2016 Year in Review: Gary Naylor's Best and Worst of Theatre

In 2016, I reviewed 148 shows for BWW:UK, so which were the Christmas crackers and which were the Christmas turkeys?

I Loved Lucy was a beautifully rendered tribute to Lucille Ball from her long term friend Lee Tannen. The two-hander charted the relationship between the ageing TV star and a gay superfan and was, by turns, funny, spiky, cold and poignant - life as it is lived, in other words. Sandra Dickinson gave the best performance I saw all year - all decade really - completely inhabiting the role, filling the intimate space of the Jermyn Street Theatre with charisma to burn.

More fine acting on the fringe (where there is no hiding place if anything is remotely off-key) in Orphans, a three-hander revival of an award-winning play at Southwark Playhouse. Written 33 years ago, the work was one of many scripts resurrected in London and, so long as the struggle to stage new work is being won (a big "if" I know), I'm always happy to see good stuff brought back, proving that theatre isn't always as ephemeral as the description "writing in air" suggests.

Another play that demanded acting of the highest quality if it were to work at all was The Awakening at the Brockley Jack Theatre, set in a remote community, in which Alex Dowding and Joana Nastari were superb as the lovers thrown together and determined to bury the past. Channeling a similar vibe, Orca, at Southwark Playhouse, created a wholly believable fishing community in thrall to a martinet unafraid to use his power over young girls and their parents.

A new work, located firmly in the here and now, Phil Davies' Firebird at Trafalgar Studios dealt with the difficult issue of men grooming teenage girls in the post-industrial wastelands of Northern England. Callie Cooke's searing and sensitive performance was one that stayed in the mind for weeks afterwards and it's a testament to the play's power that The Children's Society are using it to raise awareness of the issue.

So contemporary it was set slightly in the future was BU21 at Theatre503. Following the lives of six survivors of a terrorist incident in West London, Stuart Slade's script was razor sharp in capturing how young Londoners talk and think, with much to say about the media, tragedy and just getting by. It's work fully deserving of its West End transfer in 2017.

Also contemporary and political, the Arcola's Cargo examined the issue of refugees in a dystopian, fractured European future that already seems less far-fetched than it did in July. Writer Tess Berry-Hart is an activist herself and, though the play's message is strong and unequivocal, she never lets it obscure the drama - the play's the thing after all.

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death was marked by many productions both lavish and on a shoestring, my favourite being Filter Theatre's madcap A Midsummer Night's Dream at Lyric Hammersmith. At the extreme end of the descriptor "freely adapted", the crazy chaos just about stayed within the bounds of the play and provided an excellent rebuttal to any kids (or adults) who claim that ol' Shakey is too inaccessible. I suspect that he would have enjoyed it too.

Thom Southerland's two productions at the Charing Cross Theatre proved to be highlights in what felt something of a lacklustre year for musicals. Titanic and Ragtime were big West End shows, without the sky-high prices and pre-registering for tickets. Both delivered beautifully clear stories set against epic events with superb singing and music - exactly what musical theatre should do. Wonderful Town at Ye Olde Rose and Crowne and Soho Cinders at the Union Theatre were the best boutique musicals I saw.

Back with bigger shows, I loved Floyd Collins at Wilton's Music Hall (pictured above), a musical that presents difficulties to cast and creatives and makes significant demands on its audience too. Adam Guettel's work seems to divide critics and public alike, but this fully committed production, directed by Jonathan Butterell, did its epic scale full justice and left me exhausted - as one should be with such material.

If great musicals were relatively few and far between, the same could be said for comedies, a genre that seems to be harder and harder to pull off in the age of social media where comedy's inherent subjectivity leads to lots of negative comment - the humourless always keen to push their views on Twitter. So well played the Park Theatre, who staged Happy To Help, a supermarket sitcom with plenty of laughs that had echoes of Ayckbourn (whose Time Of My Life was revived successfully at the Brockley Jack Studio).

Finishing off the year, I was fortunate to hit lucky with some splendid Christmas shows. Peter Pan at the National Theatre was a spectacular telling of a familiar story, full of warmth and not without an edge either. Sitting in that narrow space in which parents and kids can be equally mesmerised by the power of theatre, Kiki's Delivery Service at Southwark Playhouse charmed and comforted with its coming of age challenges.

And finally, a perfect example of fringe theatre's up close and personal environment being exploited to maximum effect, Another Night Before Christmas at the Bridge House Theatre left you feeling warm and cosy, the theatrical equivalent of a mince pie and a glass of sherry on a chilly winter night,

So, to my accolades...

Christmas turkeys

Southwark Playhouse's big January hit, Grey Gardens, won much critical acclaim and though I could empathise with those opinions, I found it very difficult to watch (and wrote about exactly why here). Another show that pleased critics and audiences alike was the Lyric Hammersmith's Things I Know To Be True, but I found it overly sentimental with a unpleasant message about how dangerous the outside world could be and how grown adults can hurt their parents when trying to make their own lives in it (the diametric opposite moral to that of Kiki's Delivery Service). The American Wife at the Park Theatre was the most unpleasant play I saw in 2016, the cast and creatives hamstrung by a disastrous script that failed to understand the differences between writing for the screen and writing for the stage.

Christmas crackers

Floyd Collins was flawed and fabulous, an unrelenting passion play powered by everything that is good (and bad) about musical theatre. The National's Peter Pan probably spent more budget than all the fringe shows above combined, but theatrical gold was spun from those resources (not always the case) and I couldn't wait to recommend it to my brother, who is going with his family in February - and that's a mark of a good show. There are too few plays in London about Londoners' lives in 2016, but BU21 took on that challenge and delivered with wit and a real punch.

My personal thanks to all BWW readers and staff and, of course, the thousands of hard-working and talented people responsible for those 148 shows I have been privileged to see in 2016. I can't wait for 2017.

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