News, reviews, features and podcast on theatre across the UK
The British Theatre Guide Newsletter
No 1266: 31 May 2026
Editorial
It’s a bit of a dull day today compared to when I was composing last Sunday’s missive in the baking sunshine.
And anyway, this weekend was spent largely on the indoor task of transferring all of BTG’s e-mail accounts to a new provider, which was a bit scary but seems to have completed successfully. Although something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, it was spurred by a problem with my home Internet connection that prevented me from accessing any of my mailboxes, but it will also save me some money. There are numerous services to pay for to keep BTG online and free to use, so we are grateful to anyone who makes a small contribution towards our costs by buying tickets, books or other items from our affiliate links.
Lists of top things are everywhere on the Web; if you search online for anything you are thinking of buying, you will probably get lots of web pages of “the best … of 2026”. There’s even a rather ugly portmanteau word for them: listicals. They are easy to produce, whether by humans or by AI, and often recycle previous articles and reviews.
Any “best of…” in the arts is likely to be controversial. I remember when then lead critic of The Guardian Michael Billington published his 101 Greatest Plays in 2015 (about which he spoke to Philip Fisher for the BTG podcast), there were people on the Drama Higher Education e-mail list outraged that he would dare to dictate which plays are the best—which he said himself he never meant to do as it was “shamelessly subjective”. He said this at the Edinburgh International Book Festival the year after, by which time he had already decided he would revise his list if making it again as he was shocked to discover that he hadn’t included Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, Tony Kushner’s Angels In America or anything by David Mamet.
Despite this, last month in The Guardian, he listed every Shakespeare play in order of preference, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona at 35 to, perhaps surprisingly, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 (he has listed multi-part histories as single plays) at number 1. Philip has examined Michael’s choices for his feature this week.
I always struggle when I’m asked for favourites; for one thing, I often can’t remember them when I’m put on the spot, and for another, I change my mind daily, perhaps hourly. I’m not sure I could pick just eight records for Desert Island Discs (although I’d give it a go, Lauren, if you want to invite me on) or five dinner guests for Tim Lihoreau’s excellent Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner podcast.
But when it comes to Shakespeare, favourites are to some extent associated with the productions you’ve seen—unless you are assessing them on the page, in which case, as they are theatre and not literature, you are missing out most of the experience. This will also depend on geography, as if you are based in London, you will probably have had the opportunity to see most of his plays, whereas in other regions, you would be lucky to see anything but the most popular.
Obviously I’ve seen quite a lot of Hamlets, Romeo and Juliets, Macbeths, King Lears, far fewer Julius Caesars, one Cymbeline on a London trip, one Troilus and Cressida in Stratford many years ago but never Two Gentlemen of Verona, Timon of Athens or Henry VIII.
Although these days, you could probably quite easily fill any gaps in your Shakespeare experiences through productions available online.
Voyage and Hakkō Korean National Contemporary Dance Company, The Place, the Korean Cultural Centre UK, The Lowry, Tramway, Dance City and Pavilion Dance South West at The Lowry, Salford
Barnum the Circus Musical Bill Kenwright Ltd presents the Watermill Theatre Production at Nottingham Playhouse
Derren Brown's Only Human Michael Vine, Andrew O'Connor, Derren Brown and Phil Sandler for Vaudeville Productions Ltd at The Lyric, Theatre Royal Plymouth
The Tempest Royal Shakespeare Company at Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Second Trimester BAC (Battersea Arts Centre) Production, The Lowry and SICK! Festival at The Lowry, Salford
Only Human (Vaudeville Productions, Michael Vine, Andrew O’Connor, Paul Sandler and Derren Brown for Only Human Productions Ltd) - Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham, –
I’m Sorry, Prime Minister (Mark Goucher, Bob Benton, Iwan Lewis and Clive Hayley present The Barn Theatre Production) - Theatre Royal Bath / Ustinov Studio / the egg, Bath, –
