Looking for the best plays to see in London?
Blithe Spirit
Duke of York’s Theatre from 5th March
Jennifer Saunders is one of the UK’s most popular comic actresses. Her gleefully funny performance as the eccentric clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, delighted both critics and audiences alike when the production opened in Theatre Royal Bath’s 2019 Summer Season. With a distinguished creative team who have won a plethora of awards between them, this is a Blithe Spirit full of sparkling and spirit-lifting hijinks.
Novelist Charles Condomine and his second wife Ruth are literally haunted by a past relationship when an eccentric medium – Madame Arcati – inadvertently conjures up the ghost of his first wife, Elvira, at a séance. When she appears, visible only to Charles, and determined to sabotage his current marriage, life – and the afterlife – get complicated.
Leopoldstadt
Wyndham’s Theatre from 25th January
Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt is coming to the West End on 25 January 2020
Vienna in 1900 was the most vibrant city in Europe, humming with artistic and intellectual excitement and a genius for enjoying life. A tenth of the population were Jews. A generation earlier they had been granted full civil rights by the Emperor, Franz Josef. Consequently, hundreds of thousands had fled from the Pale and the pogroms in the East and many found sanctuary in the crowded tenements of the old Jewish quarter, Leopoldstadt.
Tom Stoppard’s new play, directed by Patrick Marber, is an intimate drama with an epic sweep; the story of a family who made good. “My grandfather wore a caftan,”says Hermann, a factory owner, “My father went to the opera in a top hat, and I have the singers to dinner.”
It was not to last. Half a century later, this family, like millions of others, has re-discovered what it means to be Jewish in the first half of the 20th century.
Coming Clean
Trafalgar Studios from 8th January
In 2017, Adam Spreadbury-Maher directed the 35th anniversary production and the first London revival of Coming Clean, Kevin Elyot’s first play, which transferred to Trafalgar Studios 2 earlier in 2019, and will return to the venue in 2020. Coming Clean looks at the breakdown of a gay couple’s relationship and examines complex questions of fidelity and love.
The play is set in a flat in Kentish Town, north London, in 1982. Struggling writer Tony and his partner of five years, Greg, seem to have the perfect relationship. Committed and in love, they are both open to one-night stands as long as they don’t impinge on the relationship. But Tony is starting to yearn for something deeper, something more like monogamy. When he finds out that Greg has been having a full-blown affair with their cleaner, Robert, their differing attitudes towards love and commitment become clear.
Pass Over
Kiln Theatre from 13th February
Kiln Theatre presents Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu.
A lamppost. Night. Two friends are passing time. Stuck. Waiting for change.
Inspired by Waiting for Godot and the Exodus, Antoinette Nwandu fuses poetry, humour and humanity in a rare and politically charged new play which exposes the experiences of young men in a world that refuses to see them.
The Doctor
Duke of York’s Theatre from 20th April
Olivier Award winner Juliet Stevenson delivers “one of the performances of the year” (Evening Standard) in the West End transfer of Robert Icke’s sold-out, five-star Almeida Theatre production – from 20th April 2020 at the Duke of York’s Theatre.
First, do no harm. On an ordinary day, at a private hospital, a young woman fights for her life. A priest arrives to save her soul. Her doctor refuses him entry.
In a divisive time, in a divided nation, a society takes sides.
The Watsons
Harold Pinter Theatre from 8th May
This thrilling new play from Laura Wade, the winner of this year’s Olivier Award for Best New Comedy (Home I’m Darling), is making its West End premiere at the Harold Pinter Theatre after a sell-out season at the Chichester Festival Theatre last year.
The Sunset Limited
Boulevard Theatre from 16th January
Two men meet on a subway platform; the chance encounter instantly changing the trajectory of both their lives.
Thrown together, their conversation quickly turns to the most essential and existential questions facing humanity. While their beliefs seem irreconcilable, the answers they seek could mean the difference between life and death.
Multi award-winning writer Cormac McCarthy‘s gripping play explores redemption, faith and free will – can you be your brother’s keeper if he doesn’t want to be kept? His celebrated other works include The Road, All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men.
The London premiere of The Sunset Limited will be directed by Olivier and Tony Award-winner Terry Johnson, whose credits include West End hits Mrs Henderson Presents, La Cage aux Folles and The Graduate.
Upstart Crow
Gielgud Theatre from 7th February
Ben Elton brings his critically acclaimed and much adored BBC sitcom UPSTART CROW to its natural home, the stage, with an all-new comic play set to delight London’s West End.
Starring David Mitchell, once more donning the bald wig and bardish coddling pouch in his iconic characterisation of Will Shakespeare and Gemma Whelan as the sweet and fragrant Kate.
‘Tis 1605 and England’s greatest playwright is in trouble. Will Shakespeare has produced just two plays; Measure for Measure, which according to King James was incomprehensible bollingbrokes by any measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well which didn’t even end well. Will desperately needs to maketh a brilliant new play to bolster his reputation and avoid being cast aside by King and country. But Will’s personal life is encountering more dramatic twists and turns than any theatrical story he can conjure. How the futtock can a Bard be expected to find a plot for a play whilst his daughters run amok and his house is used as refuge for any old waif and stray. As time runs out, can Will hold on to his dream of being recognised now and for all time, as indisputably the greatest writer that ever lived, or will family woes thwart Will’s chances of producing his masterwork?
To Kill a Mockingbird
Gielgud Theatre from 21st May
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning American classic To Kill a Mockingbird transfers to the West End from Broadway in a new adaptation by Aaron Sorkin.
Inspired by Lee’s own childhood in Alabama, To Kill a Mockingbird features one of literature’s towering symbols of integrity and righteousness in the character of Atticus Finch, based on Lee’s own father. The character of Scout, based on herself, has come to define youthful innocence – and its inevitable loss – for generation after generation of readers around the world.
Life of Pi
Wyndham’s Theatre from 28th June
After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, there are five survivors stranded on a single lifeboat- a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, a sixteen year-old boy and a hungry Bengal tiger. Time is against them, nature is harsh, who will survive?
Based on one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction – winner of the Man Booker Prize, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide – Life of Pi is a dazzling new theatrical adaptation of an epic journey of endurance and hope.
