Peter Viney's Blog

It’s been a different year. Probably 40-50% down on last year. I had two knee replacements (January 30th and May 8th) which basically took two months out of our theatre going. Then this winter is WAY down. We used to book the Wanamaker Playhouse very early, then fit other stuff around it as it came up. This year we decided (a) we wouldn’t watch anything in the “Globe Ensemble” concept without directors, and as a consequence (b) we wouldn’t watch anything with Michelle Terry in it and (c) we would need huge convincing to watch another female actor playing the role of a warlike English king or other Shakespearean lead with a 50% or more female cast. So the end result? No bookings for the Wanamaker this winter.

We also saw less West End commercial theatre, simply being fed up with paying £70-£100 to see a play with a celebrity cast of three or four, when we could cross to the South Bank or drive to Stratford for half the price, or Bath, Chichester or Newbury for a third of the price … all with bigger casts and better productions too.

So yes, there’s a lot we didn’t see. Any list of ten is arguable. Just read through and feel the breadth of British Theatre in 2019.

Short extracts from the main original reviews, which are linked.

SHAKESPEARE & CLASSICAL

1  A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bridge Theatre, London 

Easily the best of this year and possibly of this decade. We went twice.

It is our favourite play. We saw the Peter Brooks production. We saw the John Caird RSC production with Richard McCabe as Puck. Then we saw the RSC Play for A Nation version (twice). We saw the Emma Rice Globe production (twice) plus the TV broadcast, and the DVD. All of those productions defined a 5 star play. Nicholas Hytner’s production at The Bridge Theatre is the most elaborate and also the very best of the lot. I wish I had a sixth star. We’ve already booked to see it again with our older grandkids.

2  Macbeth: Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, Near Newbury

“Far better than the National Theatre or RSC Macbeth last year”

I’d have to say that the individual roles outside the two leads don’t get the space to shine … you will have seen a Malcolm, Banquo, MacDuff who have been given more space and focus.  I can think that most “murder of the MacDuffs” scenes were more tragic or heart-rending. The point is the overall effect of the ensemble, which is what this production is about. It’s thrilling, involving, rapid, musical. It has a feeling of wildness and unpredictability that plunges you into a world which escalates at high speed until you can see why Macbeth feels he sees Birnham wood striding towards him.

3  King John: Swan Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

The English arrive spoiling for a fight: L to R Hubert (Tom McCall), The Bastard (Michael Abubakar, King John (Rose Sheehy), Queen Mother Elinore (Bridgitta Ro

In my general railing against gender blind – or rather contrary gender – casting in everything in 2019, I’ll make an exception for this one. Female actors playing King John (as “he”) or Cardinal Pandulph (as “she” definitely) work a dream here, because Rose Sheehy is so good as King John, and Katharine Pearce is so funny as the cardinal. Rose Sheehy was outstanding as the stroppy teenager in The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter last year and she brings ‘attitude’ to this role. She has a good couple of minutes solo to open the play, breakfast with a hangover. It involves downing a raw egg in tomato juice too.

4  The Provoked Wife, by John Vanbrugh: Swan Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

Three great actresses: L to R: Natalie Dew as Belinda, Caroline Quentin as Lady Fancyful, Alexandra Gilbraith as Lady Brute

This is Restoration comedy at its funniest. Sir John Brute ( 17th and 18th century naming of characters lacked subtlety) has married Lady Brute for sex, as she declines to fornicate otherwise. She has married him for money. Two years on he is a drunken … well, brute. Lady Brute conspires with her niece, Belinda. Should she take on a lover or not? Her candidate is Constant, while Belinda is quite taken with Heartfree in spite of his apparent bachelor disregard for relationships. … I’m hovering on the 4 star / 5 star interface. Some complain about length – 2 hours 45 minutes stage time, but they didn’t over-run it, and it never felt long to me, though as ever I’m inclined to “if in doubt lop ten minutes off.” Traditional costume. No major gender swaps – though Alison Halstead played the Constable and referenced “my wife.” But it’s a minor role. As with Breen’s The Hypocrite and the recent The Rover and The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich, The Swan Theatre excels at these raucous randy comedies.

