If you want to see a My Fair Lady that feels like a scene for scene remake of the film, then this production at the London Coliseum will not disappoint, but equally for anyone looking for a more contemporary resonance beneath the surface, then that is certainly here as well.
‘A reminder of what a powerful actor Mark Rylance can be’: JERUSALEM – Apollo Theatre
As Jez Butterworth’s production returns to the West End, with original cast members Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook, it is interesting to reflect on how well-anointed modern classics fare more than a decade after they were originally feted.
‘Something that disconcerts more than entertains’: OKLAHOMA! – Young Vic Theatre
The Young Vic presents a rather sexy version of Oklahoma! that replaces twee interpretations of cowboy country with a throbbing desire that inflicts the inhabitants of this rural town, and becomes a fascinating technical exercise in deconstructing a musical.
‘A tough watch with an abstract style & disjointed scenes’: MARYS SEACOLE – Donmar Warehouse
Jackie Sibblies Drury’s new play is an entirely female affair, no male characters are present, implied or even speak, only the time-travelling idea of Mary, her ghostly mother, Mary’s daughter and another tri-generational white family.
‘Both a parody & a warning about that future’: THE 47th – Old Vic Theatre
Mike Bartlett has made a bit of an art out of notions of the counter-factual future. In The 47th, he grounds his flights of fancy in the knowledge of institutions, people and political tides.
‘One of the strangest & least performed musicals in the Sondheim canon’: ANYONE CAN WHISTLE – Southwark Playhouse
This wacky tale of faked miracles, town economics, mental health and social segregation is a puzzling one, combining some really great Stephen Sondheim songs and some strong female characters with a cartoonish plot.
‘Courtroom fireworks are what Aaron Sorkin does best’: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD – West End
Aaron Sorkin’s much-anticipated production of To Kill a Mockingbird may have had to exchange original British lead Rhys Ifans for the equally impressive Rafe Spall, but otherwise emerges relatively unscathed from its two-year delay.
‘Ruth Wilson & Ivo van Hove once again prove a dynamic pairing’: THE HUMAN VOICE – West End
Ivo van Hove puts aside his filmic style for an intimate monologue about the end of love. Starring Ruth Wilson, Jean Cocteau’s play The Human Voice, is a sympathetic study of a woman driven to distraction by a final phone call with her lover.
‘Mike Bartlett’s play continues to fascinate & challenge’: COCK – West End
Theatre has always been a place to explore identity by using different character perspectives to consider points of view, social structures or inherited notions of what an individual can and should be.
‘Stylised dialogue, questionable gender politics & a too literal setting’: THE WOODS -Southwark Playhouse
The Woods feels decidedly old-fashioned in style and structure, using its characters as ciphers for David Mamet’s abstract conclusions about relationships between men and women.
‘This is easily Kit Harington’s finest career performance on stage or screen’: HENRY V – Donmar Warehouse
Henry V is the greatest war play ever written and is the template for all literary responses to conflict since produced.
‘Places the classic boy-meets-girl-but-can’t-have-her template in a new location’: BROKEN WINGS – Charing Cross Theatre
In Nadim Naaman and Dana Al Fardan’s new musical Broken Wings, there are plenty of soaring melodies for lovers and just as many haunted and broken-hearted ballads for the less romantic.
‘An extraordinary piece about infidelity, guilt & distorted reality’: THE FOREST – Hampstead Theatre
It has been an extraordinarily fruitful partnership between writer Florian Zeller and translator-playwright Christopher Hampton over the past few years with adaptations of Zeller’s disconnected family saga The Father, The Mother and The Son.
‘What could be a very clinical piece can also be deeply human’: A NUMBER – Old Vic Theatre
It may be the second time in as many years that Caryl Churchill’s A Number has been performed in London, but it is a play that bears restaging, yielding greater insights every time you see it.
‘Elizabeth McGovern captures the mercurial complexities of Ava Gardner’: AVA: THE SECRET CONVERSATIONS – Riverside Studios
Beautiful, sexy and luminous are words most associated with Hollywood starlets of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and indeed they were, but they were also talented and savvy movie actors who commanded the screen.
‘A masterclass in succinct & intensive storytelling’: THRILL ME The Leopold & Loeb Story – Jermyn Street Theatre
Stephen Dolginoff’s 2003 musical Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story was the latest in a long line of cultural products inspired by this infamous murder case in 1920s America.
‘Interesting themes about human behaviour under extreme pressure’: FORCE MAJEURE – Donmar Warehouse
Force Majeure is a random act of God that cannot be predicted or measured that entirely disrupts planned activity, something we can all appreciate a little better in the past two years.
‘Tamsin Greig is exceptionally funny, candid & cutting in equal measure’: PEGGY FOR YOU – Hampstead Theatre
What is a play? A message to the future, a fart in your face or a pain in the arse?
What is a play? A message to the future, a fart in your face or a pain in the arse? Just a few of the suggestions that the writer clients of agent Peggy Ramsay offer up when a young ingenue asks that fatal question in her office one otherwise ordi…
‘A smart story about composition & the appropriation of music’: FOLK – Hampstead Theatre
With its interest in identity, ownership, tradition and the ‘rules’ applied to written rather than oral forms, Nell Leyshon’s play, which aired on Radio 3 in 2021, now earns a fully-staged run.
New work, new voices, hybrid approaches: How theatre changed in 2021
It has been another complicated year for theatres with venues unable to welcome in-person audiences for more than five months of 2021 and the tail end of the year returning to enforced closure and performance cancellations.