We are hugely grateful to our brilliantly talented team of expert critics who remain dedicated to covering musical theatre in all its different shapes and forms up and down the country.
A selection of those critics were asked to choose their ‘show of the year’ although, as you can see below, some struggled to pick just one.
The shows represent just a small percentage of productions staged this year, but we hope these ‘top picks’ bring back some happy memories.
In the meantime, we wish all our contributors and readers a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year – one in which, we hope, the theatre industry can be allowed to thrive once again.
Lisa Martland, Editor
Picture: Marc Brenner
ADRIAN EDWARDS
Oklahoma! – Young Vic, London
I had to wait until 1980 to see Oklahoma! on stage when the Haymarket Leicester production transferred to the Palace Theatre when it was directed by James Hammerstein, son of Oscar, who wrote the book and lyrics for the groundbreaking musical. Trevor Nunn directed the joyful RNT production in 1999, which swept up numerous awards. You can still catch it on DVD from Universal. All of which is a personal preamble to this year’s encounter at the Young Vic Theatre when this generally sunny tale was turned on its head by director Daniel Fish. His New York production won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
Produced as though in a village hall with the audience within feet of the players, and on three sides at balcony level, it contained the most chilling scene I’ve encountered attending musical theatre performances. And if I say, without giving too much away, that the participants are Judd Fry and Laurey and Curly on their wedding day, in a dramatic coup de grace, then I hope I might have whetted your appetite to go and see it in 2023, when this production transfers to Wyndham’s Theatre.
The production won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, the Dream Ballet didn’t quite come off for me, but the score is in tact, and a talented cast and orchestra give it their all, of whom mention should be made, since the reviews gave him less space than his due, of Arthur Darvill’s Curly, who sang, played guitar, often picking it up then discarding at short notice, as well as portrayed Curly in a less favourable light than has been the custom.
Picture: Marc Brenner
JEREMY CHAPMAN
Cabaret (second cast) – Kit Kat Club, London / Sweeney Todd – PPA / From Here to Eternity – Charing Cross Theatre, London
The shows I most admired in 2022 were two where the Press was requested not to review so this is the perfect place to tell you how wonderful they were.
First up in April was Cabaret and probably the greatest version of Kander and Ebb masterpiece ever produced (old as I am, I have not seen them all!).
Not having covered the 2021 premiere of this hot-ticket revival and, on principle refusing to pay the exorbitant ticket prices charged by the Kit Kat Club (alias the Playhouse), I missed the ground-breaking Jessie Buckley-Eddie Redmayne knockout. The invitation to see the show (but not write about it) came when Amy Lennox and Fra Fee took over.
Lennox was so extraordinary and her delivery of the title song, grabbing the number by its entrails, so gut-wrenching that it is very hard to imagine anyone, even Buckley, doing Sally Bowles better. And, of course, the rest of it, the whole concept by director Rebecca Frecknall, was mind-boggling too.
Dead-heating for top spot was the finest student production of a Sondheim musical I’ve ever seen or ever hope to see. This was PPA’s Sweeney Todd in June, directed by Graham Hubbard. What he got out of those third-year graduates were performances of a lifetime, though it wasn’t for the faint-hearted. It frightened the life out of most of us and made most professional attempts at Sondheim’s gory masterpiece look ordinary.
An honourable mention too to the Charing Cross Theatre revival of From Here to Eternity with a great batch of Tim Rice songs, some new from the more lavish but less effective 2013 original at the Shaftesbury, and a tough storyline so absorbing I saw it twice, enjoying it even more the second time.
Picture: Danny With a Camera
SCOTT MATTHEWMAN
Anyone Can Whistle – Southwark Playhouse, London
Step away from Stephen Sondheim’s “big hitters” – say, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park With George – and you often find productions which tend to be overlooked because they’re more challenging, or whose story presents so many challenges that audiences have traditionally found it rubs them up the wrong way.
Previous productions have struggled to get the tone of Anyone Can Whistle right, either going too absurd to let the political satire shine through, or treating the book as an necessary inconvenience to connect the dots between some real Sondheim bangers.
