The Human Body (Donmar): Oof. First half OK, if overlong (there were some departures around us following the interval), a bit derivative, both of Brief Encounter and of Jamie Lloyd’s cameras. Saved by Keeley Hawes’ exquisite face and acting. I’m afraid it went completely off the rails in the second half, when the war hero husband Turned into a monster. There might have been some subtleties in that scene that we missed, as we were completely unable to see any of the action, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to go on what we heard. Then there was a second scene just to reinforce it (this one was a little more plausible). Then there were some attempted parallels between the birth of the health service and her personal life, which I’m afraid I didn’t understand at all. It was just so long, and I’m afraid I didn’t feel the chemistry between Hawes and Davenport at all. Two stars, all for the acting, which I can’t fault. But the play was awful. And it made me feel very capitalist at the end (Team Dior), which I can’t imagine was the intended result.

Till the Stars Come Down (NT): I really loved this. A bit melodramatic but so well written and acted, and the plot twists really worked (why are adolescents the way that they are?) There was a school group in this evening and I’m not sure they were ready for the material, but they were engrossed and generally well behaved (apart from a few shrieks at the plot twists) and one lad raised his fists in the air in triumph when a particularly significant plot twist landed. It is always nice to see young people falling in love with theatre.

Plaza Suite (WE): I had few expectations about this but it was exactly what it said on the tin. Very Broadway, dated in the sense that a lot of posh public spaces in New York (or at least, Manhattan) are dated (Plaza, Pierre, dare I say it St Regis, most museums, madison square garden, grand central etc etc). But it was kind of reassuringly expensive, in the way of SJP’s Henri Bendel shopping bag in the first act. I thought they were both utter pros and worth the price of admission (which was whatever I paid for it when this first went on sale, under £100).

MJ the Musical (WE): Wow wow wow, what a show. 4 stars for the show (they leave you wanting more after the first act, although there were amazing moments (I do agree there was a lot of talk about budgets)) and a fifth for Myles Frost, who was just phenomenal. His singing, dancing, body language, everything! How can someone born in 1999 manage to do that. All the cast was great (little Michael was amazing!) with particular praise for Ashley Zhangazha, who made it utterly clear through body language and voice whether he was portraying Joe or Rob and switched effortlessly, and Mitchell Zhangazha, who has such a tough role as young adult Michael, and does it stunningly. Thriller was jaw-dropping, and this might sound odd, but it had the menacing energy I wanted to get from Moulin Rouge and didn’t. What a brilliant production. I booked again for May. In terms of seats, there are side seats in the front stalls at £20 less than the rest of the front stalls, which as an aisle seat devotee I think are a bargain. (Oh, and if I’m going to nitpick, US accents were great all through, except “Newark” is pronounced “noo-ark” (or “noark” if you’re really from there), not “nyoo-ark”. And I don’t think most of the audience knew who Don King was. But that’s ok).

Alma Mater (Almeida): Rupert Goold gave a kind of introduction explaining the situation and asked for kindness. Justine Mitchell was using a script which was a bit distracting but generally ok, she is a wonderful actor and will be great in the part. The acting was generally very good. My issue is more with the play itself. It may be that I particularly think it’s flawed as I work in academia, and a similar situation would never occur as it is set out in the play. Essentially the play itself deals well with issues like the feminist generation gap (although it doesn’t touch trans, which is what seems to me to be the main feminist issue dividing the generations). But I just couldn’t help constantly thinking that particular events would never happen in reality.

A first year student is sexually assaulted and is befriended by two other university students, a strident woman third year who has her own reasons for wanting publicity, and a male third year who likes her a lot but has no idea about romance. Then there’s Justine Mitchell’s Master of the College, who is a tough former journalist coming back to the college, where she was a student. She doesn’t like social media and thinks young women should worry about real concerns (like her friend who was raped and murdered at the college in the 80s). Her cohort include a male professor friend who is the chair of the board and his wife, another professor. They were all at uni together.

