London

Keith Mckenna

The huge increases in the price of food, rents and other basics over the last two years have forced workers to strike for increased wages. There were two and half million strike days In the second half of 2022 and the struggles continued throughout 2023. These added to the political discontent on issues from climate change to racism.

This was a year of some extraordinary documentary dramas. Lance Steen Anthony Nielsen’s thoughtful, informative and often amusing play False Accounts: Exposing the Post Office Cover-Up is a shocking depiction of the way Post Office managers introduced a defective computer accounting system in 1999 and then proceeded to prosecute their own employees, many of whom were sent to prison, others fined losing their homes and jobs. Four killed themselves. Over 2,700 of them have so far received some compensation.

Prison conditions are central to Lung Theatre’s Woodhill story of three men who died in the Milton Keynes prison told through the voices of their relatives (performed by actors) campaigning for justice. Other voices provide a context. They include a prison officer, a nurse, a magistrate, and a governor. An ombudsman says finding justice in the prison system is “like operating a sausage machine. Churning out investigations into deaths… We were toothless... No way of imposing sanctions on prisons. No way of enforcing consequences.”

As if that isn't enough, a Chief Inspector of prisons asks, “why has the prison population doubled since Maggie Thatcher? Are we twice as dangerous or twice as violent?... Prison sentences are inflating. Men are serving more and more time.”

Two important plays dealt with the Inquiry into the Grenfell fire of 2017 that killed 72 people. In Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicolas Kent’s edited account entitled Grenfell: System Failure Scenes from the Inquiry, we see actors playing various people in authority being questioned about their knowledge of the existing hazards.

The architect who wrote the report on the cladding fire that killed six people in Lakanal house in 2009 recalls telling the government’s fire advisor that, “another fire like Lakanal was inevitable (with the) death toll likely to be ten-to twelve times… the Lakinal fire.” To which, according to the architect, the man upon whom our safety depends, replied with the words, “where’s the evidence? Show me the bodies."

Mr Fire Safety does explain that, “to justify imposing higher standards... we would need to demonstrate that any changes were not only... as a minimum, cost-effective, but also meet the… one in three out rule by then.”

The rule relates to the Tory Lib-Dem Coalition government's promise to “kill off the health and safety culture for good.”

Gillian Slovo’s powerful verbatim drama Grenfell: in the words of survivors at the National is derived mostly from interviews with survivors interspersed with moments from the inquiry.

We hear how a regeneration plan claimed Grenfell spoilt the look of this wealthy area, prompting the authorities to give it a cheap cosmetic smartening up, which soon caused residents problems of malfunctioning windows that wouldn't close and 64% of fire doors that were not fire compliant (some doors fell off their hinges). Boilers are installed like monstrous obstructions in hallways.

The play recreates the Inquiry questioning the corporate-suited executives who decided to wrap the residents in the cheap and shiny highly flammable coffin. The fire brigade's stay-put policy is shown to have compounded the evacuation problem.

A concluding film section of interviews with survivors then follows them on a march which we in the theatre recreate, with the actors leading us in silence out of the Dorfman to a temporary memorial to Grenfell.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 in New York is the subject of Julia Thurston’s very moving play that imagines the thoughts of five women in the lead-up to the fire that killed 150 mainly women workers.

The fire safety regulations were ignored, but the employers were found not guilty and were paid a substantial insurance payment. None of the relatives of the dead received compensation.

Tracy Ryan’s uplifting documentary play Strike dramatises a union strike in Ireland to enforce a boycott on goods from apartheid South Africa. This was an important fight that increased the pressure on Ireland in 1987 to become the first Western country to introduce a complete ban on South African imports.

Although concentrating on the individual workers' stories, the show also gives us vivid, swift-moving scenes, sometimes impressively choreographed. Particularly moving are the harmonies in the collective singing of "Which Side Are You On?"

Other shows gave us a global historical perspective on struggle. Jeffrey Miller’s powerful documentary drama Maud consists of video and audio clips, along with verbatim recreations of court testimony to chronicle the murder by white men of the unarmed black man Ahmaud “Maud” Arbery who was jogging in Georgia.

A context of racist horror takes us from the disturbing 1930s picture The Lynchers to the African-Americans Eric Garner and George Floyd desperately pleading, “I can't breathe,” and the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville where the anti-racist protester Heather Heyer was murdered.

Perry William, playing an engaging realistic portrayal of James Baldwin, argues, “the southern oligarchy, which has until today so much power in Washington, and therefore, some power in the world, was created by my labour and my sweat, and the violation of my women and the murder of my children.”

