The Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism 2023

The annual competition to discover outstanding new arts reviewers has now opened for submissions

Lear Alone offers us a vision of theatre in the post-pandemic age. Yes, that's partly about its demonstration of innovative ways to film and stream theatrical content - taking the action outdoors, making dramatic the objects and sounds of street life. But it's also about its engagement with live political issues."

So wrote Calum Jacobs, the winner of the Observer/ Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism 2022, in his review of Lear Alone, a web film series in which actor Edmund Dehn wanders London's lockdown streets performing only the lines of King Lear from Shakespeare's tragedy. It's the perfect Burgess prize subject, a piece of art that engages with a particular moment in time and subtly reframes its form.