OPINION - London theatre is officially back with a vengeance

And we’re back. Founded in 1955, the Evening Standard Theatre Awards are the UK’s oldest dramatic accolades, an annual recognition by London’s newspaper of the excellence of London’s theatre. Across seven decades, the awards honoured the great and the good both on and off stage in acting, writing, musical performance, direction and design. Their history is a roll call of established and upcoming talent, from Richard Burton to Andrew Scott, Vanessa Redgrave to Billie Piper, Samuel Beckett — whose Waiting for Godot was named “Most Controversial Play” in 1955 — to 2019 winner Lynn Nottage.

Then the whole world stopped. As the Standard’s theatre critic I sat down on March 13, 2020 with nearly 900 other people to watch Robert Lepage’s all-day epic The Seven Streams of the River Ota at the National Theatre. Three days later London’s playhouses were closed for the first time since the plague of 1592 in Shakespeare’s day. The industry was among those hardest hit by lockdown.

But almost from the start, London theatre rallied, from producer Nica Burns keeping the lights on outside her West End theatres to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Sir Sam Mendes setting up funds for freelancers. Theatres like the National, Old Vic, Donmar Warehouse and Stratford East found ever more inventive ways to mount work online, outdoors or inside with social distancing. Andrew Lloyd Webber badgered the Government to let the sector reopen.

Throughout the pandemic, the Standard fought theatre’s corner, arguing its case with the powers-that-be on our pages, covering the hybrid shows that sprang up online, and campaigning for better practice within the industry. With the awards on pause, we teamed up with TikTok in 2021 to provide bursaries to bright new stars across the sector who challenged industry norms. We were there when the Donmar opened for the socially distanced audio happening, Blindness in August 2020; when the Duchess theatre staged solo show Cruise in May 2021; and when a full-capacity audience finally rose to its feet to salute Anything Goes at the Barbican three months later.

Today we announce the shortlist for the 66th Evening Standard Theatre Awards and it’s as full of talent, promise and vim as any I can remember. Without minimising the losses of the last two years, we can assert that London theatre is back with a vengeance: and London’s paper is here to celebrate it.