The levels of unreality are several – first, students and lecturers may have been buddy-buddy as is set out in the play in the 1980s, but that does not happen now. The way Justine Mitchell’s character speaks to the students (one in particular) is incredibly unrealistic. Parents of students get involved and are spoken to without any regard for confidentiality (hello, GDPR). People who have very close personal relationships take decisions about employment without recusing themselves. And there would have been many, many threats of lawsuits a lot earlier on in the process, the way this is set out. I haven’t even really explained the meat of the play, which as I mentioned deals with the generation gap amongst feminists with respect to sexual assault, social media etc. That part is ok, if completely unrealistic in terms of what would actually happen when “rapists” are named online.

Sweeney Todd (Bway): Really enjoyed this when I saw it last week, fab evening. Groban’s voice was stunning and his acting v good. Not as threatening as my ideal Sweeney but thoroughly enjoyed it. Annaleigh Ashford did fine (apart from the accent), good comic timing, but for me, the Tony should go to Micaela Diamond who was utterly stunning in Parade. (I quite liked Ben Platt too but would prefer to see Groban take it this time around).

The Motive and the Cue (NT): I enjoyed this very much and thought that Mark Gattis and Johnny Flynn were both excellent. I’m afraid I agree that Tuppence Middleton was miscast – I’ll have to see it again when it transfers to Broadway and they cast someone else in the Elizabeth Taylor role. Liz had a beautiful speaking voice, much less nasal than what Middleton is doing here.

Patriots (Almeida): Really enjoyed this, beautifully written with excellent performances from Will Keen and Luke Thallon, and Tom Hollander with a really outstanding performance. A couple of minor quibbles – there is no Nobel prize in Mathematics, and they had the judge wearing a barrister’s wig (why do they always do this?) I do understand that we shouldn’t boo excellent actors providing superlative performances, and of course I didn’t, but it did feel very odd to be applauding “Putin.”

Dear England (NT): Really enjoyed this. Joseph Fiennes and Gina McKee were both excellent (Fiennes has Southgate’s voice and mannerisms down to a tee). The staging is excellent. It’s very much of the moment (in some ways it reminded me of the Great Britain play with Billie Piper) and is in some ways a play for people who don’t go to plays (to the point that the three act structure is explained, albeit in the context of tournaments). But Graham uses every tool in his arsenal to make it work. The music is a particular highlight, with Fabio Capello’s music a laugh out loud moment. Some of the laughs don’t quite land but it is very funny overall. And it plays on every England football fan’s emotions very skilfully. The three hours flew by, for me. By the time it opens it will be very tight.

Vanya (WE): Four stars from me. His performance was stupendous, and I absolutely recommend it. (If you’re not v familiar with the story, do bone up in advance). I thought certain characters worked extremely well (Azov, Sonia, and, erm, Maureen and Liam) and others less well. I’m not sure if it’s a commentary on the weakness of Helena/Yelena as a Chekhov character or this production that I thought that she pretty much boiled down to “hot girl” without much nuance. Ivan/Vanya was also lacking in subtlety until second act at least if not the end, I thought; until then, it was difficult to feel his pathos. Andrew Scott was phenomenal, but I did miss the interactions between actors, especially when everything was going quickly. And I’m afraid any kind of “physical contact” didn’t really work for me, except at the end. But it was a really interesting experiment and an acting tour de force, and I’m v glad I saw it.

Next to Normal (Donmar): I thought this was very moving. Graham Norton was in the house, which caused something of a buzz. Caissie Levy was phenomenal, I thought as strong an actor as a singer. Jamie Parker’s acting was stupendous, except for his American accent which was sometimes weirdly twangy, and I remember his NY accent in Guys and Dolls years ago being much stronger. Lucy Munden was in as Natalie and was great on all counts. For me, though, Jack Wolfe was the highlight, what a voice, what a star!