5  The Taming of The Shrew: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

The Taming of The Shrew  in this production is not gender-blind but consciously gender switched. I had my doubts before going in, but they were totally dispelled. As the programme tells us: 1591. England is a matriarchy. So they establish an alternate universe. The names are switched (mainly) as Italian makes it easy to change a masculine -o ending to a feminine -a ending. Vincentio becomes Vincentia, Baptisto becomes Baptista, in the course of switching to female, while the younger daughter, Bianca, becomes the younger son, Bianco.  They got stuck with the name Katherine for the older son, simply because Kate and Katherine appear so often in the text and there is no male equivalent. You just learn to live with it applied to a man. The women are still dressed elaborately as women, with tight controlled elaborate hair styles. The men are dressed as men, and have long flowing cavalier locks, except for the crop-haired Katherine – so as in the normal gender version, he’s the equivalent of a tom-boy.

6 A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Globe Theatre

Oh, how far The Globe has fallen in quality since Michelle Terry decided to dispense with directors, BUT this was directed by her new assistant, Sean Holmes and restores the Globe to what it should be.

Jocelyn Jee Essien as Bottom (dressed as a Carnival donkey) gets it on with Titania (Victoria Elliot)

2019 is the year that The Bridge Theatre did one of the best ever productions of the play AND had an audience in the pit like The Globe.  The last time The Globe did it in 2016 was Emma Rice’s 5 star production, the best The Globe has ever done it, which means they have a mountain to climb. The solution is to go around it. After all, The Globe could, and probably should, do A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing at least every other year. So what are the unique points? First, all the cast take it in turns to play Puck, wth a PUCK T-shirt marker. At crucial points several of them play Puck together and at the end, everyone does taking a line each. The other is that Starveling is a member of the audience, selected to come out and be pushed through the part. it’s not quite the RSC’s Play For A Nation concept of The Dream, but it worked and our “Gavin Starveling” was great- he towered over the other rude mechanicals. Sean Foley has taken on board the interactive possibilities of The Globe and has a great deal of entrances through the pit, and makes much use of a sloping walkway down into the audience. He has used the space.

7  Measure for Measure: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

I’ll save the first waltz for you …

I’ve said before I’d like to see this play use its Vienna setting by showing us early 20th century Vienna, the time of Freud and Klimt. They’ve gone for that (slightly) and included the waltzes … I was thinking most of Egon Schiele and Vienna decadence as a visual cue ……… Fabulous cast. Usual very high standard of set, lighting and costume. It’s a clear version of the play too, though we noticed the intrinsic time issue – an awful lot happens between Claudio being sentenced to die tomorrow morning at eight, and the appointed time of execution. You’re not sure which is day or night and the stage and background is usually dark. . Shakespeare’s fault … it’s built in. Kids write essays on it.

8  As You Like It: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

Overall, it fell flat on its stark set, and lacked the sense of pastoral forest magic. We didn’t have the sense of weird stuff happening, events and people tumbling into view like Alice in Wonderland. It felt young and earnest in places where we wanted a touch of old hippy. We got newly pointed line humour in many places, but lost the entrancing verse – well, except for Jacques major speech. At two hours 40 minutes it could have benefitted from 10 minutes of cuts for me. It was as if the director watched Touchstone, Phoebe, Jacques, William and Audrey and felt ‘these actors are so funny and doing it so well that I can’t cut them anymore.’ Yes, they were, but still, when all was put together, some scenes needed more propulsion towards the conclusion. Sam Marlowe in the Times noted a ‘lack of pace and vim’ and Karen had said much the same,  ‘leaden in parts.’ Ten minutes of astute cuts would improve that. That’s true of 90% of productions … It’s the RSC. Face it, they never fall below a high professional standard of acting and production. This is full of ideas and things you haven’t seen in As You Like It before. We might complain about this or that, as we do, but you’re going to enjoy it.

