Top 10 Shows of 2022

Man, I really let this slide this year and I didn't mean to at all... I think life just got in the way (and also I have seen in excess of 125 shows this year so like, where the actual hell am I gonna find the time to review them alongside work as well (I have no idea but I promise I will attempt to be better in 2023...!)

But, as is tradition for me, I wanted to record my favourite shows and performances of the year. I have seen some seriously great stuff this year, so picking my top 10 was HARD, but here goes nothing I guess!

 a couple of special mentions...

Sondheim's Old Friends - Sondheim Theatre

Is it hyperbole to call this event one of the greatest nights of my life? 

Not remotely. 

The line up assembled for this was just ridiculous - Judi Dench, Bernadette Peters, Julia McKenzie, Petula Clarke, Imelda Staunton to name A FEW (like, Josefina Gabrielle and Anna Jane Casey were in the featured ensemble if that gives you an idea of how starry we're talking)

I'm so glad this has been immortalised on screen for us forever, because so much of this event was literally life changing (wait till you people see Broadway Baby...I was SCREAMING).

I could write a War and Peace style essay on how brilliant this show was, but just know it was pitch perfect from the beginning to the end.

Who knows, maybe we'll get to relive it sometime next year...

Audra McDonald at the Palladium

The Queen came to town, with a 40-something piece orchestra, and sang just about every composer who ever lived, and it was fucking GLORIOUS.

Audra McDonald is the Queen of Broadway because she can do it all, and has done it all, and won six Tony awards because of it, and good lord did she prove it that night.

This night at the Palladium was one of the classiest things I've ever attended (also the most theatre gays assembled in one place at one time this year - we really all did die a gay death at THAT Roses Turn.) 

10/10 no notes - perfect.

10. Cock - Ambassadors Theatre

An Elliot Harper production is obviously going to be in my top 10 shows of the year, because they created great theatre - Cock was no exception.

The most wonderful cast, and the most brilliant creative team, and a play that felt like it still had something to say (at least I felt it did anyway). The genius of having the set be bare, one costume per character, and no props, just letting the text speak for itself was great.

I was hugely moved at the end of it, largely because of Bailey's performance, but because I understood that character so well. 

Brilliant work by all - glad I saw it twice...

9. A Number - Old Vic

Plays about parents and children are really difficult for me for a magnitude of reasons, so A Number hit deep.

Lenny James and Pappa Essiedu were utterly remarkable in Caryl Churchill's blistering look at the consequences of our parents actions and how we have to live with them. A weirdly imposing set, in menacing red, looms on the stage and you're aware from the beginning that something is going to go wrong...and it does...

The Old Vic have had an absolutely storming year, and it's been a joy to watch everything they've been up to (and boy, do we have a fantastic year to come from them in 2023...!)

8. Into The Woods - Theatre Royal Bath

So we all now that this production had...issues getting to the stage (and that's putting it politely.) But Into The Woods is my favourite Sondheim show and I knew I had to see it, to make my own mind up on the drama if nothing else.

It for sure has it's problems (as almost every production of Into The Woods does) but there was lots to love. Crucially, Act 2 is finally as dark as it needed to be and did begin to feel like a bit of a slasher flick (which it doesn't always). Alex Young proved that The Bakers Wife is one of the greatest roles in musical theatre, and she is one of our greatest talents, and the concept and design of the production was at times so unbelievably brilliant that I just sat, open mouthed at it.

I'd like to see it in the West End on a bigger stage (as it was just bursting at the seams at Bath and that had it's limitations), or I'd actually rather we just got a transfer of the current Broadway production...

7. Kathy and Stella Solve A Murder - Edinburgh Fringe

Edinburgh Fringe is always a joy - I'm very lucky I get to go for work and have a really lovely week of shows. I saw 22 shows in four days this time round, but the highlight of the festival was the INSANE Kathy and Stella Solve A Murder.

It's a true crime musical - two women run a true crime podcast and then...end up having to solve an actual murder and chaos ensues.
Rebekah Hinds and Bronte Barbe are enormous fun as the title characters, but (as with everything show they are in) it's Jodie Jacobs who walks away with the show.

It's madness that Jacobs is not the leading player of the West End - their voice is BANANAS (like, you name it, they can sing it, and will probably sound better than the original) and the fun they are having in this show? Unparalleled.

