The year in theatre: New company delivers top Shakespeare

Big isn't always better: many of the best stage shows this year came in small packages, says theatre reviewer SUSAN BUDD.

It has been a year as memorable for small surprises as for spectacular, large-scale productions. The biggest and best musical production was incontrovertibly Raymond Hawthorne's production of Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods.

The stage was thronged with a cast of 18 and a nine-piece band, but was so meticulously choreographed and superbly performed that the effect was never chaotic, but magically smooth and beautifully patterned.

The New Zealand Actors Company debut production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was in many ways its antithesis.

It appeared chaotic but the anarchy was supremely well controlled by director Simon Bennett. It had magic, too, a magic that was brilliantly coloured and elemental, both comic and terrifying. Its cast worked immaculately as an ensemble and it was the funniest staging of a Shakespearean comedy I have ever seen.

Big is not always beautiful. Christopher Morahan's production of The Importance of Being Earnest achieved the almost impossible feat of rendering Oscar Wilde's sparkling comedy boring and hardly funny at all.

The play won through in the end but despite lovely costumes and sets it was so careful it was bloodless. And probably the least said about Meatworks the better, other than it was an object lesson in how not to write or direct musical theatre.

Small, however, can be superb. And Helen Medlyn's show To Hell with Love, in which she was accompanied by Penny Dodd, was just that. Is there anything this woman can't sing?

From Mahler and Britten to Gershwin and Sondheim, she sings with passion, wit and pathos. She has great style and sophistication - and she can act, too. Medlyn would be a star anywhere else in the world.

Simon Prast's production of Yasmina Reza's global hit Art was another small gem. More about relationships than paintings, it was beautifully performed on yet another of John Parker's stylish sets. The production evoked the very French quality of crisp, cool clarity.

Other little crackers were solo plays: Dianna Fuemana's Mapaki, the story of a young Niuean woman's search for love, and Alison Wall's charming fable of life and love, Blossom. John Yelash is neither young nor particularly skilled as an actor, but his Jail Song was fascinating both for its passion and as social history.

Witi Ihimaera's first play Woman Far Walking was most notable for Rachel House's portrayal of an ancient woman whose fiery, passionate spirit refuses to bend to the weakness of her body. Although more successful, it shared a problem with Linda Chanwai-Earle's new play, Fire Mountain, in that it attempted to cram too much into a short play.

Atrocities was my off-the-wall favourite. Jonathan Brugh and Jason Hoyte (aka Sugar & Spice) made a hit of their first full-length play directed by Oliver Driver. It was original, hysterically funny and courageous theatre. I hope they do more.

2000: Year in review

2000: Month by month