Monarchs, Mediums and Murderers Top Broadway.com's Five Best London Shows in 2014

From a Noel Coward classic polished to within an inch of its life to a troubling Stephen Sondheim musical that packed a pistol-laden punch, London theater was characteristically varied and vibrant across 2014. There were stars aplenty and more musicals than one could possibly imagine, revivals of Cats and Miss Saigon included. Read on for a list of the year’s five best shows.


PRIVACY, DONMAR WAREHOUSE
James Graham’s play was that rare show where audiences were invited to turn on their cell phones at the beginning of the performance, even if two acts later you were sorely tempted to toss your iPhone in the trash. A sometimes hilarious but more often wounding look at the erosion of self in our information-obsessed, publicity-minded age, Josie Rourke’s production was first among equals in a notably strong year for the tiny Donmar Warehouse—where Rourke returned at year’s end in a striking change of pace to revive the Tony-winning Broadway musical, City of Angels. For more excellence from the Donmar, check out our second choice.


MY NIGHT WITH REG, DONMAR WAREHOUSE
How many revivals of contemporary plays leave one yearning for the original? Not this time. As directed by Robert Hastie, Kevin Elyot’s bittersweet play about love and lust in the age of AIDS was funnier and infinitely more moving this time around than it was in 1994. The author died within weeks of opening night, but the expert ensemble (headed by Jonathan Broadbent and an unabashedly naked Julian Ovenden) is continuing onward--with a West End transfer next month.


ASSASSINS, MENIER CHOCOLATE FACTORY
“All you have to do is move your little finger,” or so goes a defining lyric to a Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical that can be a lot harder to get right than one might think. All the more reason, therefore, to applaud the busy director Jamie Lloyd’s effortlessly smart reappraisal of a piece about the murderous underside of the United States, a country where freedom coexists with a seemingly limitless license to kill. Andy Nyman, Carly Bawden, Aaron Tveit, and Mike McShane were among the standouts in a notably strong company.


THE JAMES PLAYS, NATIONAL THEATRE
The year saw several productions that thought in epic terms, one of which—the two halves of Wolf Hall, starring Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell—is headed to Broadway in the spring. But Rona Munro’s The James Plays was even better, shining a light on three little-known Scottish kings with a sense of adventure and bravura that reminds one of Shakespeare, whose own warrior-king Henry V even made an appearance in the first of Munro’s dazzling theatrical triptych.


BLITHE SPIRIT, GIELGUD THEATRE
The West End tended to play second fiddle this year to the not-for-profit sector, which made the director Michael Blakemore’s affectionate take on Noel Coward’s time-honored 1941 play even more welcome than usual. In a cast that included the pitch-perfect Charles Edwards as a novelist haunted by marital ghosts, the headline-making news of the night was the return to the London stage after nearly four decades of Dame Angela Lansbury, reprising her Tony-winning turn as Madame Arcati—the legendary octogenarian’s wit, sense of timing and spry intelligence were all happily intact.