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.