The best theatre of 2024: Joyce McMillan's top ten shows of the year

Escaped Alone, Tron Theatre, Glasgow “At first, Caryl Churchill’s remarkable 50-minute drama Escaped Alone seems like a brilliantly-observed comedy about the extraordinariness of apparently ordinary lives, as four women share their health grumbles, and reminisce about their working lives. Through one of the women, though, Mrs Jarrat, the play suddenly soars and crashes into something else – a horrific yet fiercely satirical and poetic account of a global catastrophe that she alone apparently survives to describe. In Joanna Bowman’s production, Churchill’s text is superbly performed by a remarkable cast, featuring Irene Macdougall, Joanna Tope, Anne Kidd, and the inimitable Blythe Duff as Mrs Jarrett.”

​Hamilton, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh “First seen in New York in 2015, and written when Barack Obama was still US president, Hamilton has an angry, impassioned, yet profoundly hopeful tone that might be difficult to recapture today. Yet those are the emotions that give the drama its unforgettable drive and shape, as it retells the story of the founding of the United States through the voices of a young company of mainly non-white performers; and uses a dazzling range of contemporary musical styles to chart Alexander Hamilton’s astonishing career.”

The Girls of Slender Means, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh “Muriel Spark’s mighty 1963 novella recalls a moment, in the summer of 1945, when the world seemed caught between war and peace, and the looming general election – which produced a Labour landslide – promised seismic social change in the UK. Gabriel Quigley’s fine adaptation, directed with flair by Roxana Silbert, strikes a perfect balance in capturing how Spark’s girls – five of them, here – live lives overshadowed by the horrors they have experienced; and yet are all the more drawn to the pleasures of love, poetry, unbridled fun and beautiful clothes embodied in the gorgeous Schiaparelli dress they all share.”

Maggie and Me, Tron Theatre, Glasgow “When Damian Barr and his co-writer, the playwright James Ley, were working on this stage version of Maggie & Me – alongside director Suba Das – they promised something much more complex than a simple staging of Barr’s book, published in 2013. And that is certainly what they have delivered: a tormented, dream-like meditation on Barr’s continuing story, that revisits both the pain of his childhood, and the agony of reliving it to write the book – and then goes beyond that, into areas of shame, self-questioning, and furtive flirtation with Thatcherism, that even the book hesitates to explore.”

A History of Paper, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh “Given a huge additional weight by the death last year of the playwright Oliver Emanuel, who co-wrote the piece with his long-time friend and collaborator, the composer Gareth Williams, A History of Paper was conceived as a radio play but is now a stage play with songs of deceptive simplicity and absolute beauty. It transforms a classic narrative of love, bereavement and loss into something magical and strange by viewing it through the lens of the thousands of pieces of paper through which, even in our now supposedly “paperless” world, we record and document our lives.”

So Young, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh “Set in Glasgow’s south side, Douglas Maxwell’s play chronicles the events of a single traumatic evening, when middle-class couple Liane and Davie go round to visit their recently widowed friend Milo, only to find that “poor Milo” wants to introduce them to his new partner Greta, a poised but glowing 20 year old he has found on an internet hook-up site. Milo’s announcement sets off an explosion of pure rage in Liane, played in Gareth Nicholls’s perfectly-paced and utterly gripping production by a dazzling Lucianne McEvoy.”

June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me, Summerhall, Edinburgh “Backed by a brilliant three-piece onstage band, June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music And Methis show emerges as a stunningly vivid and heartfelt tribute show-cum-memoir, all dressed up in 1950s hillbilly frills and sparkly stetsons. Charlene Boyd’s performance fairly stops the heart, full of wit, beauty, musicality, joy and heartbreak.”

To Save the Sea, Tron Theatre, Glasgow “Theatre makers Andy McGregor (songwriter and composer) and Isla Cowan (playwright and lyricist) have transformed the story of the 1995 Greenpeace occupation of the Brent Spar oil platform into a 90-minute musical for our times, demonstrating how high-profile direct action on the world’s mounting environmental crisis can shift public opinion, and even force some of the planet’s most powerful politicians into action.”

The Sound of Music, Pitlochry Festival Theatre “Featuring a cast of 20 – including a magnificent team of local children – Elizabeth Newman’s final show as artistic director at Pitlochry presents various creative challenges in terms of staging and performance, as the action moves from mountain to abbey to the von Trapp villa, and the score rolls on from one much-loved Rodgers and Hammerstein number to the next. Yet the company rises brilliantly to every one of them, to deliver a heartwarming and deeply intelligent version of the familiar story, driven by a passionate connection with the music. Kirsty Findlay gives a powerful and touching performance as Maria, while Ali Watt is a likeable captain von Trapp with a beautiful voice.”