IT HAS been a stimulating year after the uncertainty and inactivity of the Covid epidemic and I could highlight a dozen exciting new productions at some of London’s Off West End venues or a diversity of shows at the resurrected Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Instead, I want to focus on Bristol Old Vic (BOV).
 
“A strangely muted year” was how one forgetful journalist summed up 2022 at the beautiful, Georgian playhouse, but he could not have been more wrong.

It definitely has history and reputation behind it, but this is not a theatre stuck in the past. After facing the disruption of a multimillion-pound refurbishment and face-lift then lockdown, it has emerged as a vibrant, creative and locally embedded venue for both its own work and visiting companies and this year has been anything but muted.

The main stage has been the setting for a fascinating range of original, home-grown premiers from Mark Rylance’s tour de force, title role as the uncompromising pioneer of antisepsis in Semmelweis, and Sally Cookson’s funny, inventive and dynamically colourful dissection of childhood communication issues in Wonder Boy to Giles Terera’s powerful indictment of the slave trade in The Meaning of Zong.

If you were lucky enough to see any of these shows, I am certain you will still have a treasure trove of vivid memories not just of the headline names, but also of the elements that need to gel for any successful production.

Such memories probably include Antonia Franceschi’s choreography in Semmelweis, allowing a swirling physical expression of the doctor’s increasingly troubled mind, haunted by dead mothers and Tom Newell’s eye-popping comic book captioning in Wonder Boy with textspeak and adolescent phrases bumping alongside Shakespearian verse.

Then there was Jean Chan’s spectacular set in The Meaning of Zong, with Westminster Hall’s hammer-beam roof transforming into the ribs of the slave ship and of course Juliet Agnes’s barnstorming performance as Roshi, the mouthy girl with a heart of gold in Wonder Boy.

A worthy return of Sally Cookson’s nightmarish and emotional stage adaptation of A Monster Calls with its ensemble physicality and startling imagery were included in a year that also saw an exciting contemporary and edgy production of Hamlet with Billy Howle as the introverted prince struggling to find his role.

A diverse range of more intimate shows in the Studio supported this feast in the main house from The Red Lion, a powerful dissection of lower-league, football club politics to What Remains of Us, an emotionally charged family reunion between North and South Korean residents.

The theatre has made a concerted effort to involve the community and support local artists as well as creating a range of outreach programmes such as Mayfest, a biennial festival of genre blurring experimental live theatre spilling out in to the city.

This proactive engagement with the community and consistent quality of work is gradually building a more diverse audience and placing the theatre at the heart of the city.

This period also marked the end of Tom Morris’s 13-year artistic directorship that has successfully steered the theatre through many of the challenges and created a vibrant and inspirational artistic and social venue, true to the past yet alive to the future.

The year ends with Morris’s dark rewrite of the Nutcracker, a visually impressive and challenging Christmas show that is still finding its feet and Belle and Sebastian in the Studio from the ever reliable Travelling Light company, for children whose parents and grandparents have especially fond memories of the enchanting French TV series.

2022 has been a strikingly memorable year for BOV and with a new Complicite production due to open the 2023 season and a three-year Arts Council investment grant secured, the theatre promises to go on being a beacon of creative light.