Cultural highlights of 2024

I write a version of this introduction each year. If you’ve stumbled across this it’s useful to have some context…

During each Christmas break, one of my great pleasures is gathering my thoughts and memories of the year’s cultural outings. I love doing it and I find it invaluable as an archive of memories.

I know you needn’t care what I think; I’ve written this for current and future me. I find it interesting to do, maybe you’ll find it interesting to read.

This year some common themes emerged, either because arts programming is changing or because my booking veered in specific directions. Queer cabaret and trans stories featured prominently in my year, and there was an emerging strand of ‘men are also sensitive as well as being awful’.

I also seem to have seen a lot less stuff outside of London. I really must address that in 2025.

JANUARY

Natalie Palamides in Weer (WIP) – Soho Theatre

Is it wrong to include the same show two years in a row? I’d seen a very raw, untitled version of this work in 2023, now it was billed as Weer (a work in progress).

Palamides plays both sides of a couple who bump into each other, fall in love and break up, with flash-backs, semi-nudity, drink driving and a stag-related stabbing.

She was evidently having fun, stopping and starting and asking us if certain allusions worked on stage. A couple of my favourite gags from last year had been dropped, replaced by even funnier ideas; other half notions were now fully formed routines. Palamides is an astonishing performer; I could not have enjoyed it more.

Shout-out to Soho Theatre – I loved all three of the other featured events on the poster above. Two feature in my monthly choices and the other, the incredible Lucy McCormick also turned up in the cast of…

The cast of Cowbois with Lucy McCormick in blue.

Cowbois – Royal Court

Cowbois opens like a camp, heteronormative Western. The men-folk are away at the gold-rush and the women are pining and making ends meet.

That’s until trans masculine outlaw Jack arrives and ignites all manner of sexual longing, questioning and role reversals. One fallout is a miracle pregnancy that’s going to be tough to explain when the men return just before the interval.

Every Western stereotype is sought and found wanting. There are songs and dancing, a drag-king rival, a redeemed drunken sheriff who turns into a white-suited angel, and a Reservoir Dogs-style shoot-out that seems to last for most of the final hour.

It was perhaps an odd choice for this home of new writing to stage an RSC production but it somehow felt like the perfect London home for the Charlie Josephine script.

I’ve heard it called ‘queervolutionary’, that sounds about right.

My colleague, Emma wrote about it in our Cog Night review.

FEBRUARY

Silent Faces Theatre in ‘Godot is a Woman’ – photo from their site, I hope that’s OK.

Godot is a Woman – King’s Head Theatre

Infamously, Samuel Becket litigiously banned any women from performing his existential two-hander where the characters wait for a third who never appears.

In this show, by Silent Faces Theatre, the three characters wait for the Becket estate to answer their call, enquiring about permission to perform Waiting for Godot.

They argue that Becket would have changed his mind, had he lived to see the revolution of gender empowerment, epitomised by Madonna’s Like a Prayer (released in 1989, the year of Becket’s death).

It’s a silly take, taken seriously and pushed to extremes. The cast become judge and jury, swapping roles and arguing all sides, often switching places as they list through every banned production and every spurious argument.

They also rail against themselves – what about the character of Winnie in Happy Days, who Becket wouldn’t allow to be played by a man? Well… what about it? Where does any of that leave performer Jack, who, as non-binary actor, regards themself as neither man nor woman?

I was lucky enough to see what looks to have been the penultimate performance of this wonderful show by Silent Faces after a long run of dates. I am very pleased I did.

The newly sited King’s Head Theatre (below a shopping mall, off Upper Street) was so new that it smelt of paint and the seat row indicators were laminated sheets, taped to the floor.

MARCH

The cast of The Lonely Londoners, all on their feet in the tiny performance area.

The Lonely Londoners – Jermyn Street Theatre

Roy Williams’ adaptation of Sam Selvon’s Windrush-era London novel was just wonderful.

In a very small space, Ebenezer Bamgboye’s clever direction had each character seated before stepping into the action. As they did so, postcodes flashed across a display, placing us at pace across the capital.

And that action was a super-slick mix of dialogue, dance movement and siren song.

I can’t quite place my finger on how they did it so well but I came away with a real sense of the immigrant experience and the nuanced struggles and complex support networks amongst young Caribbean men in mid-Century London.

And Jermyn Street Theatre was a revelation. I’ll definitely be back.

The Lonely Londoners is transferring to Kiln Theatre in 2025. Do go and see it.

Figs in Wigs in their post show interview.

Figs in Wigs: Big Finish – Battersea Arts Centre

When I saw the publicity for Big Finish I mistakenly thought it was a sci-fi show from Finland. Instead it turned out to be the last hurrah from an all-female, experimental theatre, railing against the Arts Council’s refusal to fund their latest show. Or was it?

They threw everything at it. Multiple chapters presented vignettes of poignant silliness.

All dressed as dinosaurs they drove a golf buggy and raked through a sand covered stage, collecting cash;  all dressed as puffer-jacketed crabs they inched slowly sideways, pulling each other into line and testing our patience; all dressed in tails and no trousers (instead they had telescopic, wearable seats) they played badly on the sinking Titanic, over and over and over again.

There was a Crystal Maze style wind machine, blowing money in a toilet cubicle. And there was a sombre reading of a final testament where the company’s assets were promised to various others, each with a knowing nod and an in-joke.

This was a show about existential crisis; they juxtaposed climate catastrophe with the transactional monetisation of UK arts funding, all dressed in identical wigs.

At the ‘end’ of the show we sat and watched a pipe gently pulse foam, plop, plopping onto the stage. Many of the audiences left.

But this wasn’t the end, in a deadpan delivery, without costume or wigs the company returned for a Q&A. They explained that they were serious artists with a manifesto. They would never, for instance, perform in their own clothes or turn to contemporary dance.

Minutes later they were dressed sliding through foam to the sound of Dido’s ‘White Flag’.

I feel sure we’ll see Figs in Wigs again. I’ll be there when we do. This is just the sort if thing I pay my taxes for.

My colleague, Lily wrote the review for our Cog Night.

APRIL

Faith Healer – Lyric Theatre Hammersmith

“I had some envy of the man who could use the word chicanery with such confidence” I love the language of Brian Friel’s play; I’ve seen exceptional recent stagings at Donmar and Old Vic (online during COVID lock-downs). But I’ve never seen a production with three such brilliantly balanced leads.

Frank Hardy is an itinerant spiritualist touring his native Ireland in the company of downtrodden wife Grace and ever-loving manager Teddy.

Each character gets the chance to monologue a version of their history: stories overlapping, underplaying and contradicting, gently unravelling the traumas that tie them together.

Unlike other productions, under Rachel O’Riordan’s direction, it is Justine Mitchell’s Grace whose stoicism holds firm, despite the depth of her despair, while the men seem to crumple and fade.

Frank (Declan Conlon) looks hollowed out by his closing monologue as again he recites his mantra of Welsh place names, like the Shipping Forecast… Aberarder, Aberayron, Llangranog, Llangurig, Abergorlech, Abergynolwyn, Llandefeilog, Llanerchymedd, Aberhosan, and Aberporth.

A Spectacle of herself – Battersea Arts Centre

Dr Laura Murphy’s PhD was on ‘Deconstructing the Spectacle: Aerial Performance as Critical Practice’. This show brought that thesis to life on stage. It’s a solo show but never a small show. Directed by Ursula Martinez, she tackles queer politics and global economics, neurodivergence and sexual desire, cosmology and a long list of people she thinks are c*nts.

Dressed in clown make-up, Murphy lip-synchs to Elon Musk speeches, whilst inflating phalluses and pointing out the absurdity of his rocket fixation. She puts a cardboard box on her head and repeatedly headbutts a microphone through the full length of Whitney Houston’s cover of I Will Always Love You. She rails against the male gaze and then strips whilst hanging from a rope to fulfil her fantasy of being objectified as much as the man from the ’90s Diet Coke ads.