9  Merry Wives of Windsor: Globe Theatre

Phew! Here, Falstaff is played by Pearce Quigley – a much better idea for Henry IV too with its female Falstaff. At least mainly, the men appear to be played by men, apart from the Welsh schoolmaster, who could easily have been made a Welsh schoolmistress with a change of name, but no. A woman is listed as “Sir Hugh.” The intrinsic roles have defeated even The Globe’s tinkering with gender. It’s a great fun experience, though it’s neither a great nor even very good version of the intrinsic play. The RSC did this one so well in 2012 and then even better in 2018 that it’s against heavy competition. We felt a hangover from those Director-less Globe Ensemble productions as most of the cast did very funny star turns, but the whole failed to mesh smoothly. Frantic movement and dashing about was the order of the day. Sometimes a director needs to say, ‘brilliant stuff, but it detracts from the balance of the whole.’

10 Macbeth: Chichester Festival Theatre

It was good to see Chichester doing Shakespeare again AND on the huge Festival stage too. Starring John Simm and Dervla Kirwan.

It was two and a half hours plus interval, which is long for Macbeth. It felt long too. Insufficient cutting of words coupled with insufficient action. The eventual killing of Macbeth right at the back behind the gauze was extremely weak. There was no battle. The sword fighting was very limited. It’s inherently 3 star. Simm’s speeches were so excellent, his performance 5 star (we have said exactly this about the other recent lead actor centred versions!), and the lighting plot was 5 star, but the rest of the play didn’t match that standard. Cruelly, I’m tempted to minus one star from the 3 for the dreadful 50 / 50 casting and because it was so ‘talk centred’ and lacking in interaction, it was often tedious. That would be unfair.

MODERN

1 The Man in The White Suit: by Sean Foley, Bath Theatre Royal 

It got a critical savaging. We loved it. Stephen Mangan can do no wrong.

They’ve shifted the story from 1951 to 1956, because that allows them to get the skiffle group to come in at regular intervals and perform a song. There’s a lot of fine recorded music too, and a couple of times it segues from recorded to live. I wish they’d listed the live songs, which is what a musical would do. The song Chemistry stuck in my head anyway. I hope they put out a CD (EP length) for the London production.

If I’m going to be hyper-critical, it lacks the unpredictability and risk that (say) the under the stairs scene had in The Ladykillers. Audience interaction is very limited – they address (fictional) members of the audience a few times … Mr Mortimer and Mrs Hardcastle. It would be good to have given Mangan a couple of minutes to play around with the audience and improvise in the way that James Cordern was given space in One Man Two Guv’nors.

But let’s not gild the lily. Mangan exudes such a good vibe and shares it in a way I can only compare with classic Brian Rix … though Mangan is more disciplined and able. We’ve seen him play the heavy gangster in The Birthday Party which was totally different. The centre final bows were Mangan and Tointon, deservedly.

2  Kunene & The King, by John Kani: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon

Kunene’s house, scene 3, the dance

Antony Sher is astonishingly real. He is somewhat glazed from medication of course, but this is a man in pain. He has degrading toilet dashes, in one returning to the room with shit spattered underpants in his hand. He looks awful, with greasy hair, stubble. He is slurred at times (yet always totally comprehensible). He swears and curses, rages against the world – and there is a storm, though when he recounts it in scene 3 in Kunene’s Soweto house, it was a under a concrete flyover rather than on a blasted heath. The Lear parallels keep coming.

John Kani  matches his co-star. Dignified, even when Jack throws the underpants in his face, slow to anger, but finally breaking too. Lungene has no illusions about a saintly ANC, and ‘the comrades’ destroyed his father’s home and business in Soweto. However, he also recalls Sharpeville, his inability to train as a doctor, years as a second class citizen.

3 Oklahoma! Chichester Festival Theatre

I rarely do musicals. I haven’t seen most of the classics, but this was such a feel-good experience that it has to be in.

Reading the programme we were amazed to find that this is Isaac Gryn’s first major role. Chichester does find the new young stars. Isaac Gryn excels as a dancer, rope twirler, acrobat,  and as an actor and singer. Hyoie O’Grady as Curly hasn’t done much before either. Amara Okereke is a wonderful Laurey, bringing out the confused but feisty young girl, afraid of Jud, keen on Curly. So that’s three young, comparatively new actors in leading roles. Jeremy Sams as a director excels in finding new talent and giving them the chance to play leads as in Half A Sixpence .