In a year in which our financially challenged corner of the world was presided over by not one, but three, power hungry incompetents, maybe the time was always right for this revival. But director Georgie Rankcom’s fearless approach to the source material never took an easy approach to the satire, nor let Sondheim’s long shadow obscure the freshness the musical needed. Further solidifying the whole piece was a blistering, hilarious performance by Alex Young as the town’s ruthlessly power-hungry mayor, Cora Hoover Hooper – cementing Young as the latest in a long line of British leading ladies who are exceptional at interpreting the master composer.
At long last, for perhaps the first time since the show first flopped on Broadway in 1964, we had a version of one of Sondheim’s most troubled children which worked on every level. Coming as it did in the year after his death, it proved that sometimes, all a Sondheim flop needs is a few decades and a fresh eye – and then, it can become the show he always wanted it to be.
Picture: Pamela Raith
SORCHA EXWORTHY
Heathers The Musical – The Other Palace
My show of the year is undoubtedly Heathers The Musical, which I saw for the first time after the cast change in September 2022. Being pretty familiar with certain parts of the score beforehand and (very!) aware of how much the show was loved by musical theatre fans and the more hardcore ‘Corn Nuts’ alike, I was actually totally unaware of the more detailed intricacies of the storyline ahead of watching the show. Not so much a superficial drama about high school teenage life but a more gritty depiction of some hard hitting emotional issues, balanced perfectly by moments of laugh-out-loud comedy.
I think my prior ignorance of the full story arc only made the power of the show even more hard hitting, especially when coupled with the amazing talent of one of the strongest companies (in my opinion) in the West End.
Both individually and as a collective they shone and delivered a phenomenal show in the wonderfully intimate and well suited surroundings of The Other Palace. This show is one that has stayed with me since – absolutely earning its place in this hall of fame.
Picture: Ellie Kurttz
LEON FERGUSON
Only An Octave Apart – Wilton’s Music Hall, London
Among thrilling evenings and engrossing streams one creation stood out. Only An Octave Apart at Wilton’s Music Hall. Justin Vivian Bond and Anthony Roth Costanzo. From different theatrical worlds. Contrasted in appearance. A baritone and a countertenor. Theatrical magic. Nico Mulhy’s arrangements encompassing ‘Me and My Shadow’, ‘There Are Fairies At the Bottom of My Garden’, ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘Chasing Rainbows’. The Marriage of Figaro, Liszt. Gluck segueing into Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s ‘Don’t Give Up’. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Waters of March’. ‘Under Pressure’ and Sylvester’s ‘Stars’. An encore that began with Purcell: ‘Dido’s Lament’ and Dido’s ‘White Flag’. Then the Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ with Philip Glass’ Akhnaten. Exquisite staging by Zack Winokur.
They shared their voices, their lives, and took us into their hearts. We laughed and yes, we cried. What Bond may have lacked vocally he compensated for with artistry and slicing wit. When Costanzo sang the heavens must have heard him. This writer went three times and would have gone to the last night were it not sold out. An extraordinary theatrical cabaret in the unique environs of Wilton’s. One this writer will never forget.
MARK SHENTON
Into the Woods – New York City Center, then Broadway’s St James and Bath Theatre Royal / Liz Callaway: To Steve With Love – New York’s 54 Below, then London’s Crazy Coqs / Merrily We Roll Along – New York Theatre Workshop / Sondheim’s Old Friends – Stephen Sondheim Theatre, London
It’s just over a year since we lost Stephen Sondheim, the single greatest theatre musical force across the last 60-plus years (he died, aged 91, on 26 November 2021).
The first posthumously produced New York revival of one of his shows was Into the Woods, his 1987 collaboration with co-writer/director James Lapine, in a beautifully pared back production that originated at New York City Center in a two-week spring run last May as part of its Encores season, before transferring to Broadway’s St James Theatre (where it is still running, to 8 January, before then embarking on a national tour beginning on 18 February in Buffalo, NY and then continuing to Boston, Washington and Philadelphia). A rotating round of New York theatre stars has necessitated repeated return trips for me.
