Brave new world: why the capital's theatres have never been so important

Even fringe venues have been punching above their weight. There must surely have been a few raised eyebrows, for instance, at north London’s Hampstead Theatre with its production of Botticelli In The Fire, which took a nakedly anarchic (and sometimes just naked) view of the Italian Renaissance. But the result was a boldly realised drama that played devilishly fast and loose with history in much the same way as last year’s cinema success The Favourite. Elsewhere, Richmond’s once determinedly middle-class and middle-brow Orange Tree theatre continued to programme plays that push the envelope. This autumn it revived a 2011 play from the actor-writer Arinzé Kene, Little Baby Jesus. Its sexual candour and social landscape — a trio of inner-city black teenagers — were light years away from the environs for which the theatre is better known.

Such change has no doubt been thanks, in part, to the boundary-pushing directors at the helm of the capital’s playhouses. Prior to taking over at the Bush Theatre, Lynette Linton embarked on her own career fast- track, directing the thrilling UK premiere of Sweat (named Best Play in partnership with Chanel at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards) before a West End transfer. The Donmar’s artistic director Michael Longhurst, making his own distinct mark after only a few productions, seems to have forsaken the celebrity-led diktats of some of his predecessors in favour of a provocative amalgam of offerings. They included David Greig’s Europe, a 1990s play that spoke directly to our riven times in displacing a drama steeped in the Balkans conflict into a commentary-for-now on the borders that society is erecting at every turn. That startling change at the Orange Tree is being driven carefully by its artistic director, Paul Miller. His current offering is the more accessible work of Bernard Shaw, with a revival of his comedy Candida. Fold the familiar in with the new and you retain an audience that might otherwise find the change in direction all too much.

Such hand-holding, however, might soon not be necessary; even the classics are undergoing makeovers. It is seemingly no longer the done thing to preserve them in aspic, the spirit of enquiry on that front further reflecting an increasingly diverse society who want to know if, and how, these works can speak in new ways. Take, for example, the director Jamie Lloyd turning Betrayal into a mournful yet physically alive theatrical ballet this year, the production capping a season-long immersion by Lloyd in the work of Harold Pinter. Or else the Young Vic re-casting Arthur Miller’s hardscrabble Lomans in Death Of A Salesman as a black family making their fraught way in post-Second World War America in a Marianne Elliott-Miranda Cromwell collaboration (one of six Arthur Miller revivals this year). These Millers attempted to energise his work from within, rather than simply scatter them with stardust (though no disrespect to the great Sally Field, whose performance in Miller’s All My Sons at The Old Vic was memorable).

Perhaps all of this has inspired some of the West End’s greatest names to step out of their comfort zones, too. You don’t have to delve deep into this year’s Evening Standard Theatre Awards shortlist to find theatre veterans recharging their batteries at a time when they could be coasting. Dame Maggie Smith, who turns 85 this month, could be forgiven for choosing to bask in the glory of her Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey. Instead, she returned to the stage in a 100-minute solo play at the Bridge Theatre playing Goebbels’ stenographer. In a similar vein, Juliet Stevenson pitched up at the Almeida in The Doctor, a little-known play staged by Evening Standard Theatre Award-winner Robert Icke. Her role, the besieged doctor, was a potentially unlikeable character who held the audience by sheer force of personality: a maverick choice for an ever-surprising actress.

Punchy theatre productions show no sign of slowing down either: next April, Timothée Chalamet will go from playing Henry V on screen to co-starring opposite the great Eileen Atkins in the London premiere of the New York hit play, 4000 Miles, at The Old Vic. It’s an exciting move for a brilliant screen actor as yet untested in commercial theatre. Daniel Radcliffe continues to raise the bar for himself, returning to the stage opposite Alan Cumming in the demanding realms of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame at The Old Vic, while Oliver Chris is momentarily relinquishing his duties as an actor to turn co-author, with Richard Bean, of Jack Absolute Flies Again: a brave move for a vibrantly comic actor more used to life on stage than off. Might it be one unexpectedly advantageous by-product of our uncertain times that the theatre can lead from the front? After all, star wattage is one thing — a stirring sense of purpose across the theatre at large is quite another.