The voice and dialect coach, Helen Ashton, deserves acclaim – they all do excellent Shitkicker Oklahoma.The choreography is powerful. They credit the original choreography by Agnes de Mille as well as Matt Cole. The dancing is so muscular – Isaac Gryn enters with a somersault, there’s lots of lifting and carrying, it really does feel strong and Western. The “dream ballet” is listed in the original. This is Laurey’s Freudian dream of cowboys as horses and demon women and a wedding. Stunning in concept and execution here.

4  The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde,  Watermill Theatre, Bagnor

It’s fast-paced, aided by the incredible amount of footwork put in by Morgan Philpott. The director’s concept of Lane / Merriman as stage manager / Svengali / Butlers worked a dream. I don’t know how he timed it. No lingering on lines, no drawling and long pausing. It benefitted. The unique point was the anachronistic props and the butler. They didn’t mess with the characters, as the two recent Vaudeville Theatre ones did. First David Suchet in drag as Lady Bracknell in 2015, then with Classic Spring a rampantly bisexual Algernon flirting with Lane in 2018. They didn’t pour a fortune into expensive Victorian interiors and gardens either. As I’ve said in reviews, this play works read aloud in a circle. It doesn’t need extraneous stuff.  It’s in the text. You need good actors performing it with vigour, which is just what you got here.

5  Malory Towers, adapted Emma Rice, Wise Children, Exeter Northcutt Theatre

Emma Rice takes the moral of the original tales around the character of Gwendoline (bullying is bad, people who appear bad might just be concealing a problem) and plays that also for the many children in the audience. Emma Rice’s introduction in the programme makes it clear that it is an affectionate tribute to those all-girl schools, not a send up. … If anything, the intrinsic quality of the 50s songs is the only minus. For me, the originals were actually better. I would have gone for 5 stars, but the day afterwards we saw The Man in The White Suit with an even more fluid set and staging, a similar semi-musical setting and better songs. So that got the five.

6  Plenty by David Hare, Chichester Festival Theatre

With The Deep Blue Sea playing in the Minerva Theatre fifty yards away, Chichester has a themed “women adversely affected by WW2” mini-season. This play dates from 1978, when David Hare directed it himself, and it was his first major success.  It shows its National Theatre origins (money no object) in that it has a number of characters who have very few lines, just a couple of minutes on stage, and they don’t double up either. Chichester made a virtue of this by having the whole  lot marching on to do synchronized scene changing throughout. The stage is transparent (or shiny black if unlit from below). It can have smoke or fog wafting below it. At the back is a curtain of thin strips which scene changers and cast can ripple though or it can be used for projection of large close up faces. Props come on and off in rigorous formation scene shifting. Stage management throughout is 5 star, as is the bare set. … We liked the production, direction and acting more than we liked the intrinsic play, which I’d imagine came across as much edgier in 1978.  I’d say a 5 star production with a 5 star cast of a 4 star play.

7 Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward, Bath Theatre Royal

It’s one of Coward’s best plays – we’re seeing another next week, Present Laughter. Strangely the other great, Private Lives, which I’ve seen so often, pre-dates this blog. Jennifer Saunders joins the ranks of the great interpretations of Madame Arcati AND does it differently and adds new physical stuff … So, on the way out, I asked Karen for a one word appraisal. ‘Ostentatious.’ I know what she means. The set was elaborate of course, the costumes lovely, but they used a lot of effects. Elvira’s first appearance on high (on the upper landing) is only her lit in glittering silver and purple. At the end, both Elvira and Ruth ascend through darkness to the roof – I thought it was projection, but they come back flying on wires. The set rocks, pictures tumble and books fall at the end … lots and lots of books and it was a matinee, and someone has to climb up the spiral staircase and replace them before the next performance. It jars just a little, because the genius of Noel Coward in this play is creating the occult so very simply. A grey frock, a white wig and a bit of pale make-up does the job for Elvira, then all the other stuff is acting – not knowing where she is and talking to thin air for Ruth and Madame Arcati. Yes, they do that perfectly in this production too, but often that’s all there is.

