2022 Year in Review: Alexander Cohen's Best of 2022

It got off to a shaky start. The shadow of Omicron loomed threatening another year of cancellations and a return to the online realm. But as soon as Covid worries dissipated and theatres reopened their doors with confidence, a gentle tide of scandals and uproars ebbed and flowed across the theatre world. Yes, theatre is back, but is it better than ever?

Perhaps it's too early to ask as it's out of the frying pan and into the fire as the cost-of-living crisis, recession, and budget cuts across the board threaten yet another existential crisis for the industry.

But doom and gloom aside, there have been enough theatrical gems this year that promise that the industry won't go gently into the good night.

So here are my five best picks for 2022 (and one worst):

1. From the Big Stage: Dogs of Europe, Barbican Theatre

It was pretty terrifying to watch Belarus Free Theatre's prophetic vision of a fractured Europe come to life in March merely days after Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Dogs of Europe carved a visceral cacophony of guttural imagery, music, and poetry with its bare bloody hands. It was not so much about the story it told, but rather the nihilistic world that surrounded it: a dystopia nestling uncomfortably close on the horizon.

The work of the Belarus Free Theatre is astounding. An underground theatre collective in exile from their native Belarus, they are a true testament to the necessity of theatre and art not just to speak truth to power, but to force us as an audience to stare reality in the face in all its stark bleakness.

2. From the Small Stage: Favour, Bush Theatre

A touching meditation on religion and family, Ambreen Razia's Favour wowed with its intelligence, and bravery. A young woman returns from two years in prison to her adolescent daughter living with her religious Muslim mother. What unfolds is a Culture Clash that cuts straight to the heart of hard-hitting questions about family, duty, and motherhood. Razia's writing is sentimental but uncompromising, capturing firmly the claustrophobia of narrow-minded religious culture and the desperation of a woman alienated from her young daughter.

3. From the Opera House: Last Days, Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio

An opera based on the final days of Kurt Cobain doesn't sound like the recipe for success. But composer Oliver Leith's talent lies in how he manipulates expectations both thematically and musically. He slowly but surely weaves an elegiac tapestry of emotions that flirts with grunge and Nirvana iconography. It takes its time to burrow beneath the skin, a process that curiously continues after the performance. But once it is there it will never leave. Even after months since I reviewed it, I still listen to the soul stirring "Non voglio mai vedere il sole tramontare" which also features on my Spotify wrapped playlist. If that is not a compliment, then I don't know what is.

4. From the Fringe: We Were Promised Honey, Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe

I love the Roundabout at Summerhall. It's the beating heart of the Edinburgh Fringe. I regret missing a handful of critically acclaimed plays there, notably Rafaella Marcus' Sap and Marcelo Dos Santos' Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen. One play I was delighted to see and write about was Sam Ward's We Were Promised Honey.

It's a play that defies labels. It charts the doomed final flight of Richard Russell who in 2018 hijacked an empty plane only to fly it to his death. Thanks to writer and performer Sam Ward, it morphs and blossoms into something gorgeously endearing and pleasantly provocative.

Ward democratises the space. The distance between performer and audience dissipates as everyone becomes equally in control of the story. It's playing at the Bristol Old Vic next year, so there is still a chance to catch it.

And a worst pick:

When I write as a critic, I write as nothing else. I try my best to distance my preferences, beliefs, and tastes in the name of good critical writing. As it happens, I am also Jewish and was hence faced with a challenge when reviewing Jews. In Their Own Words.

It would have been inappropriate of me to criticise the play from my own cultural perspective. But I can freely reflect here both as a critic and as a Jew.

The more I think about Jews. In their Own Words the more it irks me. Everything about it is uncomfortable. Even the title sends shivers down my spine. Why is it in "their own words" as if we are an alien entity and not "our own words"?

It unequivocally should never have happened. Not only should the name "Hershel Fink" never had emerged from the dark sordid corner of Rare Earth Mettle's playwright's brain and onto the page, but the self-flagellation "woe is me" play-cum-thinly veiled apology that followed should not have happened either.

Politics aside it was simply bad theatre, a crash course lecture on the history of Antisemitism and nothing more. But here's the rub: in not opting for a more traditional theatrical route it wasted a precious opportunity to tell an authentic Jewish story that celebrates Jewish life and culture. Something that, dare I say, could make me proud to be Jewish.

When Jews are portrayed on stage it is too often as victims. We are haunted by Antisemitism, pogroms, or the Holocaust. Rare Earth Mettle was not this. It would have cast a character with an ostensibly Jewish name as an aggressor, a gaudy capitalist hell bent on power and money. Victims but in a different way. Victims of Antisemitic myths designed to stoke hate that have wormed their way into the 21st century. All Jews. In Their Own Words did was remind me of that history.

The Royal Court doubled down and exacerbated what was already an awkward situation. A simple "sorry" would have been easier and less embarrassing for everyone.

Bonus: what I'm looking forward to in 2023: A Little Life

It's not so much a play that I'm looking forward to in 2023. More the inevitable furore, debates, and arguments that will emerge in the wake of Ivo van Hove's A Little Life. No doubt some will clamour to social media to proclaim it gratuitously violent and perhaps even obscene. There will be walk outs and there will be blood.

The English language version, announced a few days ago, will play at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 25 March. I cannot wait to see what everyone makes of it.

Van Hove's Dutch language version made its UK premiere, which I saw at the Edinburgh International Festival in August. There were only three performances. It was all in Dutch with surtitles. It had a run time of three hours and forty minutes.

Those lucky enough to have nabbed a ticket will know that it was artistic masochism. It never once shied away from exploring the visceral nastiness of self-harm, sexual abuse, and trauma in full gruesome detail. But within the blinding darkness it found immense light, beauty, and love. It was as thrilling as it was moving as it was heart wrenching. As I wrote in my review: "There is light at the end of the tunnel...but it's a very long tunnel."

I may never meet anyone who was there that night, yet I will always feel an indescribable sense of companionship with them. We went through an experience together. Cathartic? Yes. Horrible? Most certainly. Indescribably beautiful? Without a shadow of a doubt. I was moved to the core when the house lights came up revealing a room packed of people crying their eyes out. That's when I burst into tears. No other art form can create such a sense of community from a bunch of strangers sitting in a dark room.

I await eagerly to see how it is received, what conversations it sparks, and how London audiences respond to it. Because whether you like it or not, you will respond to it. That's what great theatre does.

Photo credit: Linda Nylind

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