2015, the verdict

THEATRE

Event(s) of the Year Ukchuk-ga: Pansori Mother Courage – Sydney Festival Camille O’Sullivan: Changeling – Sydney Festival The Tempest – Bell Shakespeare What Rhymes with Cars and Girls – MTC Orfeo ed Euridice – Spectrum Now
Honourable Mention 4.48 Psychosis; Manic Pixie Dream World – SUDS All About Medea – Montague Basement Of Mice and Men – Sport for Jove Battle of Waterloo – STC Love and Information – STC & Malthouse Man of La Mancha – Squabbalogic A View from the Bridge – Young Vic [NT Live]
Dishonourable Mention Tabac Rouge – Sydney Festival Five Properties of Chainmale – Arts Radar & Griffin Independent The Rocky Horror Show – Richard O’Brien She Only Barks at Night – Living Room Theatre Jumpy – STC/MTC
Best (New) Play What Rhymes with Cars and Girls, Aidan Fennessy Battle of Waterloo, Kylie Coolwell Extinction, Hannie Rayson Manic Pixie Dream World, Tansy Gardam	The Most Pertinent Award ASYLUM – Apocalypse Theatre Company
The ‘Proud Overdaring’ Award Masquerade – Griffin Theatre Company, STCSA, & Sydney Festival Mother Courage and Her Children – Belvoir Edward II – Sport for Jove	Shakesproud The Tempest (dir. John Bell) Hamlet (dir. Saro Lusty-Cavallari) Love’s Labour’s Lost (dir. Damien Ryan)

The Playlist: 2015 at the theatre

As with previous years, ‘The Playlist’ is a musical summary of the year’s theatre-going. The rule is (mostly) simple: find a piece of music that encapsulates either the production or my response to it (or both, as the case often is). The only catch is I cannot re-use a piece from a previous year, even if it is the same text.

Thus, here is The Playlist for 2015.

We are left darkling: STC’s King Lear

Alongside Hamlet, King Lear is one of the megaliths of the Western dramatic canon, regarded by Percy Bysshe Shelley as “the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world.” Often cited as being sublime and universal, it is also extremely nihilistic, a bleak portrait of despair, a Bacon-like scream into the abyss. Known for his acute observations of humanity and generosity in directing, Neil Armfield’s work embraces the epic and intimate all at once, and so it was with great expectations and an almost-equal dose of trepidation that I entered his production of King Lear for Sydney Theatre Company. The only trouble is, it isn’t really that compelling at all.

There’s the point: Montague Basement’s Hamlet

Hamlet – the play, the character; the phenomenon – needs no introduction. In Sydney this year alone, we have been offered at least four productions in one form or another, and this is the third I have seen. In many respects, Montague Basement’s production is the strongest – and certainly the boldest – but it could be bolder, more daring; more Hamletian.