We were whisked to the depths of the Barents Sea, taken through the mean streets of Moscow and kissed by Belgians – that’ll be another roistering year in theatreland, then. Steve Wright draws back the curtain.

I’ve felt angry, exhilarated, depressed, delirious, panicked, betrayed, exploited, joyous and I haven’t been able to talk or think about much else for more than a week.” Venue’s theatre reviewer after a session of ‘Internal’, the extraordinarily intense and intimate one-to-one show by Belgian troupe Ontroerend Goed that constituted Mayfest 2010’s emotional high-water mark. Five attractive Belgians went one-to-one with five nervous punters in candlelit booths. You talked, had a drink, answered questions, touched: then everyone reconvened and “a dangerously beguiling twilight between performance and reality” began. Extraordinary stuff: and just one of the highlights of a vintage Mayfest – leftfield, as ever, but far from dour or impenetrable. Instead, joy, simplicity and visual beauty were the engines behind shows like Lone Twin’s ‘The Festival’ and Stacy Makishi’s charming, hilarious ‘Stay’, which fused live art, ‘Lassie’, feathers and shaving foam (don’t ask). For ‘SS Arcadia’ by locals Stand and Stare (staged in a disused shop unit on College Green – 2010 was another fine year for theatre in unexpected places), Venue was handcuffed to an actress, taken into a darkened room and sung to, one-on-one, in German. Hurrah for Mayfest and its restless prodding at the boundaries of theatre.

Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory’s spring double-header of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘The Tempest’ was typically smart, eloquent, beautifully judged fare, and reminded us (as has the TF’s Xmas show ‘Pinocchio’) what a very fine comic actor local lad Felix Hayes is. Rebecca Pownall also made a fantastic Helena, and Chris Staines and Ffion Jolly excelled in both shows. Can SATTF ever fail?

In other news… the 2010 graduates at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School were a particularly fine vintage: there was a brilliant and harrowing ‘Crucible’, a funny, tragic and genuinely touching ‘Translations’ and a hilarious and nicely exotic ‘Comedy of Errors’ (the Shakespeare en vogue at the moment – Shakespeare’s Globe brought it to Bristol this summer, and SATTF are doing it next spring. A comment on the disorientation of our times? A desire for simple, knockabout escapism?). May’s Directors Cuts season at the Alma Tavern, meanwhile, was perhaps the best yet, including truly stunning renditions of John Kolvenbach’s ‘Love Song’ and Frank McGuinness’s ‘Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me’.

We also toast Tom Wainwright, whose strange, poetic and blackly hilarious ‘Pedestrian’ wowed Old Vic Studio crowds before hightailing off to Edinburgh. Also having a good year, courtesy of Bristol Old Vic’s Ferment strand, the Short Fuses and Prototype platforms at the Tobacco Factory, Theatre West and the Ustinov’s Script Space and Theatre Lab, were a slew of local writers and performers including Tim X Atack, Adam Peck and Idiot Child.

At Theatre Royal Bath, we bowed down before Simon Callow’s Bard in ‘The Man from Stratford’; swooned at Rosamund Pike’s imperious, gun-toting ‘Hedda Gabler’; and bellowed with laughter at Filter Theatre’s playful, high-spirited and very liberal ‘Twelfth Night’. And August’s vast three-week yoof spectacular Storm on the Lawn was a brilliant ‘Oliver Twist’. Talking of big community productions, TRB’s vast ‘Ben Hur’ was an unrivalled visual and aural feast, featuring a cast of 130 and a full choir. Scripted by Hattie Naylor, directed by Lee Lyford and performed by The People of Bath, ‘Hur’ was a huge, gripping, epic feast. We also adored ‘Memory Map’, a poetic, reflective and extremely atmospheric amble around central Bath’s hidden histories by TRB Young People’s Theatre.

The Tobacco Factory and its kid sister The Brewery both had vintage years. At the latter, Adam Peck’s ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ adaptation was one of the best things seen in a theatre all year: tight, gripping and claustrophobic, with Eoin Slattery and Cathy McKinnon excelling as the crims on the lam, hiding out in their Deep South shack. Other Brewery hits included Myrtle Theatre’s ‘Up Down Boy’ and Publick Transport’s platyful, Goons-esque ‘Department of Smelling Pistakes’. And let’s not forget Little Bulb Theatre’s beautiful, moving ‘Crocosmia’, also seen at Bath’s Ustinov.

Across at The Factory itself, the year’s gems included a brilliant ‘Beckett Trilogy’, Conor Lovett’s one-man rendition of the great man’s existential mid-period triptych, and ‘Hit Me!’, Jeff Merrifield’s expletive-heavy Ian Dury portrait. We loved puppeteers Pickled Image and their haunting ‘Hunger’, and, back at the Brewery, we were moved by Beanfield, Shaun McCarthy’s clear-eyed account of the persecution of Britain’s traveller community in the mid 1980s.