Macbeth (Donmar): Still thinking about this. The headphones both added and detracted. Added in the sense that the actors could really whisper and could use literally all of the tones in their arsenal, which were not inconsiderable (DT’s beautiful diction was amazing, his pronunciation of “rhubarb” was worth the price of admission on its own, and Cush Jumbo was stellar). Detracted in the sense that the actors were there, and acting, and we could see them, but the immediacy of live theatre was taken away a bit, for me. I tried taking my headphones off at one point (the beginning of “act 2” has some potential audience participation for those in the front row, be warned (I think you can decline by not making eye contact)) but there was too much going on to really do that for very long. The headphones worked beautifully with the witches, though. Overall I enjoyed it very much, there was some really superb acting.

Top 5 of 2023:

Top 5, no particular order: Sunset Boulevard, Old Friends, Next to Normal, Streetcar, Standing at the Sky’s Edge. (In New York I loved Merrily, Parade and Purlie, quite liked Sweeney and Here We Are). Honourable mention: Macbeth (Donmar), Dear England, Shirley Valentine, A Little Life, The Motive and the Cue, Crazy for You, A Mirror, La Cage, Patriots, House of Bernarda Alba, Sylvia. (ETA that I suppose I should put Vanya in here, although the fact that I didn’t remember it initially is probably indicative of something). I genuinely think it’s been a great year for theatre.

Oklahoma (Young Vic): I enjoyed it very much, although I agree it was not as transcendent as in New York. The highlight for me was Marisha Wallace, who was stunning. As I recall (it’s been a while) the indigenous people of Oklahoma played more of a role in the NY production than this one. I understand why they didn’t here, but subtleties were lost. But overall a brilliant reimagining and appropriate, at this particular moment for the US. The likes of Laurey and Ado Annie will have many fewer choices, going forward.

Top 5 of 2022: Best (of new to me, otherwise Jerusalem would have made an appearance):
Prima Facie
Tammy Faye
Operation Mincemeat
Blues for an Alabama Sky
The Band’s Visit

Honourable mention: 
The choir of man
Othello
Jack absolute flies again
Best of enemies
Cabaret
Oklahoma
Cock
Six @ Hampton court palace was v cool

Worst:
Hex (again)
To kill a mockingbird (sorry, the accents did it in for me)

ETA the just boring: The Crucible, The Father and the Assassin, Who Killed My Father

When we have sufficiently tortured each other (NT): I never thought I would be pleased to hear Kesha’s Tik Tok along with the other mindless pop used, but it came as a blessed relief from the dialogue that had gone before. Blanchett is amazing, but I thought the material was poor and repetitive (and not remotely shocking). My friend, however, loved it. He said that the set seemed to be designed to look like pr0n, which does make sense, given the garage setting and the cheap-looking costumes (other than the corsets) and deliberately ill-fitting wigs. He also compared it to industrial music, where it sounds harsh and seemingly the same all the time, but there are subtle changes going on that your subconscious mind registers. That was all too deep for me, and I just couldn’t stand any of the dialogue between Blanchett and Dillane. I did love Jessica Gunning and thought that her scene with Blanchett was by far the best thing in the play.

Waitress (WE): I went in knowing nothing about it other than that it was a successful musical that I had skipped every time I go to New York because there’s always something else I’d prefer to see. And I’m afraid I was very happy with that decision. The score was lovely, the songs were excellent and the singing generally also excellent (except for Jack McBrayer). But I hated the book (that poor woman resident who dared to take a residency somewhere other than Connecticut, dragging her poor husband along with her and throwing him head-first into cheating on her) and I thought that Katharine McPhee had much better chemistry with Marisha Wallace than she did with David Hunter (although the whole Jim Halpert does adultery storyline left me cold from the beginning). And I don’t have any children myself, but I thought I could feign interest in a doll better than Katharine McPhee did. (The less said about Jack McBrayer the better). Even though I am North American, this was much too American for me.

