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End of year review: My 5 least favourite plays of 2019

I always go to the theatre expecting something good, hopefully amazing, but it doesn't always work out that way for a variety of reasons. Here is a list of what hasn't impressed me, my 5 least favourite plays of 2019.

National theatre nudity and violence warning

In no particular order (links through to my reviews):

1. When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, National Theatre

My first chance to see Cate Blanchett on stage and she had to choose this tedious play which rendered potentially interesting themes cold, unengaging and, well, boring.

Despite the warnings (see pic) it was emotionally flaccid and about as exciting.

Still disappointed and a bit angry.

2. Admissions, Trafalgar Studio

It's a play about white privilege, told entirely from the nice, safe perspective of a white middle-class family. Oh, the irony.

Admissions failings are particularly stark given the swathe of powerful and clever plays we've had this year about race and prejudice for example Fairview, A Kind of People, Queens of Sheba and My White Best Friend.

3. Hedda Tesman, Minerva Theatre

I'm not a purist when it comes to the classics, changing the setting, gender or period can bring something fresh and new to a play but it doesn't always work.

Hedda Tesman is a case in point, turning Ibsen's iconic character from a young woman who finds her life suddenly mapped out for her to a mature woman with a grown-up daughter in a contemporary setting.

A youthful Hedda living in a patriarchal society can be forgiven a lot but an older Hedda, especially one living with the means to change her life cannot. She just becomes bitter and twisted and I found it hard to sympathise.

4. The Man In The White Suit, Wyndhams Theatre

A bit of escapism into a silly Ealing comedy was just what I needed in the Autumn, sadly despite some clever staging and the odd bright spot this didn't really deliver the laughs. Such a shame. 

5. The Starry Messenger, Wyndhams Theatre

While Matthew Broderick's comic timing is superb and the first half had plenty of laughs it couldn't detract from the fact that this is essentially a play about a man having a mid-life crisis affair with a younger woman and getting away with it.

Coming from the writer of the superb Manchester By The Sea, it felt a bit hackneyed and despite being only 10 years old was feeling its age.

An almost ran for this list was Rutherford & Son at the National Theatre but I was so bored after the hour-long first half I left and didn't return, so it feels unfair to 'officially' include it.

What do you think of my choices? Perhaps you saw something that disappointed or you disliked? Let me know in the comments.

You might also like to read:

Theatre I did like: My 5 favourite plays of 2019.

10 plays from the past 10 years that stand out.

From the archive: My favourite curtain call moments of 2015

 

 

 

 

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4 responses to “End of year review: My 5 least favourite plays of 2019”

  1. Louise Penn avatar
    Louise Penn

    I’m with you on the first two!

    Reply
  2. Rev Stan avatar
    Rev Stan

    Yes, I believe we are not alone on those two. Sometimes you need to see something you don’t like to really appreciate what you do (and what is good).

    Reply
  3. Mark Harris avatar
    Mark Harris

    Following on from my Top 10 favourites, these are my 5 least favourite plays of 2019. Number 1 is the worst.
    (I do write seat reviews on Seatplan.com as markh25 and have recycled some of my jokes here.)
    5 Follies. A big, bloated, tuneless mess. It made me realise that I don’t like musicals. Except the ones I do like. Towards the end, one of the characters starts singing a dismal dirge in which she asks if she’s losing her mind, and I knew exactly how she felt. Still, at the end, everyone else gave it a standing ovation, so what do I know? So annoyed I paid for a good seat.
    4 The Man In the White Suit. Was it just me, or did everyone in this, er, show look just a little embarrassed to be associated with it? There was an air of ‘nothing to do with me guv, jog on’ about Stephen Mangan’s performance, Kara Tointon’s performance, that woman from Coronation Street. Thank goodness I bought a cheap seat.
    3 The Twilight Zone. Just amateur hour. It was twilight in London when I left the theatre and that was much more entertaining. Thank goodness I bought a cheap seat.
    2 Betrayal. How this dull dismal thing got such good reviews and transferred to Broadway, I will never understand. Three deeply unpleasant liars sit around discussing their middle class angst. ‘Oh darling, let’s have an affair!’ ‘Oh, how super, shall we book a hotel room?’ ‘No darling, I’ll buy us a house in Kilburn.’ Oh how the other half commits adultery! I’ll admit that Tom Hiddleston is quite the stage presence, his hair swept back as if he’d arrived at the theatre during a hurricane and hadn’t been able to find a comb. He stalked around the stage like a panther, a black panther one might say (I know, wrong film, right franchise though). But these were three horrible people and I cared nothing for them. Apparently this play was told backwards. I’d really like it to be told so backwards that I never actually went. Good thing it was selling so fast that I had to settle for a medium-priced seat.
    1 A Very Expensive Poison. Oh dear. For anything to beat Betrayal it has to be really bad but AVEP was so irredeemably awful that it easily walks away with this honour. This was without a doubt the worst thing I have ever seen on any stage, anywhere, at any time, and I include school assemblies. I felt personally let down by The Old Vic, after the earlier triumphs of Present Laughter and All My Sons. The sheer preachiness was getting me down, long before the interval; when a large number of people didn’t actually come back I quite wished I’d joined them. Then the second half was, unbelievably, worse. I was so irritated that I was twitching in my seat as if I was being attacked by fire ants. Then the actors stepped out of character and literally began preaching at us. I couldn’t leave because MyAnna Buring was coming down the aisle towards me, handing out cards with preachiness on them, getting unfortunates at the end of the row to read stuff out. If she’d got to me I had a little statement prepared. How could I know the provenance of these statements? Get back on stage and act, I would have said, better yet go do another series of Ripper Street. When she turned up on The Witcher I started having flashbacks. So, so glad I saw a preview and only paid about twenty quid. Twenty pence would have been too much.
    So there they were. To everyone involved, please take a few moments to think about what you’ve done.

    Reply
  4. Rev Stan avatar
    Rev Stan

    Thanks for taking the time to share your list. I’m not a musical fan at all so there are never going to be any musicals on any of my lists. (I’ve tried them and they don’t agree with me.
    I can’t agree about Betrayal. It was one of my favourite plays last year but each to their own. I enjoyed Angels in America up to point but I couldn’t understand why everyone raved about it so much.
    A Very Expensive Poison had a lot of problems many of which you’ve highlighted but it had one or two elements I did like which just kept it out of the bottom of the table.
    I actually enjoyed the Twilight Zone but saw the original run at the Almeida so wonder whether that had anything to do with it. Sometimes these quirky plays work better in smaller spaces rather than big theatres.
    Thanks again for sharing your list.

    Reply

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