This year saw London host buzzy productions like Jamie Lloyd’s “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Tom Holland and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, and Robert Icke’s take on “Oedipus,” with Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. Other productions struggled, including more star vehicles — and some musicals, particularly.
Matt Wolf and Houman Barekat, The New York Times’s London theater critics, discuss the triumphs and the disappointments of the last year in British theater, and also look ahead to 2025.
Which productions impressed you most?
HOUMAN BAREKAT James Macdonald’s “Waiting for Godot” at the Theater Royal Haymarket was superb. The Beckett estate is famously proscriptive about what can be done with his plays, so the performers have to make their mark in small, subtle ways. Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati delivered a master class in timing as the leads.
I was hugely impressed by Rachel O’Riordan’s take on “Faith Healer” at the Lyric Hammersmith, featuring Declan Conlon as an insidiously charismatic Svengali. On a lighter note, I also loved the National Theater’s arch, camped-up version of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” with its gorgeous staging and costumes.
MATT WOLF I second Houman’s choices, and would extend further kudos to the writer-director Robert Icke’s scorching take on “Oedipus,” whose sold-out run proved that there is still an appreciative audience in London for serious theater. Special shout-out to Icke’s Jocasta, Lesley Manville, who is well on the way to becoming a giant of British theater.
Emily Burns’s National Theater reclamation of the little-known Dodie Smith play “Dear Octopus” was the sort of large-scale discovery that the National could do more. Across town at the Bridge, I returned multiple times to catch the extended and recast run of “Guys and Dolls.” Nicholas Hytner’s immersive, deeply affectionate staging of this Broadway classic will be missed when it ends in January.
And what were the biggest disappointments?
WOLF I was dismayed by the high-profile revival of the Irish classic “Juno and the Paycock,” which failed to deliver on almost any level. Mark Rylance’s audience-pandering Jack Boyle, the “paycock” of the title, seemed to be in a different, more comic show altogether, and J. Smith-Cameron never got close to the woebegone Juno’s grievous core.
Similarly disappointing were “A Face in the Crowd” at the Young Vic, a new musical from Elvis Costello and Sarah Ruhl that still seemed like it was in the development phase. And another musical, “Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder!,” got raves at the Edinburgh Fringe, only to look entirely exposed on the West End.
BAREKAT I was similarly underwhelmed by “Juno and the Paycock.” I found Rylance’s performance moderately diverting in a Chaplin-esque way, but the production as a whole didn’t hang together. The revival of “Starlight Express” was quite unnecessary. But the year’s biggest dud was probably Ivo van Hove’s catastrophically ill-conceived musical take on “Opening Night,” which closed ignominiously early.
WOLF Lord, yes — between “Opening Night” and the weirdly anodyne “Devil Wears Prada,” this wasn’t a stellar year for new musicals.
Who gave the standout performances of the year?
WOLF The Irish actress Justine Mitchell impressed twice over. She was movingly lovesick as the haunted Grace in the revival of Friel’s “Faith Healer” that Houman mentioned. She then filled in, superbly, for an indisposed Lia Williams in the summer premiere of the Kendall Feaver play “Alma Mater.” And Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong were a wonderful double-act — sexy, moving, funny — in the West End transfer of Benedict Lombe’s “Shifters”: That play, and Lynette Linton’s production, deserve continued life.
BAREKAT John Lithgow’s turn as Roald Dahl in “Giant” at the Royal Court Theater was a major highlight — a deft, understated blend of avuncular charm and casual cruelty. The magnetic bluster of Adeel Akhtar’s Lopakhin in Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” at the Donmar Warehouse was right up there, too.
That’s a lot of shows. Did any trends jump out at you?
BAREKAT This year, I saw several iffy stage adaptations of modish literary memoirs, with producers seemingly trying to piggyback on these books’ literary cachet without giving sufficient consideration to whether the material would work on the stage.
Katie Mitchell’s adaptation of Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets” was somewhat static. The Almeida’s production of Annie Ernaux’s “The Years” was smartly done, but had a montage-like quality that was unsatisfying as theater. And an Edinburgh Festival production of “The Outrun,” based on the Amy Liptrot memoir, felt woolly at the plot level.
WOLF I would, however, extend all credit to “The Years” for bringing the fearless Romola Garai to the stage in the first of two back-to-back performances, both of them brilliant. The other was in “Giant.”
I remain dismayed at how few new British musicals prove capable of staying the course. “Operation Mincemeat,” now an Olivier Award winner and heading to Broadway, is among the few that has shown any heft, and prospects look good for the West End upgrade of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Interestingly, both these shows had clever producers who carefully shepherded the material to the West End rather than merely throwing it before audiences, untested, and hoping for the best.
BAREKAT “Operation Mincemeat” was a real bright spot. I’m intrigued to see how it will land stateside, since some of the humor is quite … British.
We saw several West End productions built around A-list stars this year, and next year, we’ll have even more. Is this a sign that British theater is becoming more Americanized? And are there others?
