Startlingly brilliant … Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, in London. Photograph: Jane Hobson/Rex Shutterstock[/caption]
Surprise often comes with the shock of the new, partly because too much expectation about a show dulls the senses. I’m thinking of seeing the unknown Gregory Burke’s electrifying Gagarin Way, or stumbling across 1927’s Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea at Edinburgh in 2007, or watching Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing at London’s Bush theatre in 1993. There’s an exhilaration in being part of an audience that has seen something really special, something that most of the world still doesn’t know about. After seeing Black Watch in 2006, I recall how the audience could hardly contain their excitement as they left the Traverse in Edinburgh. Complete strangers were beaming at each other.
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