Theatre
2019 in review: Theatre
Our critic John Nathan looks back over the past year on stage
January 2, 2020 15:54
Our critic John Nathan looks back over the past year on stage
January 2, 2020 15:54This year began as the previous year ended, with the Menier’s Fiddler and Golde beautifully played by American stage star Judy Khun, who was replaced by Maria Friedman when the show transferred to the West End. This meant that Andy Nyman’s Tevye was lucky enough to be married to two of the best singers any shtetl ever saw.
The year moved on from one of the most famous Jewish stories of all time to one of the least known, or at least in the version told by Bodin Saphir’s play Rosenbaum’s Rescue.
The work presented a revision of how 7,500 of Denmark’s 8,000 Jews were saved from Nazi’s, not by brave Danes as was once thought but the Nazis who ran the country’s occupation. The story was fascinating though the work that told it felt like an early draft.
Much more honed was Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s hit musical Come From Away about the passengers - including a rabbi - of the many planes diverted to Newfoundland on 9/11.
You could argue that the fallout from that event includes Donald Trump (discuss) and with Shipwreck Anne Washburn produced arguably the first proper attempt by a dramatist to seriously tackle Trump and Trumpism. The result was like therapy for those who still need counselling as a result of the Donald’s rise.
Hard on those heels was the new (to here) work by American writer Joshua (Bad Jews) Harmon. His Admissions, about the intake policy of an American college, might be the best play about political correctness since Mamet’s Oleanna. A shame then that Harmon recalled Mamet better the master himself when Mamet's seemingly dashed-off Bitter Wheat about Harvey Weinstein and starring John Malkovich misfired in the West End like a damp squib.
There is no segue from that turkey to the mesmerising Maggie Smith as Goebbels’s secretary in A German Life at the Bridge Theatre. None except perhaps to to say that the folly of one was magnified by its flashy virtue signalling, while the power of other in Jonathan Kent’s production was rooted in its calm.
The same venue hosted one of the most inventive nights of theatre I have ever seen when, counter-intuitively Nicholas Hytner chose to programme and direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the most revived plays of all time. The result was a perfect example of how no great play can be fully known.