Manuel Harlan

Manuel Harlan

LONDON—“My God, there are a lot of women directors working in the theater these days in London,” a female theater director who happens not to be from London remarked to me the other day.

It’s true. More women directors are proffering their work in London than I can ever recall and at a level lately that has often eclipsed the men in their midst.

I’m thinking, for instance, of Carrie Cracknell, who set the Young Vic ablaze with her production over the summer of “A Doll’s House,” Ibsen’s play reconsidered with fresh rabid emotion in much the same way that Anna Mackmin has reimagined “Hedda Gabler,” now playing at the Old Vic. Ms. Mackmin had something of a head start, having previously directed “Hedda,” albeit in different circumstances, at the Gate Theater, Dublin, four years ago.

Or of Lucy Bailey, who went from a sexy staging of “The Taming of the Shrew” (that one was a touring production near the start of the year for the Royal Shakespeare Company) to “Uncle Vanya” within the close confines of the Print Room in Notting Hill. “Vanya,” Chekhov’s wounding tragicomedy, is all but ubiquitous these days on both sides of the Atlantic — London will host two separate stagings within a single week in November — but the shimmering intensity of Ms. Bailey’s approach will be hard to equal, especially in a studio-sized space where the audience all but eavesdropped on the landscape of longing and loss.

Johan Persson

Johan Persson

Women directors have triumphed on both big and small stages. Polly Findlay had a scorching success at the large Olivier at the National Theatre with a modern-dress “Antigone” that positioned the Sophocles play as a genuinely cautionary tale for our troubled times. And in the National’s smallest auditorium, the Cottesloe, Marianne Elliott (“War Horse”) consolidated her status as a possible National Theatre artistic director-in-the-making with “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time,” a problematic script given real emotional sweep and heft by its director.

Not to be outdone at the same address, the onetime National Theatre staff director Nadia Fall is moving on from assisting the work of others to grabbing the brass ring herself with a stylish and witty reappraisal of “The Doctor’s Dilemma” which led audiences directly toward the moral maze at the beating heart of George Bernard Shaw’s bracing comedy. That production played the National’s midsized Lyttelton, which means that woman directors have enjoyed pride of place across all three of the South Bank theater complex’s stages this year.

One could add numerous names to this list. Let me just cite Nina Raine, Lyndsey Turner and Amelia Sears for their fine work at different locations around town on “Jumpy,” “Posh” and “Brimstone and Treacle,” though only the first of those three titles is running still. First seen last year at the Royal Court, “Jumpy” stars Tamsin Greig in fevered and funny form as a mother heading on a wine-fueled freefall.

Nor can one forget the gathering presence of women in key theatrical posts. Josie Rourke has followed Michael Grandage into the hot seat at the Donmar Warehouse, making her presence felt via a triptych of revivals embracing less obvious writers from the canon (Farquhar, Durrenmatt, Racine); later in the year, she will give her theater over to Phyllida Lloyd (“Mamma Mia!,” “The Iron Lady”) for an all-female “Julius Caesar” that should go some way toward restoring the balance in a town rife with entirely male versions of the Bard. Across town, Indhu Rubasingham is about to begin her own artistic regime at the Tricycle in north London.

And while we wait for Vicky Featherstone to assume the reins as artistic director of the Royal Court in 2013, the end of the year finds two major musicals in distaff hands. Maria Friedman, the actress, singer and cabaret artist, will turn director for the Menier Chocolate Factory’s revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” the Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical that Ms. Friedman should know well, having appeared in it some 20 years ago.

And Thea Sharrock, recently seen guiding Danny DeVito toward a cheering British stage debut last spring in “The Sunshine Boys,” is directing the stage musical of the blockbuster film “The Bodyguard,” starting performances at the Adelphi on Nov. 6. If only Ms. Elliott, of National renown, were still on board to stage “Viva Forever!”, the forthcoming Spice Girls musical to which she was once attached but has since parted company. (Her replacement, Paul Garrington, is a guy.)

Why this concentration of talent? Chalk it up to a generation coming of age, alongside artistic directors of both genders more than willing to give women their due. And with increasing numbers of the people in charge here turning out to be women, too? Let’s just say that the British stage as male preserve seems a thing of the past.