An entirely different approach to the show was also taken by a sumptuous summer revival at Bath’s Theatre Royal in August, in a production co-directed by Terry Gilliam. Designer Jon Bausor ingeniously locates it in a Pollock’s toy theatre frame that is full of surprises, as is the subversive appearance of the Grim(m) Reaper that stalks the action. Here’s hoping the production finds a London home.
One of my all-time favourite Broadway voices Liz Callaway, who made her Broadway debut, aged 21, in the original short-lived production of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along in 1981, is mostly these days a cabaret star, either alone or with her older sister Ann Hampton Callaway. Her long-time accompanist is Alex Rybeck, whom she met when he was a pianist in the original Merrily. This year they joined forces on a gorgeous, highly personal tribute to Sondheim, called To Steve with Love, which I saw both at its New York premiere at 54 Below in March and then again at London’s Crazy Coqs in November. But if you missed it, you could still experience some of the glory of it on a new CD release of the show.
And talking of Merrily We Roll Along, Maria Friedman’s 2012 London revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory is currently bringing the show back to Off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop, in a production that is now heavily tipped to be Broadway bound. With Sondheim’s death, this tale of long-term professional and personal relationships in a theatrical setting takes an even deeper poignance.
Finally, Friedman also co-staged (with Matthew Bourne) the year’s biggest and most star-studded theatrical gala of the year — Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, presented by Cameron Mackintosh at the Shaftesbury Avenue theatre, formerly the Queen’s, he had previously re-named in his honour. I never saw it live, alas, but it will be broadcast on BBC2 on 31 December and will also be available on BBC iPlayer.
Picture: The Other Richard
IAN BOWKETT
Hedwig and the Angry Inch – Leeds Playhouse
What a year! From the brilliant big budget musicals like Tammy Faye, to the brilliant medium budget musicals like Operation Mincemeat, to the brilliant non-existent budget musicals like Evita Too, to the brilliant movie musicals like Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, to the brilliant not-really-technically musicals like My Neighbour Totoro, I feel absolutely spoiled for choice. As brilliant as this year’s new writing has been, this tough decision came down to two revivals – and if there has to be just one, as phenomenal as the Young Vic’s Oklahoma was, I’ll have to go with a special trip I took up north…
Director Jamie Fletcher’s new production of Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Leeds Playhouse was riotous punk perfection. In the title role, Drag Race favourite Divina De Campo proved her talents extend far beyond any reality show runway, showcasing exquisite vocals and a masterful comic touch. The entire queer, trans and non-binary-led team put together a spellbinding monstrosity of a show that I pray to the many gods returns for a tour or nearby residency soon. Keep your eyes peeled and your eyeshadow gaudy.
HANNAH GRIMMETTE
Singin’ in the Rain – Milton Keynes Theatre and Touring
There’s been some fantastic shows at Milton Keynes Theatre this year, but the show that I’m still craving to see again is the phenomenal Singin’ in the Rain.
It included everything a classic musical theatre show should, from the flamboyant set to the outstanding dance scenes and the glitz and glam of old Hollywood.
Every member of the cast was a triple threat, with impeccable singing, dancing and acting.
It was a feast for all the senses and lived with me far beyond leaving the auditorium doors. It’s the one show I recommend to all of my family and friends.
Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
NIGEL SMITH
Cinderella – Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester
There have been some great shows in 2022 (across the various outlets I have covered over 50 this year – a great improvement on last!)
Of those that I covered for Musical Theatre Review the standouts are Passion, The Book Thief and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella at Hope Mill Theatre is 2022’s hands down winner for me. A European stage premiere that has been long awaited since its postponement in 2020, this has been a passion-project for Hope Mill’s co-founders Joseph Houston and William Whelton ever since they fell in love with the 2013 Broadway adaptation. That love and passion oozed out of every pore of this production and, as ever, Hope Mill pulled out all the stops to assemble a top-flight cast of immensely talented performers. The way this team continues to produce the highest standard of musical theatre in such an intimate venue is nothing short of miraculous, and they genuinely did prove that, in the words of the show flyer, anything is possible.
CHRIS BARTLETT
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Opera House, Manchester and Touring
My highlight would unquestionably be the touring revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which I saw at the Opera House, Manchester, following its run at the London Palladium.