Throughout the show, dialogue is projected onto the layers of curtained set, making it accessible to those who needed textual back-up.

My favourite ‘scene’ (which I think happened but I can’t find any evidence to back this up) was an entirely free-form, gently building crescendo of physical dance to the 9 minutes and 40 seconds of Sweet Love for Planet Earth by Fuck Buttons. I do hope that happened and I’m not imagining it and projecting my own internal flailing scream onto Murphy’s perfect performance.

Boys on the Verge of Tears – Soho Theatre

The conceit of Sam Grabiner’s excellent play is that it is set entirely in a men’s toilet with urinals, cubicles, sinks and a hand drier.

We don’t know who will next come barrelling through the door but we know they’ll bring their own spin on masculinity.

The toilet remains its grim, grimy self whilst the characters transform the vibe – a nightclub, a school or the village hall.

Five actors quick-cut through more than 50 characters; through monologues, discussions and sometimes fantastical groupings we explore the masculine psyche from vulnerable child to terrified and terrifying adults – thuggish, violent, tender, naive, manipulative, kind, earnest, fatuous and yes, sometimes toxic human beings.

I recognised and resonated with so many of those characters.

My colleague, Justin wrote our Cog Night review.

MAY

The cast of ‘Punch’ at Nottingham Playhouse

Punch – Nottingham Playhouse

Picking up on the theme of complex masculinity, James Graham’s latest play is based on the true story of Jacob Dunne who killed a man, with a single punch, after rushing into a bar fight (he and his mates had been spoiling for all day).

The story is well know in Graham’s native Nottingham so it felt fitting to see it staged there (and nice to spot Graham in the foyer before we went in).

It’s the story of restorative justice, of allowing the families of victims the space to address their grief and forgive the perpetrators.

And it’s the realisation that nobody wins in the games men play. On a Saturday afternoon, as Forest prepared to play Chelsea at home, I sat in a theatre while men wept into the dark at all sides of me. Presumably they recognised it could so easily have been them being portrayed on any part of that stage.

As the lights went up, and we stood to applaud, there was a definitely feeling of optimism in the room. Just maybe this play can make a difference.

Punch is transferring to the Young Vic in March. It won’t be as resonant there because London is a very different kind of city but it will be just as powerful. Do go and see it.

Denise Gough takes her deserved applause.

People, Places and Things – Trafalgar Studios

I missed this play at the National Theatre in 2016. And I stubbornly held out until a cheap ticket offer got me to the penultimate week of its run at Wyndham’s Theatre.

I think I was put off because the 12-step story of an addict dealing with withdrawal felt a little too real to me.

I sat transfixed at the back of the stalls. Denise Gough was so brilliant, the script was so tight and the staging was so unreal that I wished I was closer to the action. I tried and failed to book again for a seat at the back of the stage.

So I was delighted that Trafalgar Studios revived the play, complete with Gough as Emma and the incredible stage (with hidden entrances that allow hallucinatory scenes to magically fill with half a dozen Emmas at time).

And I sat on the stage, feet away from the theatrical feats. It was such a privilege to be there.

JUNE

Me, outside the Arsenale di Venezia.

Venice Biennale – Stranieri Ovunque / Foreigners Everywhere

The Orient Express used to transport refined people from Victoria Station to Venice in opulence and splendour (although, because of Brexit, that most famous of journeys now begins in Paris). Imagine the very opposite of that glamour and luxury: that’s how I travelled from St Pancras, via Paris and Stuttgart and then a sleep deprived night on the train equivalent of a Megabus.

Still, 24hrs later I was in Venice, the fantasy, flooded city, overflowing with art.

The queering of history was a prevalent theme through many of the Pavilions. Jeffrey Gibson’s US Pavilion, ‘the-space-in-which-to-place-me’ was particularly striking and loaded with meaning, with its use of glass beads and coloured ribbons.

I really enjoyed the Zimbabwe Pavilion with its emphasis on recycled materials. They also had the friendliest representatives and the offer to take a piece of their country home by popping some buttons (that were patterned on the floor like a woven rug) in an envelope. Of course I did.

I wandered into plenty of buildings I didn’t understand. One was packed like a department store with internationally acclaimed artists. There, I stumbled across Michelangelo Brancato’s All this time I’ve been waiting for you. I picked up the handset to receive the voice of ‘my’ mother telling me I was everything to them. Such a simple, powerful, emotionally manipulative idea.

The most disturbing work I came across was (I think) a person dressed as a mouse with a small sign to their side. I had to pause to read the sign which told of their unfair sacking as the cleaner of a global conglomerate. As I stood, making judgements in the few seconds I was engaged with their story, their mouse face stared at me, their body stock-still. Was it real, was I gawping? I was certainly uncomfortable.

The most fun was the Belgian Pavilion. In ‘Petticoat Government’ they’d resurrected the medieval tradition of communities creating their own giant puppets who would parade and join with neighbouring towns for festivals. They brought together communities from Belgium, France and Spain, across the Alps to Venice, from where they will set off back to Belgium. The work speaks of collective effort, of folkloric tradition, of female empowerment and of course of Europe as a collective of communities. As I stood looking up at the giants, the pavilion filled with beating drums, so loud I could have been in an ’80s rave. A primal instinct kicked in and I was dancing with my European ancestors.

JULY

The Bounds – Royal Court Theatre

Stewart Pringle’s The Bounds might be the work I have thought about most since seeing it. The reviewers were so grumpy that they made me like it even more.

Set in the reign of Edward VI (the child King who succeeded Henry VIII) the opening is a Gavin & Stacey-worthy chat between two peasant outsiders. One has been told he has a vital role in one of those legendary village vs village football games where scores are settled over days of violent play.

We’re so far from the action these two can’t even see it. But every aspect of their life is affected by the game. Without question, if the ball ever comes near they will fight to the death to defend the honour of their community.

Isolation is broken by the appearance of an upper class interloper. He’s a Catholic on the run. Our two hate Catholics, or is it Protestants? They’ve lost track of the swinging pendulum of power.

And then a child walks by, ‘beating the bounds’ and marking the perimeter of the gentry’s land to mark territory and ownership. But the child changes the boundary and now our protagonist was born the wrong side of the tracks. Should he hate himself?

All hell breaks loose and the Director jump-cuts us through history, via projections of powerlessness. Is it too on the nose? Who cares? It still sits with me, a long distance from the action.

Pringle’s direction featured again a couple of months later when I travelled to Newcastle just to see his adaptation of the Rose Glass film, St Maud. Live Theatre is a lovely venue (and not just because I spotted Maxine Peake in the bar) and the show was great.

AUGUST

The view from my seat @shoplace

Death of England trilogy – @sohoplace

Roy Williams features for the second time in this run-down (and these plays feature for at least the third year).

Co-authored with Clint Dyer these state-of-the-nation pieces pull at the threads of all that it currently means to be English.

Originally staged in the round, around a George Cross shaped stage, at the National Theatre (plus a violent, fourth lock-down encounter, Face-to-Face that was screened by Sky Arts) this trilogy emerged year on year as standalone works with cross-over life stories.

For this year’s run at the wonderful, new @sohoplace, audiences could see any or all, in any order. I chose the original order, sitting in the same seat, on consecutive Mondays.

The first, Death of England is the story of Michael, dealing with the death of his larger than life, racist father. We see him at the funeral, tragically drawn, destined to destroy all that he loves through a drug and drink infused eulogy he doesn’t really believe for a man he never truly understood. Rafe Spall had played Michael originally, full of boyish nervous twitching charm, Thomas Coombes had more swagger, more resignation, more baby-faced menace.