8 Barber Shop Chronicles, by Inua Ellems, The Roundhouse

There is a major audience participation pre-show, with people invited to the barbers’ chairs, culminating in a mass dance with many from the audience dancing, and they all knew the moves too. The audience was at least 50% ‘black’ whether African or Afro-Caribbean. Anthony Ofoegbu, who we saw several times at the RSC in the Rome season, came round speaking and shaking hands before the show. His is the lead role. If you got the references and jokes, this hugely vibrant and enjoyable production was 5 star. We both struggled with the story, partly because of  accent, partly because of cultural references we didn’t get. Not all were African … I got the Chelsea v Barcelona bit watching football, but my companion didn’t (loathes football). I’d love to read the text, and then see it again.  

9 The Deep Blue Sea, by Terence Rattigan, Chichester Minerva Theatre

This production (like the film, and Bath) goes for a detailed set very much 1952, and very much as Rattigan would have wanted it. 1952 must be a very foreign country for younger audience members, especially when putting a shilling in the gas meter to obtain gas is such a major plot hinge, let alone both homosexuality and attempted suicide being imprisonable offences. The stage set of the seedy Ladbroke Grove flat has upstairs windows, three rear doors and vintage wallpaper and furniture. Ladbroke Grove flats looked much the same in 1969. I don’t think they’d changed the wallpaper or furniture. The stage is slightly raised, and surrounded by blackened debris fromWorld War II  bombing raids. When the lights first go down, the lighting comes back up and initially only lights the shattered debris. We hoped this spell of darkness was where Nancy Carroll got on stage swathed in a blanket as Hester, rather than having to lie there … we could see the body shape … for 15 or 20 minutes while the house filled. … Rattigan has been gradually rehabilitated for me as the years roll by and I see more good productions. We agreed this was the best Deep Blue Sea we have seen, and a production which restored the power of the play, and very much because every actor was so good, and they worked together so well.

10  Present Laughter, by Noel Coward: The Old Vic, London

The critics are largely united on 5 star, though Michael Billington had doubts on the gender switch, and Quentin Letts thought it ‘patchy’ as did we. Andrew Scott’s central performance is obviously 5 star at least, as is the set, and Liz, Daphne and Roland are all  in that category,  Scott is so good, that I’ll give it four overall, though the seduction scene was misguided veering on dull, and the support roles have usually been done more forcefully.

  BEST DIRECTOR

1  Nicholas Hytner (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge)

2  Paul Hart  (Macbeth, Kiss Me Kate, Watermill)

Kiss Me Kate: Watermill, directed by Paul Hart

3  Justin Audibert (Taming of The Shrew, RSC)

The Taming of The Shrew, directed by Justin Audibert, RSC

4  Philip Breen (The Provoked Wife, RSC)

The Provoked Wife, directed by Philip Breen, RSC

5  Eleanor Rhide (King John, RSC)

King John, directed by Eleanor Rhide, RSC

BEST ACTOR

1=  Hammed Animashaun (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge) Bottom

Hammed Animashaun as Bottom

1 =  Oliver Chris (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge) , Oberon)

Oliver Chris as Theseus, with Isis Hainsworth as Hermia and Gewendoline Christie as Hippolyta

1 = David Moorst (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge) Puck

David Moorst as Puck, with Hammed Animashaun as Bottom

4  Stephen Mangan (Man in The White Suit)

Kara Tointon & Stephen Mangan

5  Morgan Philpott, Importance of Being Earnest, Watermill ( Lane / Merriman,)

Claudia Jolly as Gwendolen, Morgan Philpott as Merriman, Charlotte Beaumont as Cecily.

6 John Malcovich (Bitter Wheat,Garrick Theatre, London)

John Malcovitch (seated) with Matthew Pidgeon as The Writer.

7  Antony Sher, Kunene & The King

Anthony Sher and John Kani

8 Billy Postlethwaite (Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream tour) Watermill

Billy Postlethwaite as Macbeth

9  Jonathan Slinger The Provoked Wife, RSC (Sir John Brute)

Jonathan Slinger as Sir John Brute

10 Tory Kittles ( 8 hotels, Chichester)

Tory Kittles as Paul Robeson in 8 Hotels, by Nicholas Wright, Chichester Minerva Theatre

BEST ACTRESS

1  Rose Sheehy (King John, RSC)  King John

Rose Sheehy as King John, in King John, RSC

Rose Sheehy gets two pictures!