Clarisse Makundul’s play Under the Kunde Tree takes us to the manic imperialist competition of Britain and France to run Cameroon despite the people of Cameroon wanting to rule themselves.

London was this year given a rare opportunity to see Pacific Overtures, Stephen Sondheim’s musical account of American imperialism forcing trading agreements on Japan in 1853 told from the Japanese point of view. It’s a stunning production with ten impressive songs and a story that moves from unsettling ominous threats to occasions of satirical hilarity.

There was this year an international perspective to Regents Park Theatre’s Every Leaf A Hallelujah aimed primarily at children and performed under the magnificent oak tree on the lawn beside the theatre. The very engaging Hannah Akhalu as the 7-year-old Mangoshi is sent on an errand by her parents and meets talking trees who tell her loggers are chopping down the tree community.

The problem is even wider than that, as the wise Baobab Tree (Florence Odumosu) takes her on a journey across a tree-devastated world that is adding to global warming, desertification, and the extinction of species.

Returning to the audience of children, she encourages them to protest with placards and chants which brings out the Governor, who tells them there will be no more trees cut down “because of all the noise and protest.”

There was a fair number of climate change plays this year including fifteen at the Edinburgh festival. My favourite was Chrissie and the Skiddle Witch: A Climate Change Musical by Roberta Wilkinson (book, lyrics) and Matthew Kemp (music, lyrics).

It gently explores the family friction in the seaside town of Skiddle caused by the prospect of oil companies being allowed to drill for more oil. The 13-year-old Chrissie, whose dad is senior manager at the oil company, is collecting names for a petition asking for the oil to be left in the ground. On a Friday climate strike from school, she visits someone known as the Skiddle Witch, who turns out to be a relative who agrees with her campaign.

The music is entertaining, the story warm-hearted and well-performed and the politics optimistic.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that, after the COVID trauma, theatre often tried to give us a lighter show to keep us entertained. At this year's Edinburgh festival, there were 1,199 comedy shows advertised in the comedy section of the paper guide.

Even some shows lacking barely a laugh decided to list themselves as comedy. One such show was El Blackwood’s heartbreaking Tending, a verbatim story of nurses in Britain today derived from 50 interviews.

It takes us from the hopes of becoming a nurse through the COVID crisis. Nurse 2 (El Blackwood) tells us everything “seemed futuristic with ventilator alarms going off constantly. People shouting for help”

It still makes her emotional to think back to “relatives begging me” to let them see a patient. “And I said it isn't in my power… he died that night.”

They are all constantly tired. One fell asleep in a cupboard. Another en route suddenly froze in her car near the Elephant and Castle. The strain had become too much, She pulled over to the side of the road and decided she had to give up the job. One ended her life.

The uplifting moment of the play is a nurse's strike when they walked to a bus garage that was also on strike. It felt so necessary even though they might spend six hours on a picket line. As Nurse 2 points out “Nurses are striking because patients are dying.”

The idea of collective action making a positive difference found its way into many plays. Lynn Nottage’s 2021 funny and sometimes moving play Clyde’s is a sequel to the insight of her remarkable 2015 play Sweat into the wrecked industrial communities of Pennsylvania and the way the cruelties of employers can provoke racism and family conflict.

Clyde’s is set in the kitchen of Clyde’s Sandwich Shop, where a group of four formerly incarcerated employees including Jason (Patrick Gibson), who was imprisoned in the earlier play, prepare the food.

Given their background and the harsh employer Clyde, it might have been a grim story, but the kitchen staff, encouraged by the Zen-like, wise older employee Montrellous (Giles Terera), are constantly dreaming up sensational sandwiches, which generates an unofficial pride that triggers an act of collective solidarity when Clyde goes too far.

Even Shakespeare-connected plays joined in the celebration of collective action. Charlie Dupre’s play Compositor E takes us to 1623 and a busy workshop where compositors, including the young apprentice John Leason (Tré Medley), are setting the type.

Although the boss, Jaggard (Kaffe Keating), tries to control the workplace, his reliance on the skill of his compositors gives them a collective power to make demands of their own, and for John, that includes actively understanding and engaging with the texts he is being asked to set into print.

One of the most exciting Shakespeare productions of the year was an adaptation by Tracy-Ann Oberman and Brigid Armour of The Merchant of Venice set in England in 1936, where the British Union of Fascists are on the rise.