Second up is Michael’s one-time best friend in Death of England: Delroy. It’s later, Delroy hadn’t seen Michael since that unforgivable outburst. He had his head down and his eyes on the prize – security, family and stuff. But it is complicated by an impatient run-in with the law, on his way to the birth of his first child (with Michael’s sister, Carly).

I’d seen Michael Balogun online, as a brilliantly surly Delroy, in the National Theatre production (after COVID cancelled the run after one performance). Paapa Essiedu brought a very different, cheeky energy. He owned the stage and spent much of the show engaging with the audience, including some brave ad-libs that could easily have destroyed the momentum had he not skilfully brought us back to Delroy’s ‘real world’.

Finally Death of England: Closing Time sees Delroy’s mum and Michael’s sister, preparing to hand back the keys to their shop, a joint enterprise whose failure seems inevitable, given their incendiary relationship (their aprons are even printed with opposing versions of their shop name).

Carly’s crass behaviour, at an all white hen-do, brings fuel to the fire, and the quick to cancel judgement from Denise’s all black friends fans the flames.

Sharon Duncan-Brewster had also played Denise at the National Theatre (although I’d actually seen Jo Martin, in a preview). And it was difficult for me to shake memories of the incredible Hayley Squires as Carly in that production. But Erin Doherty was her own woman and the updated script helped to give both characters more depth and room for nuance. It seemed a shame not to split their stories into two monologues as the arguing between them felt like the least believable aspect.

The trilogy is a portrait of our times, it is messy, messed up, humans trying to find answers and catching glimpses that they don’t even understand the questions.  Congrats to all involved.

SEPTEMBER

I couldn’t take photos because they covered all our camera lenses with stickers.

Ugly Sisters – New Diorama Theatre

In 1970, on the day The Female Eunuch was issued in America, a transgender woman plucked up the courage to talk to the legendary author Germaine Greer – ‘thank you so much for all you’ve done for us girls.’

All the power rested with the radical academic.

Two decades later Greer recalled that encounter in her article ‘On Why Sex Change is a Lie’. She wrote in such cartoonishly derogatory ways that I don’t feel comfortable repeating her words.

Performance art duo, piss/CARNATION have no such qualms. They project the words, huge onto the back wall as they reenact the scene and dissect its meaning.

They don wigs and plaster faces with clumsy make-up, they strap-on plastic lips; they dress in flapping draperies and smother their faces in knitted gimp masks.

They play both sides. Listening, interviewing, trying to hear Greer.

At one point they accidentally kill her character and audience members are invited to carry and bury her body.

Beyond the comically two-dimensional, this is a more thoughtful, forgiving work than Greer’s essay (or subsequent public statements). Maybe we don’t always understand or agree with each other but there’s no excuse for using our power to belittle and dehumanise.

Performers Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill brought tenderness and compassion and a riot of humour.

The Manikins – a work in progress

Deadweight Theatre’s show is not a work in progress. It was a fully crafted, hour long experience for two actors and one audience member.

At a bizarrely creepy venue, charismatic theatre maker, Jack Aldisert greeted me outside, supposedly to give context and make me feel at ease: ‘You don’t need to act, just be yourself’.

Inside he transformed into the questionable psychiatrist, Dr. Ligotti. His assistant checked me in to a clinic to deal with my illusionary belief that I was in there as part of an immersive theatre show.

The ‘work in progress’ refers to Jack breaking character to ask me what was and wasn’t resonating. Or was that part of my psychosis? Minutes later the actors were actors, asking me for directions. ‘How would the Michael character react to this kind of situation?’. And so it continued, scene within scenes, spiralling down through layers of my reality.

It turns out I really struggle to just be myself.

I wrote a full review a couple of days after the incredible experience (or maybe I am still there and all this is part of my constructed reality).

OCTOBER

Forced Entertainment on stage at Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Signal to Noise – Queen Elizabeth Hall

The exceptional theatrical ensemble, Forced Entertainment are celebrating ‘40 years of tearing up the rulebook’. Signal to Noise is their big new work to mark the occasion.

With racks of clothes, lining the wings, a white floor and a backdrop of wooden flat boards, it feels like we are in a familiar space. Maybe it’s not quite a TV studio.

There are microphones positioned on the floor and, one by one, the performers enter, pick one up and speak: ‘is this on?’ ‘can you hear my voice?’.

They slow and speed, slur and annunciate, their voices overlap, intersect and repeat.

‘Is this my voice?’, ‘are these my arms?’

It dawns on me that they are all miming. Like a VHS tape with the vocal track never quite in sync. Disquieting and compelling.

These are AI voices, speaking in patterns that focus on our need for recognition.

On stage, everyone is busy all the time, shifting tables, chairs, rugs and pot-plants, wandering off-set, changing clothes, donning wigs. The action is so often happening in the peripheries.

A soundscape drifts in and out of conscious hearing, seemingly independent to the action, sometimes colliding in perfect symmetry.

We dip into rhythms of speech that we recognise as jokes or chat-show anecdotes but there is no punchline, no point to any of it. The same half story, again and again, the same but different, mangled rather than degraded in its duplication.

Maybe, when our AI overlords have recycled and boiled down all of our content to a gruel of banality, it’s artists like Forced Entertainment that we’ll all need to turn to for flavour context, inspiration and humanity.

Let’s hope they are still around or they’ve inspired new generations.

NOVEMBER

Actually I already know that Forced Entertainment have inspired new generations because I saw two performances by their acolytes at Battersea Arts Centre in November.

L’Addition – Battersea Arts Centre

Bert and Nasi (Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas) are exceptional performers.

In 2020 they were recipients of the Forced Entertainment Award in memory of Huw Chadbourn.

For L’Addition they teamed up with Tim Etchells, Artistic Director of Forced Entertainment, in a work that forms part of that company’s 40th anniversary season.

First performed in French, at the Avignon Festival, for us the duo perform in English.

Dressed in matching charcoal trousers and crisp white shirts they first greet us and set the scene. They explain that one of them will perform the role of a waiter and the other a customer.

The customer will order wine and the waiter will pour it, over filling the glass to the annoyance of the customer. Then the waiter will clear the table and they’ll perform the same scene again.

Which is exactly what they do, over and over again. Changing the dynamics and emphasis each time, playing with the power structures, stretching out silences, enacting out the dance of the tasting, speeding up, slowing down, over-explaining, under-sharing, pushing their luck beyond credulity.

And when it’s time to settle the bill (L’Addition) – who should pay? Not the waiter of course, not the audience, they’ve already paid to be there. Not the customer, he hasn’t actually drunk anything. Ah, it’s ‘on the house’.

Blood Show – Battersea Arts Centre

Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth is a fascinating performer (and long-time Forced Entertainment collaborator). Blood Show is the second instalment of their Extinction Trilogy (after Monster Show and before Nature Show) which Chillingworth describes as “A post-human laugh in the face of impending Armageddon”.

Donned in a plastic poncho, like a day-tripper to a soggy Legoland, I sat very close to an impeccably clean white carpet, while Chillingworth lounged, one leg over the arm of a white armchair. Every visible surface of skin was drenched in fake blood.

To the side, fight coordinator Craig Hambling was dressed in a white boiler suit with white make up covering his visible skin. And, inexplicably, a white-sheeted ghost floated between them, singing and playing the ukulele.

Wordless, Chillingworth and Hambling engaged in a choreographed fight. Punching, slapping, holding and scrabbling with each other, blood slowly passing between the two.

One victorious, they parted and reset – more blood applied to every surface.

Then again, with the ghost collecting and depositing Hambling to the starting position. The same routine with varying outcomes.

And again, now bloodier. More violent.

Interspersed with humour and the ghost singing falsetto and playing the uke.

And now bloodier still.

Chillingworth enacting shoot-outs, blood splatters from crushed plastic cups, across the notebook of the reviewer in the seat next to me.

More and more blood. Buckets of blood, sloshed across the set, over and over.

