WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: Young Vic
WHEN: 29/7, runs to 24/9
Has Billie Piper won an Olivier Award for best actress? We ask because this performance as the protagonist in Simon Stone’s adaptation of Lorca’s classic about a woman destroyed by her childlessness may well bear fruit for her where The Effect failed in 2012.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: National Theatre
WHEN: 30/7, runs to 14/10
Our last same-day multi-play event like this featured four Shakespeare plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company starring David Tennant at the Barbican over a January weekend.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: Dominion Theatre
WHEN: 18/7, press night 21/7 runs to 7/1/17
We first saw this Whitney Houston jukebox musical starring X Factor winner Alexandra Burke in 2014 at the Adelphi Theatre.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: Royal Court
WHEN 20/7 to 30/7
Escaped Alone was Caryl Churchill’s last play at the Royal Court and was memorable not least for its 50-minute run time.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHERE: Menier Chocolate Factory
WHEN?: 2/7, press night 12/7 runs to 17/9
As this Fiasco Theater production of the Sondheim classic is about to begin, co-director/Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince Noah Brody tells us his wife Jessie Austrian (moving and funny as the Baker’s Wife) is pregnant.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHERE: Old Red Lion Theatre
WHEN: 19/6 (matinee) runs to 25/6
Last year we saw former Labour leader Neil Kinnock in the audience watching an actor play him in the Arcola Theatre production of Gareth Thomas story Crouch Touch Pause Engage.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: Playhouse Theatre
WHEN: 17/6 runs to 29/10
Robert Icke won the 2016 best director Olivier for Oresteia and there’s much from that in this 2014 Almeida production which is back in the West End for another run.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE: Almeida
WHEN: 10/6, press night 16/6 runs to 6/8
Director Rupert Goold’s inventive take on this Shakespeare classic revolves around a trench centre stage, beginning and concluding in the modern day Leicester car park where Richard III‘s body was recently found.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
WHERE: Prince Edward Theatre
WHEN: 6/6, press night 15/6 booking to 11/2/17
Summer’s biggest blockbuster shows are arguably this very panto remake of the 1992 Disney musical and Harry Potter and The Cursed Child which open within days and a stone’s throw of each other in London’s West End.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHERE: National Theatre (Lyttelton Theatre)
WHEN: 4/6, press night 8/6 runs to 17/8
Written in 1952 the subject matter of Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea seems daring even now.
