I like to think/hope that someday it will see the light in a new form. That pieces of it might become something different. But right now, I can't imagine how that loss must feel.

I have been feeling so much disappointment for you and the whole team. Just a terrible outcome for such talented, hard-working people. All the very best wishes.

1. Gunter (@royalcourt.bsky.social)

The likelihood this show ends up in my dissertation is high. I’ve been thinking about it all year. Turning the lecture theatre into a theatre of cruelty, thematising the tension between the archive and memory. I don't have the characters to express how brilliant.

2. Cable Street (@swkplay.bsky.social)

This piece is so special to me. Such a salient, relevant event given such a nuanced theatrical treatment. How the music mirrors the communities, the temporal layers–Gilvin & Kanefsky have the makings of a sweeping musical here. I can't wait to see what's next.

3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (@darrenclarkmusic.bsky.social)

Another I didn’t think I’d like as I never liked the story, but Clark has composed something stunningly beautiful here. The ensemble of actor-musos are impossibly brilliant, the score is stirring, and the design is striking.

4. The Flea (@theyardtheatre.bsky.social)

If Hackney wasn't so far from me, I’d have absolutely seen this more than once. James Fritz’s almost clown-like subversion of the Cleveland Street scandal and attempted cover-up is genre-bending and hysterical, an astute piece of historical commentary.

5. The Hills of California

Jez Butterworth continues to prove himself as one of the few contemporary playwrights who earns a 3+hr runtime. Deeply affective performances and a stirring portrait of a family secret, this is a masterful example of making an entire audience hold its breath at once.

6. Machinal (@oldvictheatre.bsky.social)

Confession–I hated this play when I read it in uni. Richard Jones’ production (and Rosie Sheehy’s knockout performance), however, made me see it in a new light. A beautiful realisation of expressionism in action, I am very glad to have had my mind changed.

7. Macbeth–An Undoing (@zinnieh.bsky.social)

I’m gonna be honest–this one didn’t have me in the first half, but it absolutely consumed me in the second. Mind-bending, confronting, and sinister, I spent days afterwards thinking about this one.

8. The Lehman Trilogy

I’m already breaking my own rule, this is not a new production, but it’s new to me and I want to include it because a 3hr show about financial history sounded abysmal even to me, but the tight writing, innovative staging, and superb acting made this absolutely enthralling.

9. I’m Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire (@swkplay.bsky.social)

Up next, something appropriately bananas–this piece really exceeded my expectations. Outrightly absurd, riotously funny, yet with a weighty underbelly, Samantha Hurley has really contributed to the genre of feral teenage girl theatre.

10. Slave Play (Jeremy O. Harris)

When something garners so much sensationalism, it often falls flat. But on the whole, I found this piece thoroughly impressive specifically in its razor-sharp balancing of humour and disquiet.