This Year’s Awards …so far
As I’m going on holiday — in order to be back in time for Zorro the musical — I thought it appropriate to take stock.
It’s awards time, folks, for the first six months of the year, and I won’t be influenced by any fellow judges because there aren’t any, or by any popular vote because, unlike dealings at the great Whatsonstage awards nominations party to be hosted on 5 December by Joan Rivers — yes, folks, the one and only Joan Rivers — there’s no democracy here.
So, worst show by famous authors is a dead heat between Michael Frayn for Afterlife and Tony Harrison for Fram, both at the National. A close second was everything at the Arts Theatre and third was The City by Martin Crimp at the Royal Court.
Best West End comedy was a dead heat between Fat Pig by Neil LaBute and God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton. Best play was also a dead heat: Philip Ridley’s Piranha Heights and Anthony Neilson’s Relocated.
Best Shakespeare venue was the Globe, with special mention of The Merry Wives, the brilliant A Midsummer Night’s Dream and David Calder in King Lear, so refreshing after the RSC’s overblown, over-mannered (as I now recall it) Trevor Nunn version.
There was no original new musical worth mentioning (yes, I saw Marguerite) but the top musical theatre shows were The Jersey Boys, Never Forget and The Harder They Come and, if seriously pressed, I’d choose the latter.
We’re all looking forward to Hampstead Theatre’s British premiere of Brecht’s Turandot (well, apart from the Telegraph critics who have a view based on bias) and Spring Awakening at the Lyric Hammersmith, and probably the Donmar season in the West End with Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench and Derek Jacobi.
But will we see better performances this year than those of Simon Russell Beale as Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara and Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking, both at the National? I doubt it, as Benedict Nightingale might say.
Special spurs, undoubtedly, to Michael Boyd’s RSC History Cycle at the Roundhouse. Big cheers, too, for Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter in the Cinema on the Haymarket — a wonderful fusion of celluloid, music hall and popular theatre — and it’s been buzzing at the Bush and the Soho Theatre all year…
And can we have two special awards, please, for our American friends: Chita Rivera ripping up the stage on her 75 year-old pins at the Shaw and the year’s most remarkable double act, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum in Speed-the-Plow at the Old Vic?
I look forward to seeing how many of these noms make it through to your Whatsonstage shortlist come December…and hearing from you when I return from — at the moment — not so sunny northern Spain.
