As is traditional, here is a look back at the highs and lows of the theatrical year. These are my personal accolades, which I once christened, in the spirit of the Oscars and the Tonys, the Billies. No red carpets, no statuettes, no speeches — only an idiosyncratic selection of the plays and the people that stick in the memory.
Best new play: Punch
There were several strong contenders, including Sir David Hare’s Grace Pervades, which transfers from Bath to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in April, David Ireland’s The Fifth Step and Mike Bartlett’s Juniper Blood, but the palm goes to James Graham for Punch. This devastating work, which arrived in the West End from Nottingham Playhouse, dealt with the emotional after-effects of a fatal knockout blow. When you add to that the timely revival in the Olivier of Mr Graham’s Dear England, in which football acted as a powerful metaphor for national identity, it has clearly been a year that has reinforced his position as our leading chronicler of contemporary life.
Best revival: Mrs Warren's Profession
For reasons that baffle me, the plays of Bernard Shaw are now largely ignored by British theatre. That was all the more reason to welcome Dominic Cooke’s production of Mrs Warren’s Profession, which reminded us of the work’s enduring topicality in its attack on social hypocrisy, unbridled capitalism and the exploitation of women. The final showdown between Dame Imelda Staunton as the worldly Mrs Warren and Bessie Carter as her blue-stocking daughter showed Shaw’s genius for giving two sides of an argument equal weight.
Best and worst Shakespeare productions
I recently commended Tom Morris’s current production of Othello for its emphasis, in a concept-crazy age, on acting, narrative and language: so rare as to be a welcome shock. At the opposite pole was Rob Hastie’s Hamlet at the National Theatre, where a normally reliable director allowed the actors to scuttle through the text; the lead actor reminded me that W. A. Darlington once said of the young Richard Briers that he played the prince like a ‘demented typewriter’.
Best actors and actresses
Peter Forbes (left) and Roger Allam in Churchill in Moscow.
This is always a crowded field because British actors, male and female, are world beaters. Among the men, I would single out Ralph Fiennes for his brooding intensity as Sir Henry Irving in Grace Pervades, Roger Allam for his bulldog tenacity as Sir Winston Churchill in Howard Brenton’s Churchill in Moscow and, in a relatively small role, Finbar Lynch for investing the struck-off doctor in Sir Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea with a quiet steeliness.
The women who dazzled were led by Rosamund Pike as a multi-tasking Crown Court judge in Inter Alia, which transfers from the National to Wyndham’s in March; Indira Varma, who was a wittily ironical Jocasta in an over-produced Oedipus at the Old Vic; and Ruth Wilson as the dreamily self-deluded heroine in Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon For The Misbegotten at the Almeida.
Most underrated play: The Brightening Air
It was a hectic year for the Irish writer Conor McPherson, with revivals of The Weir and Girl From the North Country as well as a script, which I will come to later, for The Hunger Games. However, I was surprised that his new play, The Brightening Air, at the Old Vic, received so little praise. Set in Co Sligo in the 1980s, this was a Celtic Uncle Vanya all about wasted lives, missed opportunities and family arguments over a decaying property. As in Chekhov, you were caught between laughter and tears.
'The narrative, such as it is, was buried under a wealth of mind-numbing showbiz hoopla'
Most overblown musical: Evita
This was a runaway victory for Jamie Lloyd’s production of Evita at the London Palladium. I had no qualms about the heroine delivering Don’t Cry For Me Argentina from a public balcony in Argyll Street and Rachel Zegler packed a vocal punch as Eva Perón, but the narrative, such as it is, was buried under a wealth of mind-numbing showbiz hoopla. The friend who accompanied me, never having seen the show before, had no clue as to what was going on. Lloyd was once a quietly accomplished director. Here, I felt the ego had landed.
Irritant of the year
For me, it is the endless reimagining of the classics so that we get plays billed as ‘after’ Sophocles, Ibsen or Chekhov rather than the original work. I concede that the results can occasionally be stimulating. I have just praised Conor McPherson for using Chekhov as an inspiration and this year also brought us Thomas Ostermeier’s radical re-working of The Seagull with Cate Blanchett outstanding as the self-centred Madame Arkadina. However, we have also had My Master Builder in which an Ibsen masterpiece was reduced to the level of an American soap opera.
If I have one wish for 2026, it is that our theatre does more to explore the European classic repertoire (I long once again to see plays by Lope de Vega, Racine, Schiller and Ostrovsky, to name a few) and that we are allowed to see the authentic play rather than some dubious, parasitic rewrite.