2014, the verdict

THEATRE

Event(s) of the Year The Seagull – STCSA, Adelaide Festival Tartuffe; Henry V – Bell Shakespeare William Shakespeare’s Reservoir Dogs – Russall S. Beattie at The Vanguard Children of the Sun – Sydney Theatre Company Once – Melbourne Theatre Company, Gordon/Frost
Honourable Mention On The Shore of the Wide World – Pantsguys & Griffin Independent Noises Off; Switzerland – Sydney Theatre Company Jump for Jordan – Griffin Theatre Company Antigone: The Burial at Thebes – Furies Platonov – ATYP, MopHead & Catnip Productions The Legend of King O’Malley – Don’t Look Away Sweeney Todd – New Theatre A Streetcar Named Desire – Young Vic (NTLive)
Dishonourable Mention Cain and Abel – THE RABBLE, Belvoir Hedda Gabler – Belvoir Nora – Belvoir Oedipus Rex – Belvoir Rupert – Melbourne Theatre Company, David Sparrow Productions Truth, Beauty and A Picture of You – Hayes Theatre Company
Best (New) Play Jump for Jordan, Donna Abela The Effect, Lucy Prebble Procne & Tereus, Saro Lusty-Cavallari Joan, Again, Paul Gilchrist	Shakesproud Henry V (dir. Damien Ryan) William Shakespeare’s Reservoir Dogs (dir. Steven Hopley) All’s Well That Ends Well (dir. Damien Ryan) Richard III (dir. Mark Kilmurry)
The Red Curtain Award for Most Prodigious Use of Red Curtains Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin & Co. – Strictly Ballroom The Musical
The Most Restrained Deployment of Trademark Style Benedict Andrews, A Streetcar Named Desire (Young Vic; NTLive)

The kindness of strangers: Young Vic’s A Streetcar Named Desire (NTLive)

Director Benedict Andrews needs no introduction to Sydney audiences. Over the past seven years, his productions have garnered considerable critical and popular acclaim, and not without detractors. Known for his striking theatricality as much as for his reliance upon certain stock examples of stagecraft – glass boxes, confetti falling from the ceiling, loud noises or music, bodily fluids (blood, urine, faeces, vomit, spit) being spread across the set, gratuitous nudity and/or drug-taking – it has almost become predicable as to what you’d expect to encounter in a production directed by Andrews. But in his recent production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire for London’s Young Vic, currently screening in cinemas as part of the National Theatre Live program, it is the distinct lack of these effects which makes it such an engrossing and relatively ‘straight’ interpretation of Williams’ play. This Streetcar is visceral, dangerous, strangely seductive and undeniably compelling.