Top 5 shows of 2019

Best show of the year? It’s between Company and Six. Both five stars, both gems, both loads between their ears, both huge fun, both shows I’ve thought about non-stop all year. Oh, and conveniently, both shows with fab cast recordings – Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby didn’t have quite the same listenability.

Now, though – I ADORED Company, but having relistened to Six a few times, I think we really need to stop simply stanning that show and just seriously, tediously, academically look at how brilliantly these songs are written – how concise it is, how many witty lines just are smuggled in, how the medium is the message, and how cruelly apt its messages are. I think if you have 90s pop on the one side and 30s Kabarett on the other, to compare Six with Kander and Ebb isn’t just accurate – it shows how GREAT Six is that this comparison is deserved. But sod that, I loved loved loved it, I wonder if I’ll ever stop being excited by the cast recording.

So apologies Marianne Elliott, but the show of the year just has to be Six.

…but my secret favourite event of the year? Wife. I think it’s a great play for anyone, but Samuel Adamson could have written it just for me, being about being inspired not just by theatre in general but especially by A Doll’s House. I still feel inspired by A Doll’s House from 2013, and now I feel doubly inspired by Adamson’s appreciation, anger, optimism, and affection too. It’s a surprisingly fiery play which acts as a manifesto to take plays out into the real world – honestly, I hope I do bring a bit of Nora with me wherever I go, and this inspired me to keep that fight. It also reminded us that LGBT rights still must be fought for even in places as liberal as Kilburn, and illiberal attitudes aren’t historical at home or abroad – and I’ve definitely taken that with me too. I absolutely adored everything about this anyway – the fact it’s about one of my favourite plays sweetened the deal. It’s easy to say WHY great theatre inspires us, but in the real world hard to say HOW it has inspired us. This play argues for the fiery power of inspiration, allegory, theatre, and equality. If you missed it – too few people saw it – buy the script, read it, love it.

Also, Patti Lupone, second row.

Most exciting part of the year? The surprise of that small show Six being SO enjoyable, SO political, SO intelligent, SO thrilling, then SO successful… Fleabag was up the road, and that’s similarly exciting too – fiercely independently-minded shows are becoming such big hits. I think these successes could make producers riskier next time they’re at the fringe, and young artistes stick to their guns and bonkers ideas. I bloody hope so.

Also, Patti Lupone, second row.

Best performance of the year? For all the show’s flaws, Reese Shearsmith’s performance of Putin literalised the man’s inadequacies, and grip on power, in a left-field and scary way.

That said, when I remember Company, I of course remember “Being Alive” and “Marry Me a Little” – but I also remember “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” for Rosalie’s confusion over this barrage of insults, “Side By Side” for her overwhelming isolation, even “Ladies Who Lunch” for her engagement with Patti’s intensity. I think her performance in Company was one of the best dramatic performances I’ve ever seen, by being so intensely thoughtful and reactive – and that’s ignoring the fact that it’s a musical performance, and she has THAT voice! I honesty would say Rosalie is one of the top 5 performances of my life.

Also, Patti Lupone, second row.

Worst show of the year? I’ve avoided any true stinkers in my very limited theatregoing this year. These days, having so few opportunities, I either get fed what NT Live feeds me – and there’ve been no Macbeths this year. When I am in London, I try to pick things I know will at least TRY, so I can’t be disappointed – I enjoy a show ‘falling with style’. For example, like some of you on this thread, I may have been largely negative on When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, but blimey did I enjoy the mental badinage it forced me to do with it, even though it didn’t work IMHO – I also think a good heart can save a show, and I think WWHSTEO IS invested in gender diversity, literary criticism, and its strangely romantic end – so I’m very glad it problematically exists.

The only show I’ve seen this year and felt unsatisfied by was when Jack Thorne set up so much political and familial potentiality and then wrote a wet fart in The End of History – but especially given how stupendous Lesley Sharp was, to say that that was bad bad…

Oh wait! Was I’m Not Running this year? What narked me off about that is that a study of why people run, from diverse backgrounds, would be fascinating, intelligent, and prescient: why would this doctor turned accidental politician run, and why would a politician’s son run, and why would a young immigrant run? However, by focusing on Sian Brooke’s life alone, the play is a dull character piece about an uninteresting fictional anomaly whose life is just bland. It therefore makes no commentary. The play’s just so boring and aimless. Outside the play, though, ask – why did Sir David write about her and only her? Looking at the show, and having seen Sir David’s smug-as-sin NT Live interview, it’s clear why – because Sir David thinks that this character is a great feminist hero, a great rallying cry for the NHS, and a blow against a misogynist Labour party; Sir David thinks that left-wing feminism is failing, and the only person able to bring it to life is him. God, the play’s smugness almost overrides its tedium. Almost. The play’s actual feminist lines were fairly terribly judged, anyway – as feminist literature it was oversimplistic and even offensive! Sir David wrote an excellent left-wing character study in The Absence of War which used its character to truly excoriate left-wing and Labour faultlines, and the focus there worked because this one character COULD personify broader class and culture so well. Here Sir David so limited in scope because Sir David honestly thinks HIS is the voice left-wing feminists need, and his character the perfect encapsulation thereof, for left-wing feminism to rise up. That’s myopic, offensive, and (to quote a non-left-wing non-feminist) onanistic. Mind, watching the first act I had the best nap, so I’m Not Running is also my show of the year.

In case that was last year I’ll nominate Bitter Wheat, sight unseen – I did borrow the script and read it, and on the page it’s pants. Of all the ways to tackle Weinstein’s abuse and its impact on our culture, Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich in an Adam Sandler fatsuit as our bumbling comic hero, by the guy who wrote Tony Hopkins vs a bear, is about as wrong-headed as can be (I guess the Berkoff wasn’t meant to be great, but this was BIGGER and more mainstream, and I think that matters). It’s unfocused, it’s shallow, and the comedy is just unsuccessful. The idea of viewing this story through such a macho superficial lens is just rank. Its actual writing of Weinstein is icky, sympathetic to him like all comedies love bumbling monsters. This, as theatregoers, is all we have to go on for one of the most important social movements of the last five years – the pretentious wrestler who wrote Oleanna sniggering behind the schoolsheds. Is it unfair to judge a show just on script and guesswork? Yes! But hey ho, the existence of this show in the West End is unfair. So with the caveat that I’m unfair, and life’s unfair – Merry Christmas – 2019’s worst show is Bitter Wheat.

But… I was so profoundly inspired by Wife, and by Company, and ESPECIALLY by Six, that I want to end this list on a high. Wife showed that passion in theatre matters, as long as we take that passion back out on the streets. Company showed, well, Marianne Elliott is a genius, and turned Bobbie into (ironically?) more of an Everyman, whose emotional journey will stick with me for a long time. Six… where to begin on a show so political, so critical, so clever, so tuneful, so exciting?

There ya go. However you celebrate, enjoy yourself, Merry Christmas, hope 2020 validates what’s been a great millennium of theatre so far, and a Happy New Year.