WOLF London theater has always been in thrall to American celebrity. Adrien Brody acquitted himself well this year in his London stage debut in Lindsey Ferrentino’s “The Fear of 13” — his eyes every bit as searching from the vantage point of a theater seat as they are onscreen.
BAREKAT I found the coverage around Tom Holland starring in “Romeo and Juliet” a bit jarring. On the one hand, it drew audiences, and one shouldn’t begrudge that. But I got the sense nobody really went away talking about the play — it all felt like a bit of a circus.
Armando Iannucci’s “Dr. Strangelove,” currently running at the Noël Coward Theater, in which Steve Coogan plays four different roles, was another interesting example of the “star vehicle” problem. It was a fun evening’s entertainment — Coogan is always good value — but it felt very much like Coogan’s personal tribute to his hero, Peter Sellers. He does it well, but if I were an up-and-coming dramatist, I’d be a bit miffed that this sort of thing was taking up valuable real estate.
WOLF Something I noticed is that the standing ovation — once mocked by Brits as an American thing — is now ubiquitous in London. But when it comes to knocking back drinks at intermission, Americans still lag far behind the British.
There’s always a lot of Shakespeare in London. What was it like this year?
WOLF We had that “Romeo and Juliet” with Holland, which kept the paparazzi busy for much of the summer, and I was tickled by the return of the Globe’s delightful “Comedy of Errors,” which found an emotional through line to the narrative chaos of Shakespeare’s early comedy.
But this year didn’t have a truly knockout new Shakespearean staging. Maybe the upcoming arrivals of Sigourney Weaver in “The Tempest” and Tom Hiddleston in “Much Ado About Nothing” will raise the bar.
BAREKAT The push for novelty — of one sort or another — is relentless. We had “Macbeth” with headphones, an all-female Richard III and that Tom Holland “Romeo and Juliet,” rendered by the director Jamie Lloyd in a brooding, minimalist aesthetic that didn’t really suit the play. People will never tire of Shakespeare, but they may tire of gimmicks.
There were also a number of early closures on the West End — including “Why Am I So Single?,” from the creators of the wildly successful “Six.” What do these short runs say about the health of London theater?
BAREKAT “Why Am I So Single?” was serviceable but very average, and the Garrick has a capacity of around 700. It’s no small ask to fill that venue for months on end, so it was unsurprising that the run was cut short. And van Hove’s “Opening Night” was a dreadful mess.
In both cases the producers seem to have staked a lot on the assumption that good will alone — generated by “Six” and Sheridan Smith, the star of “Opening Night” — would guarantee bums on seats. It’s a cautionary tale: Don’t take your audience for granted. Tickets are expensive, and most theatergoers are reasonably discerning.
WOLF Shows need incubation, and even then, there’s no guarantee of success. But to open “Why Am I So Single?” cold on the West End, especially after the lengthy path to commercial success taken by “Six,” was very risky.
That said, London is nowhere near as draconian a commercial environment as Broadway, where productions vanish even more quickly. Take, for example, the recent closure in New York of “Tammy Faye,” which was at London’s intimate Almeida before moving to the gigantic Palace Theater in Manhattan, with no middle-sized venue in between. That seems like madness to me.
Speaking of the Almeida, it’s just announced a new leader, and there’s been changeover at the top of some other big playhouses, like the National Theater and the Young Vic. What challenges do these new artistic directors face?
BAREKAT I enjoyed the Almeida’s recent, simultaneous revivals of two canonical 1950s plays, “Roots” and “Look Back in Anger.” It was a brave, counterintuitive choice on the part of the outgoing artistic director, Rupert Goold, since both of these works are widely considered dated — you could even say “problematic.” The slightly allergic critical reception to the shows was revealing; I fear we’ve become a little squeamish about confronting the uglier side of humanity.
Artistic directors invariably talk a good game when it comes to inclusivity, but that commitment should extend beyond representation — to the subject matter itself. In 2025, I’d like to see more shows that take me out of my comfort zone.
WOLF Running a theater involves a continual guessing game with unreliable levels of state subsidy, and it’s often the case that directors’ best work can happen before they actually run a theater. For instance, Rufus Norris’s National Theater regime was especially noted for plays produced under his watch but directed by others — “Dear England” and “The Motive and the Cue” among them.
Looking ahead to the new year, what’s getting you excited?
WOLF James Graham seems to be the go-to English playwright of the moment, and I’m excited about his new play “Punch,” coming to the Young Vic after an acclaimed regional premiere in Nottingham. And after Icke’s dazzling “Oedipus,” my hopes are high for his Royal Court debut as the writer and director of “Manhunt.”
BAREKAT “Manhunt” is also on my radar — one of several eye-catching productions at the Royal Court in 2025. It’s about the British cop killer Raoul Moat, who gained a perverse folk hero status in the 2010s. Lots to unpack there, and I’m intrigued. Also on the horizon is “My Master Builder,” a new play inspired by the Ibsen classic, which opens at Wyndham’s Theater in April. It’s directed by Michael Grandage and — in keeping with the aforementioned trend — features a big-screen star, Ewan McGregor, in the lead role.
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