The Best (and Worst) Theater in Europe in 2022

Matt Wolf

Four favorites from The Times’s London theater critic

“Blues for an Alabama Sky”

National Theater, London

When the American writer Pearl Cleage’s 1995 play crossed the Atlantic this fall, it was the high point of a variable year for the National Theater, England’s flagship playhouse. Set in adjacent apartments in 1930s Harlem, the play takes an unsparing look at a cross section of Prohibition-era Americans yearning for release from the racism and homophobia that mar their daily lives. An expert Anglo-American cast was led by Giles Terera (“Hamilton”) and the Juilliard-trained TV actress Samira Wiley as roommates who talk of packing up and moving to Paris; at the helm was Lynette Linton, making a terrific National Theater debut with a production that embraced freewheeling comedy as well as deep sorrow.

“Oklahoma!”

Young Vic Theater, London

It was an indifferent year for musicals in London, until the arrival from New York of a much-lauded revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1943 “Oklahoma!” The dilemma of the farm girl Laurey Williams (a dazzling Anoushka Lucas), forced to choose between the affections of two men, possessed an unusual urgency. And the directors Daniel Fish and Jordan Fein found a primal darkness in the material that made a buoyant-seeming American classic look very bleak. In February, the production is set to transfer to the West End for a limited run.

“The Seagull”

Harold Pinter Theater, London

The director Jamie Lloyd revived Chekhov’s 1896 play in a stripped-back, modern-dress production, with the cast seated on plastic chairs against a nondescript chipboard set. The absence of props and period detail helped focus attention on the anguish at the heart of this celebrated work. You felt, more acutely than ever, the thwarted passions that drive a play about artistic ambition and misplaced love. Indira Varma was in peak form as the charismatically self-regarding actress, Arkadina, and she was superbly matched by the Australian actor Daniel Monks as her suicidal son, Konstantin. The “Game of Thrones” alumna Emilia Clarke made a memorable West End debut as the hopeful young Nina.

“A Number”

Old Vic Theater, London

Caryl Churchill’s 2002 play has been revived many times, but rarely with the scorching intensity that the director Lyndsey Turner and the designer Es Devlin brought to bear at the Old Vic in January. Nominally about genetic cloning, Churchill’s hourlong drama moves beyond scientific inquiry to address more human issues, like sibling hatred and the slippery nature of happiness. In the superlative cast, Paapa Essiedu excelled playing three cloned sons who confront a toxic parental inheritance, as did Lennie James as a father who wants to make a fresh start.

And the turkey …

“Mad House”

Ambassadors Theater, London

Dysfunctional family dramas are a staple of American drama. But they rarely come drearier and more overwritten than Theresa Rebeck’s “Mad House,” which had its world premiere in the West End this summer. Rebeck, a New York theater regular, gave the play’s choice role to a fellow American, David Harbour; he played one of three children gathered at the home of a cantankerous father (Bill Pullman) roaring his way to the grave like a dime-store King Lear. The writing felt borrowed and inauthentic, and the director Moritz von Stuelpnagel couldn’t lift an evening rife with tired confessions (“none of us had a childhood”) and clichéd plot devices (the belated emergence of an all-important letter). More than once, I groaned.

Laura Cappelle

Four favorites from The Times’s Paris theater critic

“Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists”

Bouffes du Nord, Paris

Tiago Rodrigues, the incoming director of the Avignon Festival, was on a roll in 2022. He brought several revelatory productions to Paris this fall, none more so than “Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists” at the Bouffes du Nord. The unlikely subject of the play, which Rodrigues also wrote, is a fictional Portuguese family that hunts down and kills fascists, following a tradition passed down through generations. Is that an honorable contribution to society, as most of the family members believe, or is doing harm always unacceptable, even when fascists threaten democracy? Rodrigues and his cast walk a fine line to avoid caricature, yet the conversations that result onstage — starting with the youngest daughter, who experiences doubts about her right to kill — are consistently thoughtful and engage the audience critically, without feeling forced.

“One Song”

Avignon Festival

Some of the best shows to debut in France in the past year brought unclassifiable feats of virtuosity onstage, like “One Song,” which played at the Avignon Festival. Created by the Belgian artist Miet Warlop, it was another idiosyncratic entry in the “History/ies of Theater” series that the Belgian playhouse NTGent has developed in collaboration with the festival. In “One Song,” a group of musicians/competitors perform a single song on a loop while doing an extreme workout. (A violinist plays while doing squats and leg lifts on a high beam.) Throughout, as the performers thoroughly exhaust themselves, a male cheerleader and a group of fans take turns encouraging and booing them, while a referee mumbles incomprehensibly in the background. The instant standing ovation in Avignon wasn’t merely a way to reward the performers for their efforts: “One Song” lingered in the mind as a wild, exhilarating study in absurdity.

“Fat People Skate Well. A Cardboard Cabaret”

Paris l’Été Festival

Another oddball success, “Fat People Skate Well. A Cardboard Cabaret” won a number of awards in France this year, and they were thoroughly deserved. The show’s two actors and directors, Olivier Martin-Salvan and Pierre Guillois, tell their story almost entirely through dozens of cardboard objects. Words written on the signs and boxes, of various shapes and forms, explain what each represents — including a “fjord” and a “fly swatter” — and with the help of assistants, Guillois, a lithe, clownlike figure, in boxer shorts throughout, manipulates them at lightning speed. In the tale he spins, Martin-Salvan’s character goes on an adventure around Europe to reconnect with a siren, all the while mumbling in a mix of gibberish and English. How does this all add up, you ask? The duo’s fantasy world coheres thanks to extraordinary stagecraft in this “cardboard cabaret,” and the result is serious theater magic.