2 =   Caroline Quentin (Provoked Wife) / Alexandra Gilbraith (Provoked Wife)

Natalie Dew as Belinda, Caroline Quentin as Lady Fancyful, Alexandra Gilbraith as Lady Brute

4  Haydn Gwynne (Hedda Tesman, by Cordelia Lynn, after Henrik Ibsen, Chichester Minerva Theatre)

Haydn Gwynne as Hedda Tesman

5 Claire Price (Taming of The Shrew, RSC Petruchia)

Claire Price as Petruchia with Joseph Arkley as Katherine.

6 Katherine Parkinson (Uncle Vanya by Chekhov, Bath Theatre Royal) Sonya

7 Jennifer Saunders (Blithe Spirit)

Jennifer Saundes as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit

8 Nancy Carroll (Deep Blue Sea)

Nancy Carroll as Hester in The Deep Blue Sea

9  Emma Paentz (8 Hotels, Chichester Minerva Theatre)

Emma Paentz with Tory Kittles in 8 Hotels

10  Rebecca Trehearn, (Kiss Me Kate, Watermill)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Richard Pryal (Austria in King John)

Richard Pryal as the Archduke of Austria in King John, RSC

John Hodgkinson (in both The Provoked Wife, Venice Preserved)

John Hodgkinson as Senator Antonio in Venice Preserved by Thomas Otway, RSC

Matthew Cottle (Mr Miller, Deep Blue Sea)

Matthew Cottle as Mr Miller

Joseph Arkley (Lucio, Measure for Measure RSC + Katharine (lead) in Taming of The Shrew RSC)

Joseph Arkley (left) as Lucio in Measure For Measure 

Michael Byrne (Alexander, Uncle Vanya)

Michael Byrne as Alexander in Uncle Vanya

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Sophie Stanton, (The Taming of The Shrew, RSC, As You Like It RSC)

Sophie Stanton as Jacques in As You Like It, RSC

Natalie Dew (Provoked Wife, Venice Preserved RSC)

Natalie Dew as Belinda in The Provoked Wife, RSC

Doon Mackichan (Bitter Wheat)

Doon Mackichan & John Malkovich in Bitter Wheat

Lisa Dillon (Blithe Spirit, Bath)

Lisa Dillon as Ruth Condamine with Geoffrey Streatfield- Charles Condamine

Sophie Khan Levy (As You Like It RSC) (Celia)

Celia – disguised as ‘Amalia’  (Sophie Khan Levy) – watching her reacting to the action was a highlight of the production for me

SET DESIGN

Bunnie Christie: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bridge)

Immersive theatre, constantly shifting stage areas rising from the floor while stewards moved the audience around them

2  Jonathan Kent: Peter Gynt by David Hare (National Theatre)

LOADS and LOADS of money on one of the best spaces in the land. Includes a plane crash, trucks driving about, people sinking into the ground. Incredible set.

3  Simon Scullion: Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Mischief Theatre on tour

The ultimate star of the show is the set, and all the incredible stuff that happens with it. I’m not plot spoiling, you need to see it, but doors, bunk beds, pirate ships, a table, windows, flying, electric shocks, people carthing fire. There’s a backstage crew of seven, doing the actual technical work, as well as the ensemble who are acting as technicians.

4  Michael Taylor: The Man In The White Suit

So many special effects and they all worked.

5 Lez Brotherston: Malory Towers

A touring set again that was incredibly economical but efficient.

LIGHTING

Mark Doubleday: Macbeth (Chichester)

The lighting design and projection star.  Fantastic lighting, shame about the lack of action.

THEATRE OF THE YEAR

A hard one. Bath Theatre Royal had an exceptional summer season BUT we had to move from the front row of the Royal Circle because it’s too tight for my knees. A couple of rows further back, the sound is awful.

Chichester’s Minerva is the space I’d most like to work in.

The Watermill did three great productions in a tiny space.

The Bridge Theatre was just the one production though we saw it twice.

Just looking back at the number of first rate productions, it has to be The Royal Shakespeare Theatre / Swan Theatre complex in Stratford-upon Avon.