Until an end where that white carpet was soaked in the mock violence and fake blood of it all.

They played us out with Martha Wainwright’s Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole. The perfect ending.

Bloody brilliant.

DECEMBER

Julia Masli, in costume.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – Soho Theatre

Having missed this show in Edinburgh (it was at 1am and I fell asleep), I was delighted to catch it at Soho Theatre in February. I enjoyed it so much that I booked again when Julia Masli returned with it in December.

It was just as brilliant the second time around. Maybe more so because I could better understand the stagecraft of it all.

Trained clown performer, Julia Masli appears out of darkness with tiny hand-held spotlight on her face.

We all lean in to hear her whisper… ‘ha?’

Dressed in a costume that is part Mongolian shepherd, part Vivienne Westwood and part interplanatory explorer, she wordlessly explains her physical disability. One of her arms is a shop mannequin’s leg. As it has no grip, she has to tape a microphone to the end.

‘Problem?’ she says in what could be a dubious accent if we didn’t know she is Estonian.

And for the next 55 minutes, wide-eyed in wonder, she attempts to solve the problems of her audience, one by one.

Masli’s skill is in improvising around a few key set-pieces whilst keeping the pace laconic and the mood ethereal.

She trusts her audience. She knows that someone is going to say ‘no problem’, that someone else will mention climate change, and that at least one person will have a heartbreakingly personal story that they’ll share will a couple of hundred strangers because Julia gives them permission to do so.

A raised eyebrow or a long stare is all she needs to manage the crowd. She encourages the shy, contains the boisterous and knows just how far to push an idea to keep the momentum going,

It really is a great show. Do go and see it.

As well as the outstanding show above, I was at many other, mostly great, events in 2024…

Cinema

Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan with Director Steve McQueen, interviewed by London Film Festival Director Kristy Matheson.

The BFI London Film Festival was back to full strength (after the strikes of last year and the COVID years before then). But somehow the programme didn’t spark my interest in the way that previous years had; I even skipped the Secret film and Closing Gala. But I did see a few films.

I was at the opening Gala showing of Blitz. It’s a masterclass of Directing from Steve McQueen, viewing the WWII experience through the eyes of a young boy of colour. Saoirse Ronan was, of course, brilliant in it.

Home Truths was the most Mike Lee of films but his first to focus on the lives of black characters. I often moan about how unrealistic films are; why can’t they tell real stories of real lives? Oh, that’s why, because real lives are mundane and petty and laborious and filled with misunderstanding. Mike Lee is brilliant. I particularly loved his pre-screening interview where he said that anyone who talked about the plot in advance should be taken out and shot.

Bring Them Down was a great film about intergenerational feuds between Irish sheepfarmers. It was interesting to see Paul Ready in a very different role to Motherland. I’ve no idea how Barry Keoghan fits so many films into his schedule, although I suspect even his casting won’t be enough to attract a large audience to what is a depressingly believable, if unusually heightened story of the violence of retribution.

Nightbitch was lots of fun. Amy Adams was perfect in the role, turning feral as she loses her identity and body to her life as ‘mother’. It did remind me, once again, how many writers and film makers bring their privilege to the screen; maybe everyone should watch Mike Lee to be reminded that the vast majority of us are not academics, novelists or conceptual artists, although I guess I am a Graphic Designer which is just as much of a cliché.

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English language film, The Room Next Door centres around assisted dying. Given that subject I don’t know how Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton managed to make it so stultifyingly unemotional. Their characters, both writers (yet again) wafting around astonishing architecture in impeccable clothes and literally getting away with murder through privileged connections. It split the critics and I can see why.

Saving the day, I next watched Bird. Andrea Arnold set her latest film around the places she grew up: Gravesend and Dartford. Maybe it particularly resonated with me because that’s also where I’m from. The day trip to Leysdown was a particular highlight in this coming of age meets mystical stranger story, underscored by addiction and violence.

Beyond the festival I did see a few films on the big screens, despite a growing grumpiness at the behaviour of cinema audiences…

I really didn’t understand why The Colour Purple was being remade as a musical. I went to see it anyway. The performances were great, the set-pieces were spectacular. But I’m still not sure I understand people making light of such dark times.

I can’t believe Poor Things was this year but it must have been because I saw the costumes while I was at the Barbican in January. It felt like Yorgos Lanthimos had been given too much budget but I still very much enjoyed it.

Previous Lanthimos collaborator Olivia Colman turned up in the very British film, Wicked Little Letters. I saw that at the very quaint, newly opened Sidcup Storyteller. There is still something thrilling about seeing prim British characters having a good swear (even if there are few films where Colman doesn’t drop an F bomb).

It was great to see Jonathan Demme’s ‘live’ Talking Heads show, Stop Making Sense again, this time at the packed Prince Charles Cinema where the staff introduction made it very clear – you may be tempted to sing and dance: ‘don’t do that’.

I also saw the Blur documentary, To The End which was interesting but seemed to lack any arc or specific purpose. Maybe that was why we were almost the only people still in the Greenwich Odeon when the cleaners came in 10 minutes before the end.

American Fiction and Civil War made for interesting comparisons of the state of that nation, although I worry about how prescient the latter might be.

Quiet Place: Day One couldn’t recapture the magic of the first film, even if it was a prequel. Dune II was very big and loud on the IMAX screen. I’m not sure I have much more to say about it.

I absolutely loved the body-horror and social satire of The Substance later in the year, despite or maybe because of the ridiculousness of the premise and science of it all.

And Heretic was enjoyable despite the massively silly plot point of Hugh Grant’s house being inexplicably lined with metal.

Love Lies Bleeding felt like it could have been made as a companion piece to last year’s incredible Titane. Director Rose Glass is fast becoming one of my favourites.

I thought Didi was a masterful telling of the painful transition through boyhood at a specific point in history (with chat rooms and txt tlk but no real internet). A desperate desire to both fit in and stand out, a naive self-confidence mixed with crushing self-doubt, and the awkward encounters that replay endlessly in your head.

But my film of the year has to be All of Us Strangers. It was an emotional maelstrom;  an original, compelling, exquisite insight into masculine fragility that absolutely floored me. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to bring myself to watch it again but I am so pleased I watched it once.

Television

As well as cinema trips, this year, I’ve also been trying to note some of the films I watch on the small screen, kind of in the order I watched them: The Man in the White Suit / Queenpins / Quiz Lady / The Mummy / Anon / Hypnotic / Reuniting the Rubins / Northern Comfort / The Beekeeper / The Old Oak / Top Gun II Maverick / Gosford Park / Scoop / Love Lies Bleeding / Margin Call / Reality / Anatomy of a Fall / Mad to be Normal / Benny and Joon / Frida / Typist Artist Pirate King / Odette / Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan / Mr Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse / I’m no Angel / Dumb Money / Requiem for a Dream / Woman of the Hour / Zone of Interest / The Holdovers / Safe / Our Ladies / Censor / Silent Night [the most depressing Xmas movie ever] / A Matter of Life and Death / The Man Who Knew Too Much / Gremlins / National Lampoons Christmas Vacation / Muppets Christmas Carol / Murder on the Orient Express / Perfect Days (twice).

I also tried to write down some of the significant TV stuff that I watched; I know I’ve missed a lot because I keep remembering things as I’m typing. Don’t count any of it as a recommendation, I watch lots of terrible telly.

