For the second year running, the Southwark Playhouse was the venue I visited the most.
If you haven’t visited, they have two sites in Elephant and Castle, a short walk from the underground station.
Borough, the oldest, on Newington Causeway, is home to the Large and the Little (there was briefly the Tiny, but few productions were staged there).
Elephant, the newer of the two venues, has one auditorium and larger budgets. It’s on Dante Place behind St Mary’s Churchyard.
I saw 11 productions at Borough this year. Two took artists as their main theme: The Animator focused on German film animatior Lotte Reiniger; Who is Claude Cahun? on the French photographer and sculptor.
Music featured in three productions: Wilko was about Wilko Johnson, guitarist and songwriter; Gwenda’s Garage was the story of the first car workshop run by lesbians; and KENREX took a true crime tale and doused it in live Americana.
We also had an amusing revival of Stephen Sondheim’s The Frogs, the return of tube comedy Cockfosters, and prison drama Lifers.
And the true story of a human cyborg inspired camp musical Supersonic Man; social media cancellation ran through Son of a Bitch; a group of students crafted a tale of belonging in Drifting.
At Elephant, American film inspired both Midnight Cowboy (a curious musical from the classic 1960s movie) and The Code (an imagined meeting between Billy Haines and Tallulah Bankhead, scandalous film actors from the 1930s).
This venue remains one of my favourite places on the fringe scene. It isn’t pub theatre; nor does it aspire to challenge the West End. It attracts big names on stage and in the audience alongside emerging artists.
Find out more about the venue, which was established in 1993, at https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/. Chris Smyrnios is the current Artistic Director.