Come From Away (WE): It was really wonderful, and the accents better than the original cast (except for Petrina Bromley, of course). A tiny bit too Irish, but generally very good. Jenna Boyd wins the accent crown for me, she was just perfect at everything she attempted. I thought Rachel Tucker sounded wonderful (and her Annette was particularly good and particularly funny) but I do prefer Me and the Sky in the original key. The one thing I would say is that I think there is a bit of a tendency to rush and not to let the lines land. Clive Carter and Nathanael Campbell were particularly good at not doing that, and they got the most laughs, along with Jonathan Andrew Hume. I think at this stage, a lot of the audience will know the show and won’t particularly laugh at the funny lines, but the new people will need a moment to digest. But these are very small quibbles, it was so so good and I do think people are going to love it. I also think I spotted Rabbi Sudak standing at the side of the stalls as I was exiting, he must have been back stage. (That article from the JC was great, but all I could think was where on earth they would have found Manischewitz in Gander in 2001 – the bottles must have been sitting in the NLC shop for 20 years.) What a lovely show, and a lovely production.

[Blank] (Donmar): I appreciated it overall, but I did note the passage of time. The scene near the end was devastating, but didn’t feel particularly earned. I thought of news stories I had read with similar outcomes whilst listening . I enjoyed the dinner party scene more than I probably should have as a paid up member of the middle classes, but it felt like over-egging the pudding in a number of ways. Treating the deliveroo wine delivery person noticeably worse than the actual drug dealer made little sense, especially since they accused the former of dealing drugs and welcomed the latter in a frankly unrealistic way, even given the tenor of the conversation. And I appreciate that Mum didn’t want to miss anything, but you wouldn’t hesitate to go and see if your child had been pissed on, if only to keep up appearances.

Moulin Rouge (Bway): I thought this was visually amazing, gorgeous dancing and singing, and the costumes and sets were stunning, but it moved me not a jot. It was worth it for Danny Burstein, god bless him, but I could have taken or left the rest of it. Other than Danny (and Sahr Ngaujah and Tam Mutu, who were fab) it felt very paint by numbers. I had such high hopes sitting down, with the beautiful cast unsmiling, striding about and casting a menacing presence. But that dissipated immediately in favour of an aerobicised and clinical approach, which was decidedly lacking in sex appeal, for me. The only moments I began to feel something were the songs from the film – all of the rest just felt like very high grade karaoke. For me, there was much more passion in Virtue and Moir’s Moulin Rouge ice dancing programme from the most recent Winter Olympics. I was gobsmacked to hear people sobbing near the end and wanted to tell them to get to their nearest opera house and see La Boheme and/or Carmen, which do this much, much better.

& Juliet (WE): Well I just loved this. It’s obviously lower budget than Moulin Rouge (which I saw last week) but this had oodles of feeling and was beautifully performed and I enjoyed it more. I felt that the songs were used to great effect and I didn’t have the feeling that trying to spot them took me out of the show, which I had had last week. I loved all the cast, who were clearly having a ball. I think it’s just what we need in these times and could have something of the same effect that Mamma Mia did.

Pretty Woman (WE): I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would – the cast are charming, the singing is lovely as is the dancing. The songs are forgettable but adequate. But honestly, I paid £82.50 for my stalls ticket and the costumes are actually offending me. I could get better ‘80s-influenced dresses anywhere on the high street – Phase Eight, LK Bennett, even M&S.

City of Angels (WE): I’ve never seen this before and thought that Fraser, Craig and the other usual MT suspects were fine, but that Rebecca Trehearne was the true standout, amazing. It felt like there was a lot of filler in the first act, most of the men (other than Fraser) could act but not sing particularly well and I didn’t relish any of their songs. Agree that the tennis song was particularly uncomfortable. I also hated Stine’s character (although not as much as Fidler’s). I thought that I was being asked to choose between Harvey Weinstein and Aaron Sorkin and frankly, I reject them both. Team Donna and Bobbi.

