2023 Well I Liked It awards

 It's the end of the year so it's time for Canberra's 4th most prestigious theatre awards (I might progress it to 3rd most prestigious if anybody happens to mention it in their program bio this year, hint hint).  For those who haven't looked through the backlog, this has been the opportunity for me to go through the year in theatre and give out the "Well I liked it" awards (or WILIs for short ... yes, this is a blog that absolutely belives in dick jokes). 

A key early contender was the musical "Downtown" - a show that, I must admit, I was a little wary of. A revue made up of 1960s songs seemed like boomer nostalgia turned to 11, something cosy, unchallenging and a bit over familiar. But instead we got a thoughtful retrospective on the era, its attitudes, its fashions, and what happened to the women who were subject to those attitudes, wearing those fashions and listening to those songs. It was impeccably staged by a cast of 5 actresses and an ensemble of 4, with wit, style and an unbeatable level of charm.  

Joel Horwood made his impact locally three times -as the heartbreaking lead in "Holding the Man", and as impressively by directing two plays which featured an egomaniac declaring their retirement and then trying to get everybody around them to ignore that retirement as much as possible - the hysterical "Hay Fever" and the tragic "King Lear" - both featuring powerhouse performances at the centre from Andrea Close and Karen Vickery respectively, and both with a clump of Canberra's strongest acting talent assembled with purpose to engage and delight the audience.

Two interstate tours hit Queanbeyan with intelligent non-traditional takes on theatre - Statera Circus's "Boop" which did a fine presentation of the standard juggling/tumbling/stunts we've seen multiple glossy takes on, and brought it in with simplicity and skill. Meanwhile re:group Performance Collective combined video, personal recollections and some astonishingly tight staging in the innovative "Coil", a clever look at how the places we gather form who we are. Both were cutting edge works on a touring budget, and both were incredibly welcome to catch in a "I'd never expected to see anything like that" way. 

Three shows seen interstate presented three classic American plays in modern and powerful ways - STC's "Fences" in a strong realistic production, taking August Wilson's examination of struggling 1950s black masculinity (perfectly performed by Bert LaBonte and played against an ensemble which included one of the great Zahra Newman performances); Red Line Theatre's "Streetcar named desire" (which is not reviewed elsewhere here because I saw it at first preview, but which was a pitch perfect production using every inch of the tiny Old Fitz stage, just the right size for something affordable for Stella and Stanley and a too-small-arena for them to be confronted by Sheridan Harbridge's damaged-but-dreamy Blanch, in a show directed by Alexander Berlarge that used the intimacy of the space so well that the penultimate scene as Stanley confronts Blanche could be played out lit, apparently, by a single lightbulb); and Belvoir/State Theatre Company of South Australia's "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill", which had another great Zahra Newman performance sounding perfectly like Billie Holliday on one of her last performances as she reminisces about her glory days and the mistreatment that had led her to touring gigs while her body and mind were falling apart. 

 The Q's production of "Puffs" looked at a modern multimedia cultural behemoth through jaundiced eyes, looking at how someone else's heroic narrative can be an irritating set of traumas to those around them, played out by a mostly young ensemble with verve, wit, heartbreak and inventiveness. It was playful, engaging theatre that made me smile, laugh out loud and even very slightly quiver my lip.

Sydney hosted two great productions of shows by the late Stephen Sondheim this year that I saw and loved - Belvoir's playful, minamalist-but-had-everything-it-needed "Into the Woods", and Hayes Theatre's "A Little Night Music" which was not very-much-bigger but stylish, witty and immaculately performed - both were minamalist on the orchestra and staging but maximalist in the talent of the cast, from the oldest (Peter Carroll in "Woods", Nancye Hayes in "Night Music") down to the smallest bit part.  The Act Hub also delighted me (though not some of the grumpier critics around town) with "Marry Me a little", a revue of his rarities that gave a good opportunity for Alexander Unikowski to step out of the orchestra pit and Hannah Lance to stand and dance next to him with charm and wit in an eclectic show that played with missed connections, heartbreak and elaborate vegetable visual puns.

Former Canberran Damien Warren-Smith brought two of his shows to town, and I got a chance to see both of them, "Garry Starr: Greece Lightning" and "Garry Starr Performs Everything" - both are inspired one-man shows where Warren-Smith uses the persona of goofy manchild Garry Starr to dive in a ridiculous manner into Greek Mythology (in the case of the first) or the entire history of theatre (in the case of the second). He's back next year for another run of "Greece Lightning" (and hopefully we'll also get a run shortly of his upcoming Adelaide Fringe show, "Classic Penguins", in which, due to the impending climate crisis endangering penguins, he performs every Penguin Classic novel in the course of an hour). 

The long-awaited Canberra tour of "Come From Away" was a delight, an unlikely fusion of verbatim theatre, Canadian folk-rock, and immaculate staging to tell the story of people in a remote part of Canada finding a strange sense of community in the wake of September 11th. It was a late-in-the-tour visit but you could not tell from the energy of the cast, which was unflaggable. 

Two new plays got great productions this year - Belvoir with former-Canberran David Finnigan's "Scenes from the Climate Era", which was urgent, thoughtful and surprisingly non-diadactic in its reflections on where we are and where we are very likely to be shortly; and Canberra Youth Theatre with current-Canberran Joanna Richards' "You Can't Tell Anyone", a skilful examination of 8 different personalities under pressure when stuck in a room that none of them can get out of, pushing each other's buttons brutally. 

The two shows I saw while in New York, "Hadestown" and "Death, Let me do my show" were both great shows-  "Hadestown", please god, will tour to Australia sometime in the next few years and as long as they keep the staging for "Wait for me", it'll be worth whatever ticket price and stunt casting they throw at it. "Death Let Me do My Show" is really Rachael Bloom's solo show and unless she particularly wants a paid vacation to Australia we're much less likely to see it, but if we do, grab the chance as it's a delight.

Finally, Andrew Bovell's "Speaking in Tongues" got a stylish revival with a perfect quartet of actors showing off what they can do in a staging that was intimate, clever and very powerful. It was a demonstration of four actors at the top of their game and of how skilled Bovell's script is in playing with time, space, recollections and connections missed and misleading. Fine intimate theatre. 

Congrats to all who got a mention (and commiserations to those who didn't, but this is a long article already and I don't particularly want to make it much longer).