Linda Crooks, Debbie Hannan and Gareth Nicholls
Traverse Theatre

The Traverse responded to theatres’ closure by setting up Traverse 3, a third ‘stage’ online. It produced compelling work throughout the year, with standout shows including The Journey, and put on the Traverse Festival to fly the flag for the Edinburgh Fringe. It also ran a 16-week series of online workshops to support writers.

Zoë Curnow
Minack Theatre

Cornwall’s spectacular open-air theatre became one of the first venues to reopen after the government gave the go-ahead for outdoor performances, putting on Tales from the Trees. Curnow programmed storytellers and musicians, and the arrival of Educating Rita felt like a real moment for UK theatre.

Bill Elms
Producer

Elms put together a bold and eclectic nine-day programme in the form of the inaugural Liverpool Theatre Festival, held in St Luke’s bombed-out church in the heart of the city. Elms did a huge amount of work to put the performances on and support theatre and its workers in Liverpool.

Daniel Evans and Kathy Bourne
Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester returned to live performance on its main stage with an extraordinary production of Sarah Kane’s Crave, which was live-streamed around the world. The New York Times called it a “timely ticket for a world on fire”. Chichester put on outdoor performances and other streamed shows during lockdown and also set up a youth board to boost inclusivity.

Nadia Fall and Eleanor Lang
Theatre Royal Stratford East

Following the killing of George Floyd, Stratford East produced 846, a project led by Roy Williams in which 14 writers created short response pieces. It also created No Masks with Sky Arts, based on the testimony of key workers during the pandemic, and streamed virtual-reality production Petrichor.

Nikolai Foster and Chris Stafford
Leicester Curve

After the disappointment of converting its main auditorium into a socially distanced in-the-round space, only to be plunged back into lockdown, Curve put the theatre to great use for its filmed version of Sunset Boulevard. Imaginatively done and fully integrating its theatre setting, this was one of the screen highlights of the year.

David Greig and Mike Griffiths
Royal Lyceum Theatre

Alongside the National Theatre of Scotland and Edinburgh International Festival, the Lyceum put on one of the shows of the year. Hannah Lavery’s Lament for Sheku Bayoh, performed on the Lyceum stage and streamed, was brutal, extraordinary and timely. Earlier in the year, the Lyceum also set up projects to connect artists and audiences.

Michael Harrison
Producer

Harrison did all he could to save Christmas – or, at least, the pantomime season – for millions around the UK. This included Pantoland at the Palladium, which didn’t quite make it to press night before Tier 3 pulled down the shutters. But it was not for want of trying.

Paul Hart
Watermill Theatre

One of the first UK theatres to announce outdoor performances, Newbury’s Watermill staged The Hound of the Baskervilles and Camelot, then reopened for indoor socially distanced performances in September with shows including Lone Flyer. It got two weeks into its run of A Christmas Carol before going into Tier 3, though the production was available online.

Louis Hartshorn and Brian Hook
Hartshorn Hook

Before the pandemic, Hartshorn Hook’s The Great Gatsby was the longest-running immersive show in London. It became the first to reopen, to great demand, with a Covid-secure version, tweaking cast and audience interactions until London went into Tier 3. The producers believe immersive can lead the way for theatre’s return.

Bradley Hemmings
Greenwich and Docklands International Festival

Despite the crisis, the festival went ahead in 2020 – its 25th year – with a large-scale event celebrating the NHS, a showcase of black-led work, and pop-up touring shows across Greenwich. Hemmings said GDIF had always tried to play an active role in local civic life, and it certainly delivered.

Sarah Hopwood and Stephen Langridge
Glyndebourne

The Sussex opera house staged open-air performances over the summer after cancelling the original 2020 programme. With In the Market for Love (or Onions are Forever), it was the first UK opera house to perform a full-length opera to a live audience since the start of the pandemic.

