Looking back on 2011

But London’s theatres also proved, as always, that they can satisfy all tastes and genres, and continue to break boundaries. Who would have thought that the year’s most dazzling and original new British musical would be National’s quietly insinuating London Road, based on the actual words of the community affected by the murders of Ipswich prostitutes in 2006?

Not to be outdone, the RSC ended the year on a triumphant high by transferring Matilda, their own Christmas musical of last year’s Stratford-upon-Avon season, to the West End, where it is that rare thing: a show based on a children’s book by Roald Dahl that’s actually for grown-ups as well as kids. It contains the single most galvanising musical performance in town from Bertie Carvel as the monstrous headmistress.

Andrew Lloyd Webber had a hit by theatricalising the film classic The Wizard of Oz (and adding a few new songs of his own) and Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Betty Blue Eyes, a musical about a pig, sadly couldn’t line his silk purse out of its sow’s ear. There were also consecutive West End flops at the Gielgud for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Lend Me a Tenor (in a new musical version at the same address that coincidentally the original Ken Ludwig play it was based on was premiered, too).

The best musical productions were otherwise to be found on the enterprising fringe, where former flops like The Hired Man (with its haunting Howard Goodall score) and Ragtime (both at the Landor), The Baker’s Wife (at the Union), Parade (at Southwark Playhouse) and Sondheim’s Roadshow (at the Menier) were variously magnificent, all at venues coincidentally in south London, proving that it is always worth venturing beyond the West End. Outside London, too, there was strong musical work at Leeds (with a stirring new British musical The Go-Between) and Sheffield (with a stunning revival of Sondheim’s Company).

On the plays front, the Royal Court blazed the trail, as ever, for new work, with Jumpy by April de Angelis, The Faith Machine by Alexi Kaye Campbell and The Village Bike by Penelope Skinner all amongst the best of the year, while the Bush finally moved, after 40 years in a room above a pub, to its own home and delivered another terrific play with The Kitchen Sink. The Court’s Dominic Cooke has recently announced he is stepping down from running the place in 2013, while Josie Rourke is now departing from the Bush to take over from Michael Grandage at the Donmar. The National made a splash with Frankenstein, featuring Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch alternating in the title role and as the Creature he creates.

The most shocking new play of the year, however, wasn’t staged in a theatre at all, but a house in East London: Roadkill, conceived by Cora Bissett with a text by Stef Smith, was a bracing account of a young Nigerian girl being sold into sex slavery in London. And Gillian Slovo’s The Riots, at Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre, put the summer street disturbances in London and across the UK, into an extraordinary theatrical context, less than four months after the event.

Play revival house of the year was the Donmar Warehouse, where Michael Grandage signed off after a decade in charge. His staging of Richard II, with Eddie Redmayne in the title role, was the Shakespearean production of the year; while Rob Ashford’s staging of O’Neill’s Anna Christie contained the most ferociously brilliant male performance of the year from Jude Law.

Finally, top of the flops were West End productions of Cool Hand Luke (based on the book that became a film) and The Lion in Winter (the original play that later became a film). I also hated Rock of Ages at the Shaftesbury and Deborah Warner’s production of The School for Scandal at the Barbican, while on the fringe the biggest disappointments were Constance, allegedly a reclaimed play by Oscar Wilde that showed little of his hand at the King’s Head, and Ex, a new British musical at Soho Theatre that as Lyn Gardner said “puts the ex into excruciating”

What were your personal highs (and lows) of 2011? Feel free to add them here! And here’s to a happy and successful year of theatregoing in 2012. See you in the New Year!