Haymarket Theatre Royal

This revival of Shakespeare’s great tragedy of race and jealousy won’t get a fraction of the attention that the 2025 Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal production received, but there’s every hope it’ll be the better Othello. Certainly it doesn’t have $3,000 tickets, so that’s something. The work of director Tom Morris has been little seen in London since he co-directed War Horse and then went off to run the Bristol Old Vic – but now he’s back with a bang, as this production marks the start of a five year partnership with Chris Harper Productions to direct Shakespeare plays for the West End.  Of course you need names for West End Shakespeare, and Morris’s cast is headed by a fascinating choice of Othello. As a big Black British star, David Harewood is a shoo-in for the role. But what’s most interesting about his casting is that this is his second time doing it: as a young man he was famously the first Black actor to play the role at the National Theatre, in 1997; he’s indicated he’s looking forward to returning to the part without all the cultural baggage and weight of expectations. He’ll be joined by Toby Jones as Iago, looking to shed his saintly Mr Bates vs the Post Office image, while Desdemona will be played by US actor Caitlin FitzGerald, probably best known here for her role as Kendall’s trobled girlfriend Tabitha in Succession.  In terms of clues at to how Morris’s revival will play out, we’re told it’ll be modern dress, and it seems reasonably likely that the...

A hit at the Chichester Festival Theatre, Rachel Joyce adapts her own hit novel – which also birthed an accliamed 2023 film – about the eponymous 65-year-old man, who receives word his former colleage is dying and instructs her not to pass on until he has walked the length of England to bid her farewell. The songs in Katy Rudd’s production are by indie musician Passenger, and Mark Addy and Jenna Russell will reprise their roles as Harold and his wife Maureen in this limited run transfer.

Ralph Fiennes has been beavering away busily over at Theatre Royal Bath this last year, curating and starring in a season of work at the prestigious South Western theatre. London seems very unlikely to get all of it, but here’s one nailed on transfer: Fiennes and Miranda Raison will star as the great Victorian actors Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in Grace Pervades, the approximately millionth (well, thirty-second) play from the great David Hare (curiously it’ll run in the West End at the same time as a revival of his very early play Teeth ‘N’ Smiles). Jeremy Herrin directs the drama, which follows the stage legends plus Terry’s children Edith Craig and Edward Gordon Craig, and examines the dynasty’s wider influence on British theatre.