Joseph Houston and William Whelton
Hope Mill Theatre

Hope Mill’s revival of Rent was originally due to premiere in July. It became a pertinent production to reopen the venue two months later but lasted only five shows before the second lockdown was announced – though it managed to film the show on the last night and subsequently streamed it.

Wasfi Kani
Grange Park Opera

Early on, founder-director Wasfi Kani commissioned singers to stream concerts from their homes. The Surrey venue then became the first to film an opera after lockdown and then the first to stage a new opera in a theatre since March. A Feast in the Time of Plague, composed by Alex Woolf, received a warm critical response.

Bill Kenwright
Producer

Theatre impresario Kenwright produced the first play back at Theatre Royal Haymarket since March. Love Letters, which previewed in October at Theatre Royal Windsor, where Kenwright gave an emotional opening-night address, was among the very first shows to return to the West End. Plans for a McKellen Hamlet might have stalled, but he was one of the few to stage a full panto – in Windsor.

Jamie Lambert and Eliza Jackson
Lambert Jackson

Lambert Jackson moved quickly as the lockdown became a certainty, putting on concert series Leave a Light On. It lasted 10 weeks and provided financial support to those involved. They filmed The Last Five Years and Songs for a New World, taking the latter to the Palladium in October.

Spotlight on... Henry Filloux-Bennett

The Lawrence Batley Theatre has served up some choice morsels during lockdown, including one streamed show that critics dubbed a “masterpiece” and saw the Huddersfield venue make the pages of the New York Times.

Under artistic director Henry Filloux-Bennett, who started his career in restaurant kitchens with chefs including Gordon Ramsey and Tom Aikens, the venue responded to the crisis with verve, putting a series of new and adapted works online.

Befitting Filloux-Bennett’s roots, LBT streamed his acclaimed adaptation of Nigel Slater’s autobiography Toast – including recipes specially created by Slater for viewers – and developed a streaming version of David Nicholls’ The Understudy, starring Russell Tovey and Sheila Atim, raising money for theatre charities. Both were part-radio play, part-animated film.

But LBT’s standout production of the year was its collaboration with Ipswich’s New Wolsey Theatre and Cirencester’s Barn Theatre: an adaptation of Jonathan Coe’s dark 1994 satire What a Carve Up!. Filloux-Bennett adapted this tale of greed and corruption in Thatcherite Britain, which couldn’t have landed at a better time.

“The Winshaws [the family at its centre] have always been to me a shorthand for the Tory government: everything Thatcher was doing then, the current regime is continuing. The legacy of the figures of the 1990s still affects us,” he told The Stage.

Directed by Theatr Clwyd’s Tamara Harvey, its stars, mostly working from their homes, included Derek Jacobi, Stephen Fry, Celia Imrie, Rebecca Front, Sharon D Clarke and Jonathan Bailey.

The production made full use of its medium, aping the chopping, changing narrative of Coe’s novel – some parts were delivered to camera, some done as a studio interview, as well as archive pieces all with the framing device of a present-day YouTuber.

The Arts Desk called it a “postmodern masterpiece” and The Stage’s Tim Bano said it was: “A thrilling creation, stunningly and lavishly designed. It pushes the theatrical form and has fun while doing it.” Audiences bought tickets in droves and it received interest around the world.

Filloux-Bennett said the result was a new way to create work “and keep telling stories [in a way] that isn’t quite theatre and isn’t quite film”. It also showed what venues can do when they work together – even those without international renown can gain traction beyond the UK.

LBT consistently looked to keep its operation running in any way it could, opening its courtyard as a social space in July and staging live performances as soon as it was able several months later.

In October, the theatre recorded and streamed Locked Down. Locked In. But Living, a world premiere triple bill of contemporary dance and ballet with Studio Wayne McGregor, Northern Ballet and Gary Clarke Company. It also streamed its own digital version of A Christmas Carol, with Gyles Brandreth as Scrooge. Under Filloux-Bennett, it will be fascinating to see what LBT cooks up next.