The Crush Bar's End-Of-Year Lists
A list of good stuff! A list of bad stuff! A list of stuff to look forward to! A list of lists! (The Crush Bar will return at some point in January.)
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre written by Fergus Morgan.
This is the free, Friday issue, which usually contains a Q&A with an exciting theatremaker or an essay on a theatre-related topic. This week, though, there is The Crush Bar’s End-Of-Year Lists: five covering my favourite shows of 2024, the stuff I’m looking forward to, and more.
In case you missed it, here is this week’s issue of Shouts And Murmurs, which is a weekly round-up of the most interesting reviews, interviews and articles on theatre elsewhere. In this issue: how Simon Russell Beale convinced me to keep writing about theatre…
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Who doesn’t love a lazy and reductive end-of-year list?
Here, in the final issue of The Crush Bar in 2025, are five of them. If they look different to everyone else’s end-of-year lists, that is partly because I am exposed to an odd collection of shows and stories in my strange career spanning Scotland and London, and partly because I simply have better taste than everyone else.
My five favourite shows of 2024
Till The Stars Come Down at the National Theatre
Beth Steel’s state-of-the-nation drama about a Nottinghamshire family falling apart over the course of a long wedding day was funny, insightful and deeply moving.
The Hills Of California in the West End
Jez Butterworth’s latest play focused on a mother and her four daughters in 1970s Blackpool and asked profoundly disturbing questions about ambition, parenthood, and life. Sam Mendes’ production featured some fantastic performances, too.
Mnemonic at the National Theatre
A quarter of a century on from its premiere, Complicité brought its legendary show back, and it did not disappoint. An intelligent, absorbing, exhilarating masterpiece.
Cyrano at the Traverse Theatre
Virginia Gay’s queer reworking of Edmond Rostand’s classic play was stuffed full of music, slapstick and metatheatrical humour. It was an absolute joy. And you can still catch its London transfer at Finsbury Park’s Park Theatre until mid-January.
Escaped Alone at the Tron Theatre
The Scottish premiere of Caryl Churchill’s exquisitely precise, profoundly disturbing play confirmed its status as a modern classic. Joanna Bowman’s staging was flawless and featured terrific performances from four doyennes of the Scottish stage.
Honourable mentions: Giant at the Royal Court Theatre, Hadestown in the West End, Radiant Vermin at the Tron Theatre, The Girls Of Slender Means at the Edinburgh Lyceum, Boys On The Verge Of Tears at the Soho Theatre; Red Pitch at @SohoPlace; After The Silence at the Edinburgh International Festival, and VL, Vigil, Stuffed, Sorry (I Broke Your Arms And Legs), So Young and Shotgunned at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Shows I wish I’d seen: Oedipus in the West End, The Fear Of 13 at the Donmar Warehouse, The Other Place at the National Theatre, The Years at the Almeida Theatre, The Real Thing at the Old Vic, Slave Play in the West End, Bluets at the Royal Court, Kenrex at Sheffield Playhouse, The Cherry Orchard at the Donmar Warehouse, The Buddha Of Suburbia at the RSC, The Picture Of Dorian Gray in the West End, Punch at Nottingham Playhouse, and The Lonely Londoners at Jermyn Street Theatre.
Five things I did in 2024 that I’m proud of
A History Of Scottish Drama In Six Plays
You are probably sick to the back teeth of me banging on about my podcast by now - but I am very proud of it. It is a comprehensive history of Scottish playwriting since the sixteenth-century, pegged around six boundary-breaking shows. Listen wherever.
This oral history of Hadestown in The Stage
I spoke to composer Anais Mitchell, director Rachel Chavkin, and designer Rachel Hauck to assemble an oral history of Hadestown ahead of its arrival in the West End.
This review of the Traverse Theatre’s Fringe programme for The Financial Times
The Financial Times asked me to head along to the Traverse Theatre’s opening weekend in August and round up everything I saw: five stars for Cyrano, four stars for The Sound Inside and So Young, three stars for A History Of Paper.
This issue of The Crush Bar about the Edinburgh Fringe
I’ve published 65 issues of The Crush Bar/Shouts and Murmurs in 2024, which have collectively got over 200,000 views. One of my favourites is this issue from July about the problems facing the Edinburgh Fringe and how to fix them.
