Theatreboard Top 5 of 2023

It's December again (how did that happen?) and with the consent of the assembled party I am happy to offer my services for a further year to gather a consensus about what members have enjoyed most this year. It's not all about the Top 5 though, one of the joys of doing this for me is to see the breadth of opinion, to remind myself of things I missed, things I wish I'd seen, and things that other people enjoyed more than I did...

Last year's results are here: theatreboard.co.uk/post/452706/thread and you can click back from that into previous years since 2018 since I rashly said "someone should be counting what gets the highest number of mentions..." Last year Tammy Faye topped the Musicals list and Jerusalem walked the Plays category. A few people last year were looking forward to a return for Tammy Faye which obviously looks unlikely to materialise now. Operation Mincemeat came fifth in the musicals and it will be interesting to see whether its arrival in the West End means that it finds a new group of supporters - could it manage an unprecedented third year in the top table?

There are no real rules, you can nominate anything you've seen on stage, or indeed anything somewhat 'theatrical' that you have streamed. For me, my on-stage events dropped from 75 to 49 so far with a handful still to come, a long way from the 131 I managed in 2019. I have a feeling the double-whammy of rising prices and disappointing star vehicles might take that number down even further in 2024.

Anyway, now's the time to start reviewing your old diaries, your spreadsheets, your folder of etickets, and start considering your Top 5. A point for each show you mention, if you absolutely can't get it down to 5 you can give some more but they won't all get a whole point because that would be unfair. I'll close the books at midnight on Hogmanay (Dec 31st), so you have plenty of time to think about things, but some of you may be close to the end of your theatre-going year so I thought I'd open the thread to nominations now.

Comment away!

PS - I just did a survey for the Young Vic which asked me what type of theatregoer I was. First option was "Regular theatregoer (sees one or more shows a year)" So when you are looking at your own lists, if you saw at least one thing, you can official self-define as a regular theatregoer...