Chicken Burger and Chips
Brockley Jack Studio Theatre 10th – 14th March
After a sold-out run of his debut play, 32 Peak Street during Camden Fringe in 2018, Corey Bovell now brings his edgy and moving one-man play Chicken Burger and Chips to the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre – a venue just a stone’s throw away from the streets, estates and takeaways of South East London at the heart of the drama.
During the summer holidays of 2009 Corey dreams of nothing but to hang around with his friends while ordering as much Morley’s as possible. Until Jodie comes along and makes Corey realise the changes that are happening within his beloved Lewisham Borough. Making Corey, for the first time, think about what path his future takes.
CASES
The Other Palace 31st March – 18th April
Following sell-out performances at the Phoenix Arts Club in collaboration with Michael Auger from Britain’s Got Talent winning group Collabro, new musical CASES returns to the London stage at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Other Palace with a revamped score, additional songs and an exciting new West End cast.
CASES is a new musical exploring the triumphs, heartbreaks and sacrifices involved in the pursuit of art where the commercial world collides with the underground and fame becomes a high price to pay. Relationships change, partnerships rearrange and ideas exchange. The musical depicts the ultimate fight for creative freedom, providing a voice for artists, performers and creatives alike who lose financial security during the establishing of a career.
Clybourne Park
Park Theatre 25th March – 2nd May
A timely 10th anniversary production of this razor-sharp satire about the politics of race and real estate, winner of both the Tony and Olivier Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for author Bruce Norris.
In 1959, Russ and Bev are moving to the suburbs after the tragic death of their son and have sold their house to the neighbourhood’s first black family. Decades later, the roles are reversed when a young white couple buys the lot in what is now a predominantly black neighbourhood, signalling a new wave of gentrification. In both instances, a community showdown takes place – are the same issues festering beneath the floorboards fifty years on?
Oliver Kaderbhai directs Michael Fox (Jim/Tom), Imogen Stubbs (Bev/Kathy), Eric Underwood (Albert/Kevin), Alisha Bailey (Francine/Lena), Maddy Hill (Betsy/Lindsey), Andrew Langtree (Karl/Steve), and Richard Lintern (Russ/Dan).
One Jewish Boy
Trafalgar Studios 10th March – 4th April
Amidst an increasing climate of far right ideology worldwide and following a doubling of hate-crime incidents in the UK, One Jewish Boy makes a timely return with its West End debut. Written as an urgent response to overt antisemitism, this compelling two-hander explores a young family’s struggle against fear, prejudice and identity looking at the inheritances that haunt us.
Written by multi-award winning writer Stephen Laughton, current Writer in Residence for the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History, the visceral, biting play heads to the West End for four weeks only following its Old Red Lion Theatre sell-out success in December 2018/January 2019.
Lipstick
Southwark Playhouse 4th March – 28th March
Rupert Henderson Productions presents the world première of Lipstick, a new play by Lily Shahmoon. Ed White directs Helen Aluko (Jordan) and April Hughes (Tommy).
Tommy is scared of everything. Especially the kids at school who would call him gay if they saw him putting on lipstick. Jordan isn’t scared of anything. He’s not scared that he likes the way Tommy looks in lipstick. Really, he’s not.
‘You’re the same as the rest of them. Trying to get me to be transgender, gender neutral, fluid. Why can’t I just be Tommy?’
Two women play teenage boys in this two hander that questions what’s really underneath, and what it costs to show it to someone else.
The Effect
Boulevard Theatre 19th March – 30th May
The first London revival of The Effect, written by award-winning writer Lucy Prebble (A Very Expensive Poison, ENRON, The Sugar Syndrome, Succession and Secret Diary of a Call Girl) and directed by Anthony Neilson (The Tell-Tale Heart, The Prudes and Unreachable).
Eric Kofi Abrefa plays Tristan Frey, Christine Entwisle will play Lorna James, Tim McMullan will play Toby Sealey and Kate O’Flynn will play Connie Hall.
Winner of the Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play when it opened at the National Theatre in 2012, The Effect places modern medicine under the microscope, examining the fallout from a collision between love and science.
Indecent
Menier Chocolate Factory 13th March – 9th May
The European première of Paula Vogel’s Tony Award-winning play Indecent.
Rebecca Taichman directs Cory English – The Middle (Male); Beverley Klein – The Elder (Female); Finbar Lynch – The Stage Manager; Molly Osborne – The Ingenue (Female); Peter Polycarpou – The Elder (Male); Alexandra Silber – The Middle (Female); Joseph Timms – The Ingenue (Male); Merlin Shepherd – The Clarinettist; Anna Lowenstein – The Violinist, and Josh Middleton – The Accordionist.
A seminal work of Jewish culture or an act of traitorous libel? Indecent explores the origins of the highly controversial play The God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch. We follow the path of the artists who risked their careers and lives to perform it in this deeply moving play accompanied by a small live klezmer band.
Blithe Spirit
Duke of York’s Theatre 5th March – 11th April
Theatre Royal Bath Productions, Lee Dean and Jonathan Church Productions present Noël Coward’s classic comedy Blithe Spirit, directed by Sir Richard Eyre and starring Jennifer Saunders, for a strictly limited 6-week engagement at the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre following a celebrated reception in Bath last year.
Written in 1941, Coward’s inventive, witty and meticulously engineered comedy proved light relief and a popular distraction at the height of World War II when it was first staged. The show had a record-breaking run in the West End and on Broadway and remains one of the playwright’s most popular works.
The Last of The Pelican Daughters
Shoreditch Town Hall 23rd – 27th March
Following preview performances in Northampton in July and a successful Edinburgh Festival Fringe run at the Pleasance Beyond last summer, award-winning theatre company The Wardrobe Ensemble’s co-production of The Last of the Pelican Daughters comes to Shoreditch Town Hall as part of a UK tour.
In 2020 four sisters are trying to divide their mother’s house between them. Joy wants a baby, Storm wants to be seen, Sage just wants to remember, Maia doesn’t want anyone to find out her secret and Granny’s in a wheelchair on day release. Mum’s presence still seeps through the ceiling and the floors. The Pelican Daughters are home for the last time.
The Wardrobe Ensemble use their trademark irreverent humour and lovable characters to tackle the idea of what it means for young people to grapple with inheritance, loss and justice in this comedy about four sisters trying to come to terms with their mother’s death.
Old Red Lion Triptych – Nuclear War/Buried/Graceland
Old Red Lion Theatre 3rd – 21st March
Revitalising the creative and cultural integrity of The Old Red Lion, newly appointed Artistic Director Alexander Knott presents a thought-provoking triptych, spearheaded by the first revival of Nuclear War from the multi-award-winning Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time adaptation, Sea Wall, and Heisenberg).
Stephens’ text is accompanied by two premiere productions from emerging talent, Buried by David Spencer and Graceland by Max Saunders-Singer. These plays find commonality in the exploration of human suffering and how we survive the unimaginable, resonating with today’s fraught social divisions in a not-so-United Kingdom.
An unmissable triple-bill.