Little Wars (online): Oh, I have missed this. A play, a new (to me) play, to watch and to which to react and with such great actors “interacting” with each other. Monologues are good (in many cases, great) but this was different. The acting was uniformly superb. The use of Zoom was innovative and clever. The play…had issues. In many ways I wish the playwright hadn’t used the names of real people, because so much of this depended on suspension of disbelief that just wasn’t possible. I’m sure some of the details with respect to Stein and Toklas were inaccurate, but I don’t know as much about their lives as the others. But Lillian Hellman was no innocent in June 1940, she was a communist sympathiser from years before. Muriel Gardiner may or may not have been the “Julia” of Hellman’s Pentimento, but there is no denying that Gardiner was a very good spy and no spy would have acted in the way the character did in this play. And Agatha Christie was many things (I am a big fan) but she was no friend of the Jewish people, at least not as reflected in any of her books. The historical inaccuracies took me right out of the play. But I was gripped, and recommend it highly.

Starting in 2018:

Frozen (WE): Let it go was amazing, although I suppose it could have been more visually spectacular. It’s certainly no flying carpet in Aladdin. But Caissie Levy sang and acted the hell out of it, the projections and curtains really did look great and the audience was not at all disappointed, roaring its approval. Generally I enjoyed it, but it does what it says on the tin, it’s a slick Disney production. The acting saved it. Patti Murin as Anna is phenomenal, not the world’s strongest belt but she sells the role incredibly well. Caissie is stupendous, both singing and acting-wise, and she has two big numbers in Let it Go and Monster, but it’s Anna’s story, really. Story-wise, Hans’s motivation for acting as he did was really not explained, but you kind of have to run with it. Act 2 was ok, but the world-building in Act 1 was preferable for me. 

Heathers (Other Palace): I thought it was great fun, and much better than Mean Girls. I felt very old and North American as I was the only one laughing at a number of the jokes, which are highly specific to time and place. Carrie Hope Fletcher was fantastic from start to finish, great acting, singing, everything. Jamie Muscato was very good, but needs to work on the American accent a bit. I thought Jenny O’Leary was outstanding as Martha, and made the most of her big number. 

Company (WE): I adored it from start to finish. It was extraordinarily polished for a first preview (rogue bench and drifting balloons notwithstanding) and I think it is going to be an enormous hit. I loved the gender-switching, and I have to think more about that. Patti was Patti (to the point of glaring at my area of the stalls because we dared to laugh at the pre-written jokes about Chicago (it’s Chicago for god’s sake, try not to let the meat jokes hit you on your way out) but she was very good for all that. As was Rosalie Craig. But the star of the show for me was Jonathan Bailey, whose big number was perfect and perfectly performed (especially for a first preview).

A Very Very Very Dark Matter (Bridge): Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I’m afraid it reminded me of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, but without any verve or energy. I suspect the “Pygmy in a box” is the new “dead n-word storage.” It was controversial in 1994, and tying it superficially to the Belgian Congo in 2018 isn’t going to make it any more palatable. Just because the woman in the box is clever (and might ultimately win, in some hypothetical scenario that doesn’t make any sense) really doesn’t make this acceptable. The scenes in London were marginally preferable, but only because the thing in the cupboard was literally a skeleton and the characters’ interaction was more or less among equals. I see what he was trying to do, but it wasn’t sophisticated or (in my opinion) very intellectually interesting. I may be too North American to get this, but I can pretty much promise that it will never, ever transfer to New York in its current form.

Sweat (Donmar): Oh, i thought this was just phenomenal. I’m really surprised that Oslo beat it to the Tony (although even more pleased that A Doll’s House Part 2 didn’t win, because that would have been an utter travesty) and not surprised at all that it won the Pulitzer. It was a beautifully constructed play, tackling complex American issues of race, class, deindustrialisation and nationalisation. It made me despair for both that country and this one, because I think things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. And the acting was great. Some minor accent wobbles, but overall very good.