The play has become one of the most performed in the UK and some of the New Vic audience dressed up in posh frocks and fascinators. Marieke Audsley’s production was a real winner.
In August Birmingham Rep staged Noises Off, Michael Frayn’s delicious look at a touring company muddling their way through a shambolic rehearsal, a disastrous matinée and a final catastrophic performance. It’s one of the finest comedies of the 20th century and director Lindsay Posner got it just right. The timing couldn’t have been better.
Derby Theatre went back eight years to revive Paul Allen’s adaptation of Mark Herman’s screenplay of Brassed Off. Set in Grimley, Yorkshire in 1994, ten years after the devastating miners’ strike, Brassed Off features a community whose pit is under threat of closure even though it is profitable. During the cost-of-living crisis, the production was just as relevant as when it was first staged in Derby. The theatre’s artistic director, Sarah Brigham, clearly hit the right notes with the production which had the audience on their feet at the end.
Another revival was Mark Gatiss’s stunning adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story. Only two years previously, audiences were captivated by Nicholas Farrell’s portrayal of Scrooge; this time, the Playhouse reckoned it had pulled off a coup to get Keith Allen to take the role of Ebenezer. He portrayed Scrooge as a scruff, not just an odious character who tries to steal money from a blind man but also an unkempt individual whose personal hygiene would dissuade you from inviting him for dinner. A fascinating performance.
Nottingham Playhouse also presented the final Ramps on the Moon production and its first original play, Village Idiot by neurodivergent writer Samson Hawkins. Set in the south Northamptonshire village of Syresham, which was about to be ripped apart with the arrival of HS2, Village Idiot was a hilarious, joyful, hope-inducing night at the theatre, the sort of production that’s a regular offering at Midlands theatres.
Be fascinating to see what the region manages to present in 2024.
Sally Jack
A look back at the shows I’ve seen during 2023, predominantly at Curve in Leicester, reveals another year dominated by touring musicals, and in the main, those based on the back catalogue of popular artists. Not a complaint, more an observation, however, non-musical touring productions of Lemn Sissay’s stimulating re-telling of Metamorphosis and the National Theatre’s surrealist An Inspector Calls were welcome.
It was my first visit as a reviewer to Kilworth House Theatre for their excellent summer production of Hairspray. The wooded, rural location really adds to the whole “magic of theatre” experience.
Back to the back-catalogue musicals: Conor McPherson’s Girl from the North Country based on Bob Dylan’s music was sublime, with the musical interpretations and creative telling of various stories absorbing.
I ended the year with two trips to Curve’s production of Evita, one as a reviewer and one a few weeks later taking my daughter as a Christmas treat. Heraclitus came to mind, specifically his quote “no man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”. Always a worry as a reviewer if you revisit a show and wish you’d said something else or changed your opinion, however, this time I could appreciate a different view, not just literally viewed from different seats but also, noticing different elements of a different performance.
Director Nikolai Foster aimed to show how Eva Peron was an influencer of her time and gave the overall aesthetic one of a more contemporary setting. He may be pleased to hear that my Gen Z daughter rated the show “much better than the film” and now has the soundtrack on her playlist, the ultimate accolade.