“Free Will”

Théâtre Dunois, Paris

Theaters that cater to young people often fly under the critical radar. With Léa Girardet and Julie Bertin’s “Free Will,” however, the Théâtre Dunois in Paris landed a hit for all ages. This new play explored the life of the South African runner Caster Semenya, an Olympic gold medalist caught in a long-running fight with her sport’s governing body — and repeatedly banned from competition — because of elevated testosterone levels. Girardet and Bertin, two gifted young writers and directors, depict the frequently inhuman treatment of Semenya (the excellent Juliette Speck) with instructive clarity, weaving together verbatim excerpts from court proceedings and witty spoofs of femininity standards that even top athletes are forced to abide by.

And the turkey …

“Tartuffe”

Comédie-Française, Paris

This “Tartuffe” was supposed to launch France’s yearlong celebration of Molière’s quadricentennial in style. Staged by Ivo van Hove for the Comédie-Française, a descendant of Molière’s own theater ensemble, it offered an intriguing experiment: a reconstruction of the play’s 1664 original version, censored by the French religious establishment and subsequently lost. Yet van Hove undermined it with a stultifying black-and-white production that had less to do with Molière than with his own directorial tics. The suited cast was left to wrestle with bewildering character arcs: When Tartuffe, who fakes piety to secure a position within a bourgeois family’s home, attempts to seduce the wife, Elmire, van Hove manufactured a love story between the two — leaving Marina Hands, as Elmire, to take Tartuffe’s abuse with puppy-eyed adoration. Thankfully, stronger Molière productions followed at the Comédie-Française later in the year.

A.J. Goldmann

Four favorites from The Times’s Berlin theater critic

“humanistää!”

Volkstheater, Vienna

The director Claudia Bauer’s “humanistää!,” which premiered at the Volkstheater in Vienna in January and traveled to Berlin for Theatertreffen, the prestigious German theater festival, in May, is rightly one of the most acclaimed German-language productions of the year. This theatrical homage to the Viennese experimental poet and writer Ernst Jandl (1925-2000) is a musically supercharged and visually arresting work from one of Germany’s very best theater directors. Exuberant performances from the Volkstheater’s excellent actors are perfectly calibrated to this gleefully surreal production, in which 10 of Jandl’s key works come to eye-popping life in a Gesamtkunstwerk that combines spoken word, music, dance and pantomime. While delighting in Jandl’s linguistic games, the production, which remains in the Volkstheater’s repertoire, crackles with fresh and euphoric inventiveness. This is the one show I can’t wait to see again.

“Oasis de la Impunidad”

Schaubühne, Berlin

This show, from the Chilean director Marco Layera and his company, La Re-sentida, is brilliant but harrowing: I don’t ever want to revisit it. A coproduction between Berlin’s Schaubühne, where it premiered in April, and the Münchner Kammerspiele, the rigorously choreographed exploration of state violence is one of those extreme works of art that is all the more disturbing for the delicate artistry of its execution. Darkly comic in some places, poetic or balletic in others, this “investigation into the origins and mechanisms of violence,” to quote the program, feels like being trapped in a carnival of torture and brutality that is profoundly unsettling for the performers and spectators alike.

“Verrückt nach Trost”

Salzburg Festival

Thorsten Lensing’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2018 adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” is possibly even more astonishing. In “Verrückt nach Trost” (“Crazy for Consolation”), which premiered at the Salzburg Festival, in Austria, in August, Lensing and his group of four brilliant actors achieve something close to a theatrical miracle. The lengthy and often surreal play, which revolves around an orphaned brother and sister who go through life craving love and human connection, is one of the most profoundly moving new plays I have seen in a long time. The work’s emotional impact has much to do with the finely chiseled performances of Ursina Lardi, Devid Striesow, André Jung and Sebastian Blomberg, who guide us through a long evening of unpredictable and incandescent episodes, including what is quite possibly the most moving monologue ever written for an octopus.

“Hamilton”

Stage Operettenhaus, Hamburg

In October, the German premiere of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning musical, “Hamilton,” landed with volcanic force in Hamburg. The first production of the show in a language other than English, it was a herculean undertaking. The ingenious translation of Miranda’s abundant and inventive lyrics took four years, and the cast hails from 13 countries. Hard to believe, but the original Broadway production, directed by Thomas Kail, is already seven years old; if anything, this one seems galvanized by its new language and cultural context. There has never been a show like this before in Germany. From the dazzling linguistic feats of the translators to the convincing and handsome staging and gripping, Broadway-caliber performances, everything about “Hamilton” in Hamburg feels revolutionary.

And the turkey …

“Queen Lear”

Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin

Germans love their Shakespeare, and Berlin has seen many fine stagings of the Bard’s work, both traditional and deconstructed. Christian Weise’s goofy sci-fi production of “Queen Lear” at the Maxim Gorki Theater is possibly the most bewildering Shakespeare reimagining ever conceived. The modern-language adaptation is by Soeren Voima, an authors’ collective, and it recasts Shakespeare’s darkest play as an outer-space soap opera with echoes of “Star Wars” and “Doctor Who.” The chintzy, low-budget aesthetic, the hammy acting and the lightsabers are all good, if mildly tedious, fun for the first hour. But hark! There are two more hours to go! The only thing this intergalactic spacewreck of a production proves is Lear’s maxim that

“nothing will come of nothing.”