For me, Joseph has always been Lloyd Webber and Rice’s most purely enjoyable show and Laurence Connor’s bright, buoyant and fast-paced production was possibly its best incarnation yet.
A brilliantly well-drilled ensemble and infectiously enjoyable performances from Alexandra Burke as the Narrator and Jac Yarrow in the lead role made this the perfect feel-good family treat.
JULIE WATTERSTON
Othello – Watermill Theatre, Bagnor
Not technically a musical, more Shakespeare with music, the creative blind-casting in this production emphasised the drama rather than detracting from it, providing the opportunity for some of the actors to play roles for which they would generally never be considered.
A powerhouse of a show, this “jukebox” Shakespeare was an inspiring interpretation which will have embraced even those for whom Shakespeare was previously a complete enigma. Another great example of the Watermill’s creativity, making it even more perplexing as to why the theatre has been completely cut from Arts Council NPO funding.
FIONA ORR
Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder! – Edinburgh Festival Fringe / Orphans – King’s Theatre, Edinburgh and Touring / The Stamping Ground – Eden Court, Inverness / A Mother’s Song – Edinburgh Fringe
The Edinburgh Festival and Fringe were back in full force and Musical Theatre Review’s hard-working team covered as many pieces of musical theatre and opera as possible. A highlight was the wacky comedy Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder! – a killer of a show that became the hottest ticket in town and the worthy recipient of the Musical Theatre Review Best Musical Award.
In terms of original Scottish musicals, both Orphans (National Theatre of Scotland) and The Stamping Ground (Eden Court and Raw Material) deserve attention. The latter will tour the country in 2023 and the Runrig music is sure to be a hit, especially in such a glorious show. Orphans was full of laughs, yet the pain of the characters is explored through the amazing score in this truly ensemble piece. Reuben Joseph was particularly striking and he has just recently been cast in the title role of Hamilton.
So, looking forward to 2023, it will be a treat to revisit The Stamping Ground and to see a new work, A Mother’s Song by Finn Anderson and Tania Azevedo which will premiere in Stirling on 23 February. Finn Anderson won the Musical Theatre Review Award for Best Musical for Islander which went on to become a radio play, a film and was performed in New York. The cast of Islander, Bethany Tinnick and Kirsty Findlay, are also part of the company for A Mother’s Song: spanning 400 years, from 17th century Stirling to 21st century New York City, the show follows three remarkable women at different times in history, and traces the incredible journey of Scottish folk music across the Atlantic.
Picture: Ciaran Bagnall
MICHAEL QUINN
Into the Woods – Northern Ireland Opera and Lyric Theatre, Belfast / Propaganda – Belfast Ensemble and Lyric Theatre, Belfast
Although duties elsewhere kept me away from MTR this year, I’m glad to belatedly report that musical theatre in Northern Ireland in 2022 was in bracingly rude, good health. The year began with the old(-ish) and ended (nearly) with the new.
February saw a stunning revival by Northern Ireland Opera’s Cameron Menzies of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, soon to be part of West Australian Opera’s spring 2023 season. Evidence enough of the still-young company’s growing international profile. Magically realising Sondheim’s patchwork fairy tale-cum-morality fable, every element of the production – set, costume, lighting, performances and an ad-hoc band revelling in Jonathan Tunick’s original Broadway orchestrations – seamlessly coalesced to produce an unforgettable evening, as vital as it was fantastic.
Later in the year at the same venue, as part of autumn’s annual Belfast International Arts Festival, composer Conor Mitchell and his Belfast Ensemble delivered the year’s most accomplished new work, Propaganda: A New Musial. Set in blockaded Berlin as the Cold War began to chill, it boasted the thrilling energy of Mitchell’s blazing blending of Big Band brashness, operatic bravura and Broadway at its most exultant. With telling echoes of Jerry Herman’s Mame and John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Cabaret, and more than a splash of Mitchell’s own original signature, it was a work that made a bold, persuasive claim for the rich reservoir of Northern Irish talent, and is one that we surely haven’t heard or seen the last of.
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