Drama –

Newsroom 1, 2 & 3 (Sky) / Fool Me Once (Netflix) / Inside Man (BBC) / Witness Number 3 (Channel 5) / The Drowning (Channel 5) / Slow Horses 1, 2, 3 & 4  (AppleTV) / The Way (BBC) / The Watcher (Netflix) / The Gentlemen (Netflix) / Whitstable Pearl (ITV) / Rebus (BBC) / New Amsterdam 1, 2, 3 & 4 / Bodkin (Netflix) / Eric (Netflix) / The Crown 6 (Netflix) / Nightsleeper (BBC) / Grace 1,2,3 & 4 (ITV) / Elspeth (Sky) / Showtrial 1 & 2 (BBC) / Sherwood 2 (BBC) / Chelsea Detective 1 & 2 (U)/ The Morning Show 1, 2 & 3 (Apple TV) / Capital (Netflix) / DI Ray 2 (ITV) / Lincoln Lawyer 1, 2 & 3 (Netflix) / A Man on the Inside (Netflix) / The Diplomat 1 & 2 (Netflix) / The Franchise (Sky) / Everyone Else Burns 2 (Channel 4) / Black Doves (Netflix) / Ludwig (BBC) / Ripley (Netflix) / No Good Deed (Netflix) / Honour (ITV) / Insomnia (Paramount+) / The Agency (Paramount+)

Comedy –

Loudermilk 1, 2 & 3 (Netflix) / The Chair (Netflix) / Here We Go 2 (BBC) / Fisk 2 (Netflix) / Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda / Only Murders in the Building 1, 2 & 3 (Disney+) / We Are Ladyparts 2 (Channel 4)  / Trying 1,2, 3 & 4 (Apple) / Ted Lasso 1,2, 3 & 4 (Apple) / Inside No.9 9 (BBC)

Reality –

Traitors 2 (BBC) / Celebrity Race Around the World 1 & 2  (BBC) / Blown Away 4 (Netflix) / Welcome to Wrexham (Disney+). Do Only Connect and University Challenge counts as reality shows?

Documentary –

Shirkers (Netflix) / Steve (Martin) a documentary in two pieces (AppleTV) / The Pilgrimage of Gilbert & George (Sky) / American Nightmare (Netflix) / Escaping Twin Flame (Netflix) / Lucan (BBC) / Hearts of Darkness (Amazon Prime) and Wolf Alice on the road (Amazon Prime)

Music

My first live music outing of the year was to see (Cog’s client) London Philharmonic Orchestra’s commuter concert: Jazz Roots at St John’s. The obvious highlight was Amy Casey’s arrangement of Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody and Stevie Wonder’s Superstition played on four bassoons. Unbelievable. I wrote about it, as it was our Cog Night:

My next outing was another client and another orchestra – OAE playing Sibelius, brilliantly loudly at the Royal Festival Hall.

I also got to see my favourite very loud, post rock bands – Godspeed You! Black Emperor at The Troxy, and Japanese band Mono at the gorgeously renovated and rejuvenated Hackney Church.

The Blue Aeroplanes on stage at Lafayette.

In the summer I was thrilled to see The Blue Aeroplanes back on stage (at Lafayette) after frontman Gerard Langley’s recent health scares. It was a little disturbing to see special guest Rodney Allen looking my age (as I remember him looking like a schoolboy in the late ’80s). But dancer Wojtek Dmochowski was just as energetic as I remember, and the gaggle of guitars encore of Breaking in my Heart took me way back to see them when I was in my teens.

Seeing Oxford band Suspire at 93 Feet East and at Goldsmith’s Tavern felt a lot like those old days too; it’s wonderful to know there’s still a grass roots venue network. Actually, I almost saw them three times this year but arrived late for the third gig.

The rest of my gig going was dominated by female performers.

Picking back up on my nostalgia for the music of my youth, The Breeders were celebrating the 30th Anniversary of their album Last Splash. I caught them at The Troxy. Kim Deal was in great voice and everyone seemed excited to be performing Lime House in a venue next door to Limehouse.

Also from the ’90s (but rooted in ’60s surf rock), I really enjoyed the Japanese trio The 5, 6, 7, 8’s at the oddly municipal venue 229 Great Portland St. The audience was a bizarre mix of hen-party energy and ’50s biker wannabes, maybe they all thought they were in their own Quentin Tarantino movies.

American/Japanese artist Mitski was lots of fun at Hammersmith Apollo, it was wonderful to see their audience filled with young people who felt so comfortable being whatever they wanted to be, inspired by a performer who has always done her own thing in her own way.

Also carving her own path, Elizabeth Bernholz’s Gazelle Twin persona continues to evolve and delight. I saw her perform the new, Black Dog album in a special show with London Contemporary Orchestra at the British Library. It wasn’t the best venue (a temporary stage on a flat surface in the middle of the huge atrium) but it was appropriate to be there while the Library celebrates the lives of Medieval Women.

I did also get to see that exhibition while I was there. They had the actual signature of Joan of Arc and some very strange wall paintings of mutilated nuns, taken from the walls of Dartford Priory.  Who’d have thought Dartford would get a second mention in my annual round-up?

Dance

Abby Z (I think she is the performer with pink hair) and The New Utility after the Sadler’s Wells performance.

Gecko always do brilliant work. Kin (at National Theatre) was the personal story from Artistic Director, Amit Lahav reflecting on his grandmother’s harrowing story as she fled from Yemen to Palestine in 1932. It was less theatrically inventive (and less dancey) than Gecko shows I’ve seen before. But it was hugely moving to hear each performer step forward to tell of their personal migration story.

At London Coliseum I saw what might be my first proper ballet: Georgia State Ballet’s take on Swan Lake. It was a treat to have such good seats (I took my mum for her 80th birthday); I’ve never sat in the stalls at The Coliseum before, and never been able to see the faces of dancers on a big stage. They were terrific but there were two oddities: they kept stopping to take a bow after each solo, and the swan came back to life at the end.

I saw two dance-based events as part of LIFT.

Picking up on the theme of swans, L’Animale is apparently inspired by Anna Pavlova’s The Dying Swan. In a very slow, considered and deliberate performance Chiara Bersani (who lives with has a brittle bone condition) explores the politics of the body. I’m not sure I fully understood what was happening but it made me rethink my definition of dance. Staged in the atrium of the Old Bailey, the space was a spectacle in itself.

Bacchae: Prelude to a Purge, at Sadlers Wells, was bizarre. The publicity blurb states: “…traverse the order and wild chaos of Euripides—and ultimately, the depths of the human psyche”. The Stage wrote that this “Attempt to channel the madness of Dionysian release turns into a gruelling marathon of gurning and thrusting”.  I sat somewhere between them, laughing with and at the dozen or so performers, especially as one dropped their trousers, held a mic up, twerked and sang out of their arse.

I was back at Sadler’s Wells for three more performances:

Hofesh Shechter Company’s Theatre of Dreams was typically stunning, jumping between bright epic ensembles and solos, picked out in spotlights; delving deeper and deeper through layers of curtained staging.

Similar in scale, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rosas’ new work was titled Exit Above, After the Tempest. People have described it as a fresh start for the choreographer whose reputation has been tarnished by recent allegations. I’m not sure I fully appreciated the free styling hip-hoppery or the references to Shakespeare’s play via an essay about a Paul Klee painting.

My stand-out dance performance was the much more human-scaled Radioactive Practice, from Abby Z and The New Utility. Not least because I got to sit on the stage at Sadler’s Wells. Abby Zbikowski’s choreography takes its inspiration from the street. Yes, from street dance and fitness gyms but also from building sites and street workers. The half dozen performers flail, kick and lunge, hurl into each other each other. With superhuman strength they leap into the air from prone positions, and butterfly on their backs, flying a foot off the floor. The soundtrack is squeaking trainers, gasps, moans and shouts of encouragement – ‘you got this’. The programme encourages us to join in, to let the mood take us, to express ourselves vocally. Of course this is London, not New York. We sit in silent appreciation, clap politely at the end and leave the stage.

Art

Yoko Ono: ‘Add Colour (Refugee Boat)’

Made from over 2,500 pieces of coal, Coalescence (see what he did there) is by artist/designer Paul Cocksedge. He hand-polished each piece of coal and suspended them on wires, forming a globe around a single 200W light bulb. That much coal produces enough energy to power that bulb for a year. It made for a stunning installation, hung in the Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College.