This interview with Simon Russell Beale in The Stage
I did several big interviews for The Stage this year: this one with David Haig, this one with Francesca Moody, this one with the cast of The Hills Of California, but my favourite was this one with the great Simon Russell Beale last week.
Five things I won’t miss about 2024
The relentless uncertainty over arts funding in Scotland
I spent a lot of time this year writing about the Scottish government’s shoddy treatment of Scotland’s culture sector. A couple of weeks ago, it finally put its money where its mouth is and increased culture spending by £34 million. Hopefully, after Creative Scotland announces who will be getting money from its new multi-year funding programme - now with an extra £20 million in the pot - on January 30, I won’t have to write about Angus Robertson and Iain Munro again for a while.
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Some truly terrible shows
I don’t tend to get to London press nights any more, so I missed out on the delights of The Enfield Haunting, The Devil Wears Prada, and Opening Night. Scotland had its fair share of stinkers, too, though. Two Sisters and Maggie & Me were not good at all.
That tedious discourse about content warnings
No-one is forcing anyone to read them. You can simply walk straight past.
My twenties
I turned thirty in March, bidding farewell to a decade of professional precarity and existential angst, and saying hello to a decade of consistent, lucrative brilliance.
Five things I’m looking forward to in 2025
Scottish theatre becoming great again
Some reasons to be optimistic: that aforementioned £34 million; new artistic directors at the Tron Theatre, the Lyceum Theatre, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, and A Play, A Pie and A Pint; the Citizens Theatre reopening; and some exciting shows, including Wild Rose at the Lyceum, A View From The Bridge at the Tron Theatre, and the recently announced Small Acts Of Love, which will reopen the Citizens Theatre in September.
Exciting shows elsewhere
Some that have just opened: Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812 at the Donmar Warehouse, The Invention Of Love at the Hampstead Theatre, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at the Almeida. Some that are transferring soon: The Years, Punch, The Lonely Londoners, Kenrex. Some that are on the way: Manhunt at the Royal Court, Richard II at the Bridge Theatre, Hamlet at the RSC, Otherland at the Almeida Theatre, and lots more.
The 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
I know it sometimes seems like I hate it but I promise I don’t. Like a tough sports coach, I am only so hard on the world’s largest arts festival because I love it so much.
New artistic directors with new visions
In addition to the aforementioned shake-up in Scottish theatre, we also have relatively new bosses at the Donmar Warehouse, the Royal Court Theatre, and the RSC, plus Elizabeth Newman arriving at Sheffield Theatres, Nadia Fall taking over at the Young Vic and Indhu Rubasingham taking up the reigns at the National Theatre. I admire all of them and believe they can achieve great things with the right support.
Some personal professional stuff
I’d like to keep making audio work in some form. I’d like to keep this newsletter going and growing. I’d like to keep shouting about theatre - and particularly Scottish theatre - anywhere I can. I’d like to speak on more panels and at more conferences because - as you know - I occasionally have good opinions. Don’t ask, don’t get, right?
Five more end-of-year lists to read
Natasha Tripney on international theatre in Café Europa
Natasha Tripney looks back at the “most fuck-yeah” moments she has seen on stage in 2024 in the latest issue of her Substack Café Europa: Angels In America in Slovenia, Hamlet in Edinburgh, Hecuba, Not Hecuba in Greece, and more.
The Stage’s top fifty shows of 2024
The Stage has picked fifty shows across four different lists actually: one covering London, one covering the rest of the UK, one covering opera and dance, and one covering international work. I’ve contributed the Scottish stuff.
Joyce McMillan’s top ten shows in Scotland in The Scotsman
She has gone for Tortoise In A Nutshell’s Ragnarok - another show I wish I’d caught - plus Escaped Alone, Hamilton, The Girls Of Slender Means, To Save The Sea, and more…
Jesse Green’s top NYC shows in the New York Times
The NYT’s critics have also contributed to a piece covering the nine best moments in shows in 2024. Elisabeth Vincentelli has chosen the moment Laura Donnelly’s character Joan returns in The Hills Of California to The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter.
The Crush Bar’s Christmas Gift Guide
Just in case you have left it really, really late to get your presents this year…
That’s all for this issue
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on BlueSky, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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See you in 2025.
Fergus
I would swap Radiant Vermin and Escaped Alone. The list just shows I don't get to see enough theatre.