Theatre and Other Pleasures in 2025
by Tansy Rayner Roberts
My year has been a difficult one, and so as always I have turned to the cozy and the funny to get me through when I have time to sink into a little pop culture.
Costume dramas remain my favorite escape. I’m enjoying the new adaptation of The Forsytes, not least because I’m so familiar with the text (and the two previous, plot-accurate TV adaptations from the 60s and early 2000s) that I’m finding the changes to the story-line in this version fascinating rather than infuriating.
On the other end of the media spectrum — my family and I just finished a rewatch of GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), with my 16-year old watching it for the first time, and my 20- year old having (apparently) learned about wrestling since the last time we saw it. It’s a fun, crunchy, complicated show filled with interesting women and indulgent '80s nostalgia. It’s been five years since COVID made Season 4 impossible to shoot, bringing the show to a sudden end, and it’s still upsetting that we didn’t get more.
Back to costume drama — I’ve been a Downton Abbey tragic for so long, it felt momentous to watch the final film in the cinema. I didn’t even rewatch to refresh my memory (ahem, my last rewatch was less than a year earlier), but I did give my husband a crash course so he could join me at the movies.
I loved it — indulgent fan service from end to end, and so many lovely hats. It is an epilogue, of course, not a real story — as is true of all three Downton films, given that the show had a properly satisfying end — so it’s basically a hat on a hat on a hat. But the in-jokes were fun.
What I did discover, in my craving to revisit the show, was my new favorite podcast. Up Yours, Downstairs is a husband and wife (I believe later episodes will be friendly ex-spouses, but I haven’t reached those yet) podcast that first began around Season 2 of Downton (2011 but also, 1914) and recorded its most recent episode this year for the finale.
As well as their passionate, loving, and anti-aristo American takes on the show — hilarious, chaotic, and sometimes devastating — the co-hosts focus on their mutual love of Edwardian history, researching key aspects of the show, and later broadening to reviews of other works including Mr Selfridge (which they love even more than Downton!), various Merchant Ivory films, Parade’s End, Anne of Green Gables, Gosford Park, and pretty much every Titanic film ever made.
Their research starts out at reading-off-Wikipedia levels and grows more complex, reviewing specific history texts and deep-diving into racial and LGBTQ+ perspectives. It’s a joyous romp, but you also get to witness history being absorbed.
Another sheer joy of this podcast is the community of “cousins” who send in telegrams and letters (Twitter & Email) to share their own love, lore, and specialized knowledge of Downton Abbey and Edwardian history.
This has been another wonderful year for cozy fantasy (how I adore and celebrate the rise of cozy fantasy!), with new releases from many of my faves. A.J. Lancaster released How To Find a Nameless Fae, a gentle romantasy retelling of Rumplestiltskin with a middle-aged princess, a grumpy nemesis, and a sentient house with pure Diana Wynne Jones vibes all the way down.
Speaking of middle-aged heroines, Rosalie Oaks brought her Matronly Misadventures series to a close with Lady Avely’s Guide To Guile and Peril, a cozy mystery set in a crumbling Cornish castle with illusion traps, espionage, tiny vampires, and a hot amnesiac Duke for our heroine to contend with… not to mention a reunion with one of her wayward adult children who has no idea she has been sleuthing and flirting her way across the country!
Tilly Wallace released the first two books in her new Regency botanical magic+tiny dragon cozy fantasy series, starting with The Stormborne Vine — a spinster heroine contends with a carnivorous creeping plant (and deep magical roots) at a country manor, in a story can only be described as Mansfield Park meets Rosemary & Thyme meets Little Shop of Horrors.
Closer to home, I wanted to share a few gems of local theatre with you. My little coastal city of Hobart, Tasmania has a thriving independent theatre scene with so many small companies and some powerhouse young people producing really interesting work. I’m a little biased because my son’s ongoing work in art design and stage management makes a lot of our theatre ticket-purchasing decisions for us… but I was raised on loving and appreciating live theatre, so it’s something I am delighted to share with my family now.
Some highlights from this year for me included Emma (Bijoux), which was a lovely production of the classic novel with a pitch-perfect cast and costumes that honestly kept me almost as riveted as the dialogue. (It didn’t hurt that I was in the second row and could enjoy all the bonnets up close)
I also loved a 48-Hour Shakespeare production of Macbeth (Bad Company), which had great, raw performances and also really stood out for its design choices, including a stage wrapped in Christo-style floaty plastic sheeting (illuminated gorgeously with lights and moving with the breeze) and literal interpretations of the blood on the hands of Lady Macbeth and her husband, smeared casually on their white clothing.