On a trip to Wiltshire I accidentally stayed in the home of an ardent conspiracy theorist. Ask me about that sometime, it was fascinating. Whilst there I dropped in to Messums West, a series of converted barns, set in open countryside, housing to art and sculpture. I particularly enjoyed Of The Earth, a group exhibition of ceramic artists. The star of the show was Halima Cassel’s Virtues of Unity, showcasing 54 sculptural bowls, each hand-carved from the clay of a different country.

Es Devlin features at least twice, in this article, as a theatre designer. I also saw her art installation, Congregation at St Mary le Strand. The work features 50 large scale chalk and charcoal portraits of Londoners who have experienced forced displacement from their homelands. As I queued to enter I was lucky enough to meet her and tell her how much I admire the range of her work.

Yayoi Kusama had another show at Victoria Miro. Every day I pray for love featured an infinity room and an infinity ladder plus lots of other fun things.

My stand-out art show was Yoko Ono’s Music of the Mind at Tate Modern. It’s easy to dismiss Ono’s work as gimmicky and sleight. But I love it; maybe that’s my level. It made me think and see the world differently from before I went in. Plus I got to write on the walls, hit a nail with a hammer and marvel at the memory of people playing chess with all white pieces on an all white board.

Immersive

Fuerza Bruta performers, racing around the world, above the crowd at Roundhouse.

I’m never really sure what belongs under the slightly arbitrary title of ‘immersive’.

Sleepwalk Immersive helpfully define themselves in that category. At St. Peter’s in Bethnal Green, in a Dibley-esque waiting area I met a member of the regular congregation who seemed bemused by the sudden influx of hipsters. When my number was up I was ushered down steep steps into the crypt and the Dionysian world of Bacchanalia. It was a fun experience, with many interesting set-pieces but I often lost the plot of this complex Greek drama, set in Egypt, retold through the lens of 1960s radical hippies by recent conservatoire graduates.

Currently between big London shows, Punchdrunk are using their vast Woolwich warehouse to experiment with smaller forms. In Viola’s Room, barefoot audiences, half a dozen at a time, are guided through timed lighting cues and fairytale sets via Helena Bonham Carter’s voice, played through individual headsets. There were some opening week issues while I was there and an accident of timing meant I was left stranded in the dark and had to be rescued by a man with a torch.

Shoreditch Town Hall was the venue for Goliath: Playing with Reality, an interesting VR examination of how online gaming has helped people deal with the symptoms of schizophrenia.

It was wonderful to see Fuerza Bruta back at the Roundhouse
with their new show Aven. It might not be as impressive as their shows at the venue but there was a life-sized whale, and a man who sprayed us with a jet-washer while we danced to Icona Pop’s I don’t care.

Comedy

Frankie Thompson in CAttS (not the musical)

I didn’t see any conventional stand-up comedy this year. I did see lots of very funny things. In fact plenty of the my ‘theatre’ shows could probably be called comedy/cabaret and I’m not sure the events below are particularly distinct from those. But you have to draw a line somewhere, and I drew mine around these…

I saw two Daniel Kitson shows in the summer. I’d seen them both before.

The Ballad of Roger and Grace is a tender, gentle comic tale, with musical interventions from Gavin Osborn. I saw it at the always gorgeous Union Chapel and I remembered to arrive relatively early to nab a reasonable place in the uncomfortable pews.

I was really pleased that Kitson brought his Collaborator – A Work in Progress show to The Albany in Deptford, which meant I could walk there after work. The conceit of the show is that, despite his hatred of audience participation, he hands out scripts to every willing audience member and we each have a line or two to contribute. I’d seen it in Edinburgh and was terrified throughout. I was just as anxious this time and it was just as good.

I caught the Max and Ivan show, Life Choices at Soho Theatre. I hadn’t seen (or really heard of) them before. This was a surprisingly tender show about two men who seem to have written a show about splitting up their comedy partnership and making the choice to do other things with their lives.  It was very funny and a bit sad.

My stand-out comedy show was a revisit to Frankie Thompson’s CAttS (which I also saw, twice last year). I’m billing it as comedy, partly because it is eye-wateringly funny but also because I wanted the opportunity to include a photo. CAttS (not the musical) is actually centred around Thompson’s fragile mental health – is that funny? She is a brilliant comic performer. Her lip-synching to interviews of Jacob Rees Mogg as a child, or of Elaine Paige on hearing that she was going to replace an injured Judi Dench, are wonderful. But it is her recounting of The Apprentice episode, where one delusional team created cat calendars for Great Ormond St Hospital, that almost literally floored me.

Theatre

I saw a lot of theatre in 2024.

My year was bookended by trips to the Young Vic.

My first show of the year was Matthew Dunster’s take on Pinter’s The Homecoming. It’s an awfully uncomfortable play and they played it perfectly uncomfortably. Joe Cole was the waywardly academic son returning with his new wife (Lisa Diveney) to a masculine home of boxing and butchery. The patriarch (Jared Harris) is beyond his prime but still oozes masculine menace and misogyny from every pore.

Like all Pinter, there’s no clear story arc just fallible people living complex lives that we can recognise but never understand. If anyone tells you that London was better in the good old days, take them to see this play; it’s a jolting reminder of how violence and hatred ran like a river of filth just below the surface of the post-war capital.

I loved it but I know it wasn’t for everyone…

The last theatre I saw in 2024 was Lyndsey Turner’s take on Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. Regina Hubbard (Anne-Marie Duff) attempts to play her brothers at their own game in the big business of the deep South. The acting was great, and I appreciate it was a period piece, but I did find it unsettling to see the black actors being such servants to the action.

Also at the Young Vic I enjoyed the Patrick Marber directed Nachtland, the story of a modern German family who discover a painting when clearing out their late father’s loft. Angus Wright stood out for me as the wonderfully creepy, alt-right art collector. And it was a treat to see Jane Horrocks back on stage.

I sat far too close to the action for the A Face in the Crowd, the musical satire of American political populism, with tunes from Elvis Costello. I was so close that Broadway star, Ramin Karimloo stepped through the fourth wall and onto my leg.

Rosie Sheehy and the cast of Machinal on stage at the Old Vic.

Along the street, at the Old Vic, the ever brilliant Rosie Sheehy was wonderfully detached in Sophie Treadwell’s avant garde play, Machinal, about a woman who has had enough. Richard Jones’s production featured a stunning set and an oppressively ticking soundscape.

Also there, I saw James Corden and Anna Maxwell Martin in what could have been a wonderful two-hander, The Constituent touching on topics of stalking, public access to MPs and the lack of support for ex-soldiers. Frustratingly, the third character of a comic policeman cut the atmosphere for me. That and the French woman behind me complaining about ‘l’homme avec le grand tête’ impeding her view.

Down the road at the National Theatre, I tried really hard to see Til the Stars Come Down. I got an email cancelling my first booking due to an indisposed cast member. I rebooked for a week later, sitting in the front row, dangerously close to the realism of a wedding with its familial feuds, racist undertow and simmering sisterly resentment. I even got a handshake from groom Marek (Marc Wootton). But I still don’t know if the wedding happened. A cast member was taken ill in the interval and we were all sent home.

It was lovely to see Michael Sheen in his pyjamas, in one of the two NHS-focused plays of my year. Nye celebrated the struggles of Aneurin Bevin through a series of flasbacks on his deathbed. But it all felt a little sleight for such a big topic.

And I was a bit disappointed by James Graham’s adaptation of Boys from the Blackstuff. It felt too respectful of the Bleasdale’s original, trying to squeeze the whole TV series into a single show. It just wasn’t quite dark enough to capture the mood of Thatcher’s ’80s.

