1. A Streetcar Named Desire
Almeida, London; January
Rebecca Frecknall’s transporting production, with a tinderbox Paul Mescal, fascinating Anjana Vasan and marvellous Patsy Ferran, parachuted into the lead role at a few days’ notice.
2. Phaedra
Lyttelton, London; February
Simon Stone’s galvanic reimagining of a classic drama. Among a magnificent cast – including Janet McTeer and Paul Chahidi – teenager Archie Barnes highlighted one of the year’s most cheering aspects: the surge in gifted young actors. The RSC’s Hamnet featured exceptional performances from Ajani Cabey, Alex Jarrett and Harmony Rose-Bremner as Shakespeare’s children. In The Effect, Taylor Russell made a strong stage debut alongside an incandescent Paapa Essiedu.
3. Guys & Dolls
Bridge, London; March (runs until 31 August)
Nicholas Hytner’s knockout production jived all over the Bridge and into the heart. It was a thin year for new musicals, but Conrad Murray and the Beatbox Academy lit up Battersea Arts Centre with their explosive hip-hop Pied Piper, while at the Gielgud, Old Friends provided Sondheim satisfactions: caustic, melancholy, rich in double-takes and teasing rhymes.
4. Infinite Life
Dorfman, London; November (runs until 13 January)
Annie Baker’s mesmeric play about illness.
5. Alter
Secret location near Milton Keynes; July
Catalan company Kamchàtka’s moonlit exploration of migration in the glades of a Buckinghamshire wood. The audience were told to bring stout shoes and a potato: both were put to good use.
6. Dear England
Olivier, London; June (runs at the Prince Edward theatre, London, until 13 January)
James Graham scored with his football play, looking at the state of the country through the fortunes of the England team. There was not much overtly political drama in 2023 – playwrights may feel they can’t match the pantomime arguments of the House of Commons – though Nicolas Kent and Richard Norton-Taylor continued their meticulous chronicle of catastrophe in Grenfell: System Failure.
7. A pair of Macbeths
Donmar Warehouse, London; December (runs until 10 February) / The Depot, Liverpool; December (tours to Edinburgh and London until 23 March)
Macbeth, also staged at the RSC, was the year’s most popular Shakespeare play. I can’t detect a widespread appetite for regicide, but the tragedy’s wildness touches a pulse, as does its interest in equivocal truth. Are the witches early bearers of fake news? David Tennant and Cush Jumbo simmered through headphones in Max Webster’s Donmar staging. Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma were the magnetic murderers in Simon Godwin’s warehouse production.
8. Boys from the Blackstuff
Liverpool’s Royal Court; September
Gissa play. Alan Bleasdale’s tales of tarmacers were stirringly adapted by (again) James Graham. The play found the perfect stage at Liverpool’s tremendous Royal Court, which specialises in reflecting the life of the city – and offers supper and new writing for £30 a seat.
9. Clyde’s
Donmar Warehouse; October
Lynn Nottage’s X-ray of impoverishment in America – which contained an inventive celebration of the sandwich – was dynamically directed by Lynette Linton. Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo firecrackered across the stage.
10. Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Phoenix theatre, London; December (runs until 30 June)
Turned the idea of technology on stage Upside Down.
