Even if you’re not heading to Edinburgh Fringe this August, there’s still plenty of great theatre to see in London, here’s our list of the top ten shows to see in August.
Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain – Part Four!
Apollo Theatre 1st – 31st August
Be reduced to rubble by the ruthless Romans! Would you be shaken or stirred by Richard III? Will Queen Elizabeth I endure her terrible teeth? Would you be hanged by King James I for being a witch? Mount a mutiny against King Henry VIII! Peep into the world of Samuel Pepys and help Georgian detectives find the headless man! Take a trip into the night with the night soil men and discover how to survive the first ever train ride!
After seven years in the West End, Barmy Britain is back, starring Pip Chamberlain and Benedict Martin.
Go Bang Your Tambourine
Finborough Theatre 6th – 31st August
The London premiere of Philip King’s 1970 play Go Bang Your Tambourine opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season.
Young David Armstrong misses his mother. Following her death, he now lives alone in their North Country house, a devoted member of the Salvation Army.
Tongues start to wag when David advertises for a lodger, and good-hearted, attractive Bess, a local barmaid, moves in.
Seen in London for the first time, Philip King’s touching domestic family drama is a new insight into the work of a classic British playwright.
World’s End
King’s Head Theatre 27th August – 21st September
The King’s Head’s popular Queer Season will this year complete its season with World’s End – the debut play from upcoming writer James Corley.
It’s November 1998 on the World’s End Estate in Chelsea. Energetic single mum Viv (Patricia Potter; Holby City) has just moved in with her shy, troubled son Ben (Tom Milligan; Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, West End), eager to start afresh and escape economic precarity. Next door, single father and painter-cum-security guard Ylli and his confident, yet enigmatic son Besnik are also negotiating their horizons, against the televised backdrop of catastrophe in their native Kosovo.
A Very Expensive Poison
The Old Vic 19th August – 28th September
A shocking assassination in the heart of London. In a bizarre mix of high-stakes global politics and radioactive villainy, a man pays with his life.
At this time of global crises and a looming new Cold War, A Very Expensive Poison sends us careering through the shadowy world of international espionage from Moscow to Mayfair.
John Crowley (Brooklyn, The Goldfinch) directs Lucy Prebble’s (The Effect, ENRON) reimagining of Luke Harding’s jaw-dropping exposé of the events behind the notorious death of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
British Theatre Academy Residency
Southwark Playhouse
The British Theatre Academy is returns to Southwark Playhouse for a second summer season of shows.
Headlining the 2019 season in The Large will be a youth production of the multi award-winning Broadway hit, Once On This Island, from the Tony Award-winning songwriting team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty (Anstasia, Seussical, Ragtime).
There will also be a youth production of Dogfight by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land, The Greatest Showman) and Peter Duchan, directed and choreographed by Dean Johnson.
There will also be productions of Footloose and Disney’s My Son Pinocchio Jr.
Queen of The Mist
Charing Cross Theatre 15th August – 5th October
Pint of Wine Theatre Company’s acclaimed production of Michael John LaChiusa’s Queen of the Mist is to transfer to Charing Cross Theatre for a strictly limited seven-week season. A London cast recording will be released ahead of the transfer.
Queen of the Mist, which received its UK premiere in a sold-out run at the Jack Studio Theatre in April, is based on the astounding and outrageous true story of Anna Edson Taylor, who in 1901 on her 63rd birthday set out to be the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel of her own design.
Timpson The Musical
Stockwell Playhouse 30th August – 1st September
Following a smashing success at the Edinburgh Fringe 2018 and on tour in 2019, Gigglemug Theatre bring their ‘sharp, catchy’ new musical back to London for the final performance of Timpson The Musical. Sponsored by Timpson Ltd. themselves,
Two warring houses. One ancient grudge. A whole lot of shoes.
Can the warring houses of Montashoe and Keypulet be united by a pair of star-crossed lovers? Journey to Victorian London where Monty Montashoe and Keeleigh Keypulet, two young inventors bursting with ambition, strive to break free from their humdrum lives and follow their dreams all the way to the 50th annual ‘Invention Convention’!
Evita
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre 2nd August – 21st September
Chicago-based Samantha Pauly makes her UK debut in the role of Eva Peron, direct from her performance in SIX (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre) and as Valkyrie in Bat Out Of Hell (US Tour). She appears alongside Ektor Rivera, also making his UK debut, having recently played Emilio Estefan in On Your Feet! on Broadway and US Tour. In addition to lead roles in Rent, Hairspray and High School Musical, Ektor was selected by Jennifer López to be one of the lead singers in the US Television and Live show Q’Viva! The Chosen, which was seen by over 30 million television viewers.
An original Broadway cast member of Disney’s Aladdin – where he has been performing on and off for the last 5 years – Trent Saunders returns to the UK in the role of Che following his appearance as St. Jimmy in Green Day’s American Idiot
Falsettos
The Other Palace 30th August – 23rd December
The double Tony Award-Winning Falsettos is a hilarious and poignant look at a modern family revolving around the life of a gay man Marvin, his wife, his lover, his soon to be bar mitzvahed son, their psychiatrist, and the lesbian neighbours.
Originally created under the spectre of the AIDS crisis, this groundbreaking musical about family dynamics manages to remain buoyant and satirically perceptive even as it moves towards its heartbreaking conclusion.
The Son
Duke of York’s Theatre 24th August – 2nd December
Following a critically acclaimed sell out run at Kiln Theatre, Michael Longhurst’s production of Florian Zeller’s The Son, in a translation by Christopher Hampton, transfers to the West End.
Amanda Abbington, Laurie Kynaston, John Light and Amaka Okafor reprise their lauded performances for the strictly limited 10 week run.
The Son marks the first West End transfer for the Kiln Theatre since it reopened last September, and is presented in the West End by Fiery Angel and Gavin Kalin Productions.
Written by the internationally acclaimed Florian Zeller, lauded by The Guardian as ‘the most exciting playwright of our time’, The Son is directed by the award-winning Michael Longhurst and forms the final part of the critically acclaimed trilogy with The Father and The Mother.