Can't wait to see what happens with this show - it's got the potential for a massive future!

6. Blues For An Alabama Sky - Lyttleton, National Theatre

I wasn't going to bother seeing this show, but word of mouth had been so good that I had to snag a ticket to the final matinee of Blues For An Alabama Sky, and thank god I did!

I truly wasn't sure what I was going to think of it, but it's as up my alley as any show I saw this year.

Beautifully realised characters, all with their flaws but all that you can't help but fall in love with. Giles Terera and the whole company were utterly sublime, with terrific musical numbers pushing you through the nearly three hour running time.

5. The Doctor - Duke of Yorks Theatre

I see an obscene amount of theatre each year - so much that lots of things blur into one and it takes something special to properly make me sit up and take notice.

The Doctor is one of those shows.

It tests every moral you have, and forces you to look at yourself and how you would react in this situation, and where you'd align yourself in a way I haven't felt for a long time. Add into that a sensational central performance like the one Juliet Stevenson is giving, and you've got a really compelling three hours that had me on the edge of my seat.

4. Much Ado About Nothing - Lyttleton, National Theatre

The fact this is on my list will probably surprise a lot of people, but I cannot tell you how much fun I had watching this.

Simon Godwin is an absolute legend when it comes to Shakespeare - his productions of Twelfth Night and Anthony and Cleopatra at the Nash were both absolutely bloody wonders, and he's gone and done it again with Much Ado About Nothing. I basically never want to see Shakespeare if he isn't directing it...

Future Dame Katherine Parkinson is a joy.

John Heffernan is a comedic marvel.

It just made me so happy for two and a half hours.

More of this please National Theatre, less of The Crucible.

3. To Kill A Mockingbird - Gielgud Theatre

I bloody love a courtroom drama, and no one writes a courtroom like Aaron Sorkin.

The novel of To Kill A Mockingbird had eluded me (don't worry it's on my TBR pile for January), so I pretty much went in blind, and my LORD what a ride to go on when you don't know what is going to happen.

Rafe Spall was a bloody sensation as Atticus Finch, Gwyneth Keyworth was a delightful Scout, and the whole company really rallied together and made an unforgettable piece of theatre - can't wait to go back and see it again.

2. Crazy For You - Chichester Festival Theatre

A big, flashy revival of a tap dance musical, directed and choregraphed by a Broadway legend, starring one of our best song and dance men?

Yeah, Crazy For You couldn't have been more up my street if it tried.

The show confirmed what we already knew, but got to show it even more perfectly: Charlie Stemp is a star. The ease with which he leads this show as Bobby Child is just astonishing. He dances like no one else I've seen, and is the ultimate showman - just wait until he does The Music Man in 15-20 years time...IT'LL BE INCREDIBLE.

Susan Stroman understands build in a musical like no one else, and so she creates a musical supernova in the act 1 finale I Got Rhythm, which fizzes over to a firework of joy and you have no choice but to stand up for.

When I first saw it, I saw both shows that day at Chichester - I loved it THAT MUCH.

And then I went back to see it's final performance.

I'm so thrilled that it's coming in to London for a season next year - if you were a fan of Anything Goes, you're going to love this show. I got that level of joy from it, and it's got a performance at the centre of it that is as joyful as the ones we got from Reno Sweeney.

1. The Band's Visit - Donmar Warehouse

The Band's Visit is a masterpiece, a marvel and a miracle, and I'm so glad it was in my life this year.

I had the opportunity to see it on Broadway in 2018 and for reasons unclear to me, I saw Waitress instead (I know, still trying to work out why). But I think I was waiting for a production like this that I could fall in love with...

What Michael Longhurst achieved at the Donmar with this show is remarkable. 

Assembling a truly authentic, gorgeous cast to deliver this material in such a unique way is something I will never forget. I've said it before and I'll say it again - watching Miri Mesika cast a spell over the audience as she delivers Omar Sharif is something I will never forget... ever.

Each time I watched it, I wept as Mesika was cast away into a dream, howled at the roller-skating, and then slowly dissolved into a puddle from The Park to the end of the show... (if you know, you know...)

Above anything I saw this year, this show deserves a future life.
More people deserve to see this show.

What a year it's been - we really have had a great variety of stuff, and boy is there some fun to come next year xx