Bath Fringe is facing tough economic times but still delivered a very decent fortnight back in May. Highlights included Tracy Letts’s ‘Bug’, a powerful piece set in a seedy Oklahoma motel, with various damaged, vulnerable characters from the ‘trailer trash’ end of American society caught in a world of paranoiac conspiracy theory. NoFit State Circus’s ‘Tabu’ was gorgeous: great band, evocative polyglot songs and high acrobatic art almost close enough to touch; and veteran Bristol street-theatre duo Skate Naked treated delighted Fringers with their shameless semi-nude acrobatic pranks.

Over at The Ustinov, classy, thought-provoking contemporary drama again dominated the agenda, with the year’s copper-plated highlights including David Greig’s funny and wistful Edinburgh thirtysomething lost weekend ‘Midsummer’; ‘Love Love Love’, Mike Bartlett’s portrait of Baby Boomers growing up (or not); and a deliciously unsettling trilogy of plays by Neil LaBute, accurately billed as “acts of emotional terrorism”. The Ustinov’s summer shows ‘The Chairs’ and ‘The Good Soldier’ were both triumphs, with one of the performances of the year from John Hopkins as Ford Madox Ford’s flawed, rueful and charismatic Soldier. A very fond farewell, too, to Andrew Smaje, the Ustinov’s artistic director for ten years and the architect of the theatre’s hugely dynamic, generative new writing and production programme, who upped sticks to Hull Truck: replacement TBA.

As well as its various Bath Fringe triumphs, the Rondo Theatre hosted one of the year’s leftfield gems in the shape of ‘Eric’s Tales of the Sea’, a collection of sub-aquatic anecdotes by (surely) the UK’s only submariner-turned-stand-up. And ‘Shelter’, penned by the theatre’s AD Ian McGlynn, took a hard stare at the realities of homelessness via the tale of Mark, who falls apart after the sudden death of his wife and child, and winds up on the street.

Four stars across the board this year for Theatre West’s autumn new writing season: props especially to ‘Pavement’, Sharon Clark’s gripping study of eroding family ties and the coruscating effects of loneliness and hardship; and ‘Venus at Broadmoor’, Steve Hennessy’s beautiful, touching tour around the psyche of an infamous Victorian poisoner. And Bristol’s Show of Strength showed us another side to Bedminster with their brilliant walkabout theatre piece ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’

Bristol Hippodrome welcomed a rousing ‘The Sound of Music’, a hilarious ‘Spamalot’ (starring Marcus Brigstocke – fine comedian and, we learned, very decent comic actor) and a swashbuckling ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ whose real star, our reviewer left us in no doubt, was the titular flying jalopy.

For a week this summer, it felt like 1985 all over again, as some of the original cast of Vivian Stanshall’s comic opera ‘Stinkfoot’ (including actor Tony Slattery) reunited to restage the madcap musical on board the boat. Kids’ theatre troupe Travelling Light scored two resounding hits this year: first back in April at the egg with their delicious adaptation of toddlers’ storybook ‘Bob, the Man on the Moon’ and recently with ‘Boing!’ their beautiful Xmas collaboration with Bristol dance duo Champloo.

Bristol Old Vic Studio continued, as ever, to emulate, even outstrip its main house sibling. Its high point was also its low-water mark: ‘Kursk’, Sound and Fury’s bewitching account of life for a group of submariners caught in a diplomatic incident in the remote Barents Sea. But we also loved ‘Ivan and the Dogs’, Hattie Naylor’s stunning tale of a boy who ran the streets with a pack of Moscow street dogs; Doon MacKichan’s eye-openingly confessional and genuinely hilarious ‘Prima Doona’; and Company of Angels’ adaptation of ‘Apples’, Richard Milward’s visceral, sex, drink and brawls account of a Middlesbrough adolescence. Up in the main house ‘Juliet and Her Romeo’, Tom Morris’s transposition of the great love story into a modern old people’s home, worked on most levels and drilled home a few emotional truths more resonantly than Shakespeare’s original, while SATTF/BOV’s co-pro ‘The Misanthrope’ was flawed but witty, boasting a very fine performance from Simon Armstrong as the eponymous society-eschewer.

Two non-pro outfits had a particularly fine year: Bath’s Next Stage celebrated the securing of their Mission Theatre home with a fine programme including, late in the year, a sensitive trilogy of plays about relationships at life’s various stages. And Bristol’s Ship and Castle gave us an inventive, alternate-genders ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ followed by ‘The Few’, Tom Phillips’s portrait of life in an English village during 1940’s fateful Battle of Britain summer.

Festivals-wise, 2010 was a busy year featuring 30th anniversary festivities for the Desperate Men; another vigorous Bristol Do street-theatre shindig; and a second instalment of BOV’s ambitious, what-the-hell-next spontaneityfest The Bristol Jam, whose highlights included Theatre Improbable’s live, improvised this-is-your-life ‘Lifegame’, another hugely ambitious 30-hr ‘Improvathon’ and more off-the-cuff brilliance from improv-meisters The Factory.  
 

Copyright Steve Wright 2010

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