25 years after its first staging, Simon McBurney and Complicité brought their Mnemonic back to the Olivier. Bizarrely, or maybe ironically, as it’s such an interesting and original show about the complexity of memory, I still can’t remember if I had seen it before. It all felt so familiar. I loved it (maybe again).

Es Devlin’s vertically shifting set for ‘Coriolanus’ at National Theatre.

Still at National Theatre, I did really enjoy Coriolanus. The conceptual theme, of bringing history to life, was beautifully realised and David Oyelowo makes for a stunning lead. Yes, there are flaws and the action lacks oomph. But Es Devlin’s set and Tim Lutkin’s lighting are so terrific that they hold the whole production together in a very firm embrace.

Of course I saw some other Shakespeare.

If you ever wondered what happens if a rainstorm hits Shakespeare’s Globe, I can tell you. The groundlings get very, very wet. Michelle Terry was a wonderful, Trumpian Richard III, making lewd asides as they plotted their way to power. But I could barely see through the driving downpour, or hear over the beating sound of rain on my hood. I left at the interval but I’m sure it ended badly for our anti-hero. I was already so wet that it took three days for my shoes to dry out.

Yaël Farber’s epic direction of King Lear was a great use of three and a half hours. The all-black cast brought a different audience to the Almeida and fresh perspectives to the character relationships, especially between the sisters. Danny Sapani was mercurial, dangerous and pitifully flawed (if unusually healthy and muscular) as Lear. My only disappointment was how under utilised Clarke Peters was as the Fool, played more as a voice in Lear’s head than the side-kick jester from his court.

South of the river (in a purpose built, industrial marquee in Canada Water) I saw Ralph Fiennes & Indira Varma star in Macbeth. It was an interesting experiment in Shakespeare as spectacle, with burnt-out cars littering the entrance, and merch-counters in the expansive foyer/bar. The place was packed. The show was good. Let’s hope it attracts those audiences into more permanent structures.

A mile down the road I was really pleased to see Greenwich Theatre back on form with a couple of great shows.

As I wrote, on Instagram, at the time “Bryony Lavery’s Frozen is significantly more harrowing than its namesake. But it does feature several mentions of the phrase ‘let it go’ plus wonderful performances, especially from Kerrie Taylor as the mum of an abducted child”.  Taylor wrote back:

Later in the year, I saw the marvellously ambiguous The River, written by Jez Butterworth. ‘The Woman’ joins ‘The Man’ (Paul McGann) at his log cabin, on the one day of the year when the rainbow trout return to the place from where their dull grey kin had bullied them out to sea. Does the man return every year with a different woman? Is he testing and seeking some kind of impossibly perfect partner? If so, what is driving him? We never find out. I loved the enigma and atmosphere of it all.

On a very different scale, I also saw Butterworth’s latest play The Hills of California at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Set in a hotel, in the less fashionable backstreets of Blackpool, the script perfectly places the action a misstep behind the fashions in very specific moments of modern British history. It’s the story of a family whose estranged daughter returns from a supposedly glamorous LA life where she’s living out their dreams and living with a secret they’ve all been denying. A really great script and a wonderful ensemble cast.

Also in the West End (although I really don’t like seeing shows in the cramped and overpriced West End) I saw…

Hadestown back in London with a new cast. I’d loved it at the National Theatre a few years ago. I liked it at the Lyric theatre.

At Wyndham’s Theatre, Lesley Manville and Mark Strong were brilliant in Robert Icke’s version of Oedipus. Set on the eve of a modern political election, the Greek tragedy gradually emerges as we literally count down to the moment of truth.

Kind of still in the West End, but in the very different scale of the Donmar Warehouse, I saw several shows.

I loved the Donmar’s mad-cap modern production of The Cherry Orchard, directed by Benedict Andrews. Nina Hoss plays the epitome of head-in-the-sand aristocratic denial to Adeel Akhtar’s brilliantly spivvy new money. Staged in the round, with the lights on, and characters sitting amongst us, we were in the action as the tone shifted from banging-house to end-of-the-party realisation. I was especially pleased to see June Watson in the excellent ensemble cast as well as Michael Gould who seems to pop up in so many great productions.

I was less excited but still enjoyed Skeleton Crew which sought to tell the story of a modern moment in US history. Set in a Detroit car plant, closing due to the effects of the 2008 recession, the ensemble cast seem to represent the tipping point of America’s working class and the slide towards populist politics. There’s talk of rising crime, guns and OxyContin.

I suppose it was exciting to see Adrien Brody in Fear of 13. But I thought the script and direction didn’t give him enough of a chance to do much acting between the rapid storytelling of every detail of this real-life story of injustice and wrongful imprisonment.

It was a treat to see Keeley Hawes and Jack Davenport in the masterful production of Lucy Kirkwood’s birth-of-the-NHS-adjacent play, The Human Body. With clipped accents and English manners the story is of a female GP and Labour party candidate, in a requited, Brief Encounter style affair with a Hollywood star returned home to care for his elderly mum. With an impeccable supporting cast, including Siobhán Redmond and Pearl Mackie playing multiple characters, the play was beautifully crafted and directed by Michael Longhurst & Ann Yee.

A chair, a table, two glasses of water, a vial of poison and the script for ‘White Rabbit, Red Rabbit’.

Down the road, in the very modern and fully accessible (if oddly named) @sohoplace I saw Pearl Mackie again, this time in the solo show, White Rabbit, Red Rabbit.

Typical of a Nassim Soleimanpour show, the actor reads the script for the first time, on stage. In this show, there’s a lot of audience participation which really suited the in-the-round set up. But I found it odd that the script hadn’t been updated to either suit the staging or to account for modern sensibilities. The play tackles the topic of ‘committing’ suicide head-on in a quite matter-of-fact, even humorous way. Mackie did a great job of managing the sensibilities of it all, even adapting the stage directions as she went.

The show lends itself perfectly to being a ‘star vehicle’ – there’s no need for rehearsals or a cast, and you only need your big name for one night while they are in London doing other things. Nica Burns looks to have called in many favours to gather a superstar roll-call of celebrity actors to keep the show running for weeks.

I was interested to see how another actor would handle it. So a week later I saw Olly Alexander take his place. There was a very different vibe with genuinely fanatical fans. At one point a seemingly intoxicated audience member had to be (very skilfully) escorted from the middle of a row after repeatedly filming and shouting out. Alexander continued unphased but it made me realise why public-figures must feel the need to protect themselves from their ‘adoring’ fans. Alexander made a swift exit rather than the stage direction of lying motionless as we all left.

A couple of month’s earlier, I’d seen another of Soleimanpour’s ‘plays’ at the Royal Court.

ECHO (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) was another cold-reading with famous faces taking on the task. But this time, Soleimanpour appeared as himself via a live video link, cleverly cut with pre-recorded video. The story jumped through time and space and touched on topics of identity and subjugation. I saw Mawaan Rizwan in the role. Maybe he lacked the gravitas of the other famous names but he brought humanity, vulnerability and a personal perspective as a gay man born in Pakistan.

Thomas Finnegan and Charlotte McCurry after ‘Lie Low’.

Also at the Royal Court, I saw the Katie Mitchell’s staging of Maggie Nelson’s book, Bluets. Ben Whishaw, Emma D’Arcy and Kayla Meiklewas speak overlapping, interspersed snippets of thought, poetic folly and sexual fantasy, close into mics, filmed from different angles, displayed on screens, intercut with images of water, cityscapes and bowls of blue marbles. It was a dreamscape of blue remembered chills.

Upstairs, Charlotte McCurry and Thomas Finnegan were wonderfully funny in Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s play about the very unfunny topic of home invasion and sexual assault, Lie Low. In a very simple staging, Faye enlists the help of her brother, Naoise, to try a form of exposure therapy by hiding in her wardrobe, dressed in a chicken mask. Described to me, by someone who should know, as being “as slippery of a bar of soap in the shower” which summed it up perfectly.