Gratiano (Xavier Starr) drunkenly turns up one night outside Shylock’s home singing a fascist version of "Land of Hope and Glory" derived from an actual member of parliament at that time, with lines like “Land of dope and Jewry” and “land of Jewish finance”.

Antonio arrives at the court scene dressed in the black uniform style of the BUF leader Oswald Mosley. He wears the fascist armband as a sign of his confidence that, in this court, such indication of extremism would not count against him.

However, Shylock (Tracy-Ann Oberman) is no easy victim of their racism. The final scene shows us the angry community of the East End of London building a barricade on Cable Street that defeats the attempt by police and the Blackshirts to march provocatively through the area. In front of the barricade stands Shylock with others raising clenched fists in the air.

We will likely see a lot more of such struggles in theatre in 2024.

Vera Liber

Miscellaneous dozen best of 2023:

Dance

Opera at the London Coliseum

Theatre

And a shout out for a first-time fringe play at Theatre503: A Woman Walks into a Bank.

Sandra Giorgetti

I am privileged to have been away—albeit briefly—at both Brighton and Edinburgh during festival time this year. Those joyfully frenzied days of overindulgence in various forms of live performance have pushed the number of shows I have seen in the last 12 months to just shy of 180.

With so much to choose from, I beg our readers’ patience as I split them into groups in an attempt to do justice to the amazing talent and creativity that I witnessed this year.

Musicals

A big musical theatre fan, this genre was always going to be strongly represented in any roundup and Sondheim was bound to feature. The elegant and thrilling compilation tribute Old Friends was just as much fun the second time around and Chichester Festival Theatre’s Assassins returned the effort of the travelling to see it. Other highlights are:

In the West End
At fringe venues

And at Edinburgh Fringe: Bowjangles: Dracula In Space at Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose.

Pantos

Another favourite entertainment of mine is adult panto, and the year got off to a great start with Mother Goose in the West End with the indomitable Ian McKellen as the Dame—what a lot of water has gone under the bridge since I saw him play Romeo as a 15-year-old schoolgirl back in the 1970s.

It was a long and rainy wait until November when my cup runneth over with Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick from the writing team that used to dominate the season from Above the Stag’s Vauxhall homes, now bringing the house down at Charing Cross Theatre; days later Tinderella at Union Theatre had me crying with laughter at its smutty goodness such that thinking about it now still brings a smile to my face.

Solo performance pieces and two-handers

It is in the nature of theatre financing and funding (lack of) that small cast shows have become a staple of programming across fringe venues so these get a list of their own.

Whilst Andrew Scott in (Simon Stephens's) Vanya and Eddie Izzard’s one-person Great Expectations may have glitzed up the West End, it has been the heavy lifting at venues outside of that hallowed ground that make up my highlights in this category for their writing as much as their performances:

The chemistry between the performers in a sharply-written two-hander can have the electrical pulse of Michelangelo’s divine breath of life. This was breathtakingly evident in Bacon at Summerhall (Edinburgh Fringe) whilst Masterclass at Theatre Royal Brighton (Brighton Festival) provided openly savage and clever comedy and Strategic Love Play at Soho Theatre kept you on your toes.

Gentler options were delivered by the classy Frank and Percy at The Other Palace and the touching Supernova at Clapham Omnibus.

Plays and comedies, fringe and West End

I am at a bit of loss as to summarise the eclectic list that follows. It does have the dubious honour of being different from the others because this is the only one to contain a play that is a 2023 milestone for not exclusively good reasons—A Little Life at Harold Pinter Theatre—which was as striking as it was flawed. The same is not said of the others on this list:

Everything else

In this section, I would like to pay homage to events that don’t fall neatly under previous headings but yet are milestones in my theatre-going year.

In a miscellany of music-based shows that includes the (extortionate) irresistible fur coat and no knickers spectacle that is ABBA Voyage and its antithetical stablemate ABBA tribute show Thank You For The Music, the standout is Annie Get Your Gun in concert at the London Palladium.

Online viewing has slumped to almost never, but Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead has seared itself onto my memory.

Amongst the comedy and variety that made me hoot with laughter, a medicine for which I will be always grateful, stand the Summer Show at Cromer Pier and the Scummy Mummies, whose two shows at Catford Broadway bookended my year.

It has been a bumper 12 months of live performance averaging three and a half shows a week. It is a rate that I can't expect to keep up in 2024, but I have made a good start with 14 shows already booked as far ahead as November. My next year of live performance starts on Thursday and I can't wait.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2024 filled with good theatre.