Only a baker's dozen to recall

Theatre Review of the Year

HIGH POINT: Paul Marron and Margarita Grillis in ‘The Great Couch Rebellion’

Emer O'Kelly

I saw 93 theatre productions in the past year. The most disturbing factor is that on going through my diary where the name and location of each is noted, I have no memory, good, bad or indifferent of about 30 of them: what they were about, or who was in them. Theatre should not be like that: it does not have to be weighty or particularly significant, it does not have to be controversial; but it should make some kind of impact.

There are several other productions in my diary which did make an impact: an entirely negative one and I can recall the mixture of irritation and disappointment combined with sympathy for a cheated audience that they engendered, as I left the theatre feeling that nobody should be expected to hand out hard-earned cash for such insultingly bad, self-regarding, self-indulgent work.