Also upstairs, I really enjoyed Oli Forsyth’s play, Brace Brace. Entering the custom built set (designed by Anna Reid) we were ushered to seats so dangerously close to a deep hole in the stage that they had to use barriers to prevent us toppling in. Anjana Vasan and Phil Dunster play a couple whose honeymoon flight is literally hijacked. The script takes us on a journey that banks and turns between power and consent, expectations, forgiveness and gaslighting, and a moment of unforgettable Shakesperean violence that nobody wants to talk about.

The cast of ‘Giant’.

Downstairs for the third time in the year, Giant told a fictionalised version of the true story of Roald Dahl’s anti-semitic public statements, and the hopeless attempts of those around him to get him to apologise. In 2018, when first time playwright (but well respected Director) Mark Rosenblatt started writing it, cancel-culture and the separation of art from artist were the hot topics. In 2024 the focus has shifted; a week after I saw Giant, Israel invaded Lebanon for the sixth time. Directed Nicholas Hytner Giant transfers to the West End in 2025 with John Lithgow back as Roald Dahl, alongside Elliot Levey and Rachael Stirling. Although, sadly it doesn’t look like the ever-busy Romola Garai will be back.

Q&A with Les Antliaclastes after ‘Ambergris’.

Another much visited venue for me this year was the Barbican.

In the Pit, my only London Mime Festival event of the year was to see the brilliant puppet company, Les Antliaclastes perform their new work, Ambergris. I particularly enjoyed the post show Q&A where the company explained why they had settled in France under a much more supportive funding system for artists. Interestingly they talked of attending Croydon College at roughly the same time as me. Maybe my life could have gone a very different way if we’d met back then.

Also in the Pit, Ruth Negga was wonderful in Quiet Songs, a coming-of-age tale about a young gay person dealing with a breaking voice in a broken world. A poetic, theatrical world was conjured by the company playing string instruments with swords.

On the main stage I finally saw the beautifully constructed My Neighbour Totoro. It is every bit as good as everyone says it is.

Isabelle Huppert was magnetic as she performed as if a marionette under director Robert Wilson’s strings, reading from the letters of Mary Queen of Scots  in rapid-fire, tongue-twisting French, in Mary Said What She Said. I often found myself drifting from the surtitles, unfussed by meaning, mesmerised by her rhythmic vocal dexterity.

Also in French (and other languages), La Colline – théâtre national in Paris, brought their House project to Barbican Theatre. The large scale production tells the story of a West Jerusalem home through accounts of its successive occupants. It is based on a documentary project that spanned 25 years, commissioned by and subsequently banned by Israeli television. I admired the ambition but I’m not sure I understood why it was on stage rather than on film.

Also at the Barbican, but in the Great Hall, I saw the former NASA roboticist and cartoonist Randall Munroe talking about What if? A Decade of Imagining the Improbable.

The cast of ‘Abigail’s Party’.

Further east, I was tempted to Stratford East by Abigail’s Party, directed by Nadia Fall. Tamzin Outhwaite played a wonderfully predatory Beverley, prowling across the stage and looming over Laurence. But it was Pandora Colin as Abigail’s mother, Sue who really stole the show for me. Mike Leigh’s play really is great and shows that everyday lives can be just as uncomfortably awkward and complex as the middle-class lifestyle that which Beverley aspires to live.

In North London I visited (new Cog client) Park Theatre a couple of times.

First for A Song of Songs. As writer/director/performer/producer, Ofra Daniel wrote “Audience reactions to musicals are often split between those who adore them and those who can’t stand them”. I tried to write a balanced review of it for our Cog Night.

Second I saw Amanda Abbington star in Tawni O’Dell’s story of a mother whose world collapses when hearing of the sexual assault of her daughter. It was directed by Park Theatre’s Jez Bond. I don’t need to be as balanced about When It Happens to You because I thought it was great.

I also visited (another of Cog’s new clients) Arcola Theatre in East London.

Dealing with a different kind of maternal trauma, Phoebe Ladenburg was wonderful as Mother in Sophie Swithinbank’s stripped back monologue, Surrender. In it she plays a prisoner who, we slowly realise, is there because she abandoned the child who is now old enough to visit.

The repertory company after ‘Look Back in Anger’.

In Islington I really enjoyed the pairing of Arnold Wesker’s Roots and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, directed by Atri Banerjee. The two (Angry Young Men) plays ran alongside each other in repertory. I saw them a week apart. Neither hold up well to modern sensibilities but that made them all the more interesting to see performed by such a terrific ensemble of believable young actors. I ‘studied’ Look Back in Anger at school and had no idea how great it was until I saw Billy Howle being so unlikeable.

Also in Islington I felt uncomfortably old in the tiny upstairs theatre at the Old Red Lion when I went to see Unearthed from Deadweight Theatre. Through three set-pieces, the evening explored female rage through history. It was a work in progress; I felt a bit like a visiting dad watching a(n excellent) university showcase.

A little further down the road I was really looking forward to seeing A Chorus Line at Sadler’s Wells. The songs are great, the performances were accomplished and it sparkled like a glitterball. But it was an odd choice for Ivo van Hove to bring ‘director’ Zach onto the stage instead of being the disembodied voice that made previous productions feel so interesting.

I was also a little disappointed by David Haig’s adaptation of Minority Report at Lyric Hammersmith. I’ve heard other people say it was great so I suspect it’s just me. Maybe it was because I was up high, looking down but, despite the cleverness of the set, there were multiple chase scenes where the characters ran in ever decreasing circles. Maybe it just isn’t possible to stage such a complex sci-fi story.

My only two Soho Theatre shows that didn’t make the monthly list were still great.

Rob Drummond’s play, Don’t Make Tea is a (not too) futuristic look at a society that has made accommodations and used technology to ‘solve’ issues around disability so everyone can go to work. It’s a darkly comic satire from disability company, Birds of Paradise, where the government uses every trick to catch out benefit ‘cheats’.

Rounding off my review (although it was early in the year) as it began, was the wonderful Lucy McCormick in her solo show, Lucy and Friends. I’d caught it last year in Edinburgh and enjoyed it just as much at Soho Theatre. Within my cultural round-up it is the second example of a show specifically talking about Arts Council funding; it is the upteenth example of underground queer cabaret making it to a broader stage; and it was by far the filthiest and literally messiest show of the year. I was proud to be one of Lucy’s friends that night.

Plans for 2024…

There’s already lots to look forward to in 2024. I’ve already booked for: Stewart Lee vs the Man Wulf, Leicester Square Theatre / OAE’s Baroquebusters, Queen Elizabeth Hall / La Pendue’s La Manékine, Barbican Pit Theatre/ Lukasz Twarkowski: The Employees, Royal Festival Hall / ADF vs La Haine, Royal Festival Hall / Frau Trapp, Barbican Pit Theatre / Heaven, Southwark Playhouse / More Life, Royal Court Theatre / Girls & Boys, Nottingham Playhouse / Lynn Faces, New Diorama Theatre, Backstroke, Donmar Warehouse / Testo, Battersea Arts Centre / A Knock on the Roof, Royal Court Theatre / The Mosinee Project, New Diorama Theatre / Romeo & Juliet, Belgrade Theatre / Inside No. 9, Wyndham’s Theatre / The Seagull, Barbican Theatre  / Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me), Battersea Arts Centre / Derren Brown – Only Human, Churchill Theatre / Manhunt, Royal Court Theatre / Burnt Toast, Battersea Arts Centre / Scenes from a Repatriation, Royal Exchange Theatre / Goner, Battersea Arts Centre / Here We Are, National Theatre / 4.48 Psychosis, Royal Court Theatre / Intimate Apparell, Donmar Warehouse  / Hamlet x Hail to the Thief, RSC.