Speaking of fake blood, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the recent production of Evil Dead: The Musical (Big Job Productions) — in which “splash zone” seats were charged extra! This one was especially interactive for our family because our son Bailey was art-directing and prop-building: he made several puppets including a giant moose head, a dynamic chainsaw (that can be worn as a hand), multiple weapons, a wearable forest of trees, and two severed heads.
In this case, he also needed to be a prop doctor, cleaning liters of fake blood off the props every night (and in the case of the chainsaw, fixing/rebuilding it). By the time we actually saw the show, we felt like we’d experienced it many times over — but OH it was wonderful. Tight, talented cast with amazing comedic, dramatic and musical talents… armed with squirty bottles for that extra random joy. I particularly admired how many people who bought those front row seats came wearing white for the full splash zone experience…
I started noting all of the shows I’ve seen this year because of Bailey, or because of Inigo (a borrowed son!), and the list got incredibly long! They worked together (B stage-managing, I directing) on Clue: On Stage (Big Job Productions), which used the tiny but wonderful Hidden Theatre stage rather brilliantly, considering that the show is designed for a much bigger space. Our boys worked well together to pull this off with a killer cast.
I also saw fantastic plays like Hedda Gabler, Folk, and Sunday Roast, which I might not have considered if Bailey wasn’t working on the production or Inigo wasn’t performing, because I knew nothing about them going in. A real stand-out for the year was The Master & Margarita (Bad Company & Old Nick), a hugely ambitious, gorgeously staged phantasmagoria using the quirky Peacock Theatre (with cliff-face back wall) to great effect, so intense and strange and beautiful.
When COVID hit and our world shrank around us, one of the first arts industries to be taken out was live theatre. Watching our local community figure out how to stage shows safely and come back stronger than ever over the last 5 years has been really inspiring. Having glimpsed a little of the behind the scenes work happening locally, I’m also impressed to see how indie theatre is growing, while prioritizing cast safety, intimacy co-ordination and accessibility alongside innovation and creativity.
My new attitude is very much “you regret the shows you don’t see more than the shows that you do.” That was what led me to take my 16-year old J to Melbourne for a show of their choice for their birthday (Beetlejuice, starring Eddie Perfect), which was an unforgettable shared experience. It was also what led me to hit an impulsive BUY on tickets when Adjoa Andoh came unexpectedly to Hobart.
Visiting friends in Tasmania, this wonderful actor (whom at the time I only knew as Martha’s Mum, Lady Danbury, and the voice of the Chateau show) decided to throw a one-night only fundraiser for our Hobart Repertory Theatre Society with the loose theme/premise of “celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare’s First Folio.” WELL. This was one of the most interesting, generous performances I have ever witnessed. Adjoa talked about her own long history as an actor, producer and director of Shakespeare, including an all-women-of-color staging of Richard II at the Globe Theatre and a recent opportunity to read from one of the original Folio manuscripts. In between her inspiring and funny and off-the-wall anecdotes, she regularly dropped into full, intensive character readings of her favourite scenes and characters from the Bard.
One woman, her career, her thoughts, her performances, one chair on stage, and she held us all mesmerized for two full performing sets.
Then, Adjoa gave the audience full permission to leave if they needed to go… and opened up for an unexpected THIRD set, this time a more casual Q&A about her career.
I came away buzzing and inspired and elated, and I’m pretty sure the other 300 or so people who got to sit in that theatre for that one-night-only experience felt the same way. Not to get all political as we teeter on the verge of the silly season, but… this is something AI can’t take from us. We’re seeing so many creative industries under attack from slop and copyright theft and most of all, a systematic and deeply mean-spirited devaluing of what we do as artists, as makers, as creators.
Live theatre may have been the first industry to topple under COVID, but there’s no replacing it with an algorithm.
While the enormous big city productions make for incredible experiences — I still dream about the set from Beetlejuice — you don’t have to spend Broadway bucks to see something really fun, or great. Community/independent theatre is an extraordinary gift to audiences, and there’s a reality to it — imperfections, messiness and beauty all squished in together— that is undeniable.
The moment when a prop breaks but the scene goes on without missing a beat, or the comic timing between two actors just hits, or a performer manages to convince you he is being actively murdered by his own demonic hand… or the cast includes an in-joke one of their friends sitting in the front row… and you realise, this is the only time you or anyone else will EVER see this specific version exactly like this. It’s incredibly special.
If you’re lucky enough to have theatres, however large or small, within a reasonable travel distance of where you live, support your local shows! And when you find a company or a performer or a venue that creates work you enjoy… keep going back.
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