A-Z: West End theatre shows on now in London

Henrik Ibsen’s proto-feminist masterpiece ‘A Doll’s House’ has appeared in some wild London incarnations lately: Tanika Gupta’s postcolonial take at the Lyric Hammersmith, the Young Vic’s generation-skipping ‘Nora’, and Kiln’s odyssey through sexual identity, ‘Wife’. Jamie Lloyd’s production is based upon a straight-down-the-line 1997 Frank McGuinness adaptation, but don’t think it’ll be lacking in distinguishing features: Lloyd is a master at luring in big names, and he’s bagged big Hollywood star Jessica Chastain to play Ibsen’s heroine Nora, who feels stifled by her marriage and family. Although the Academy Award-nominated ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ star has a smattering of stage parts under her belt, she’s only taken on a single Broadway role (‘The Heiress’, in 2012), and this British debut will be her first major stage role since then. Tickets go on sale at 10am on January 28. 

Globe boss Michelle Terry makes her usual seasonal acting performance in what’s being billed as a ‘radical reimagining’ of Shakespeare’s great romantic history, ‘Antony & Cleopatra’. Deaf actor – and Globe regular – Nadia Nadarajah will take on the role of Cleopatra, as opposed to bigger name Terry, who will play an alternative, unspecified part. We don’t know that much else about the production, even, remarkably, the director, although in probably not unconnected news, Terry and Nadarajah will be joined on stage bu Federay Holmes, best know as sort-of director of the pre-Sean Holmes Globe Ensemble shows. Confusingly, this is a Globe Ensemble show, but not the same Globe Ensemble as the one that will be performing ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Metamorphosis’ this season.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s greatest musical is good enough to be revived almost constantly and dated enough to usually feel a bit uncomfortable. But might the Open Air Theatre’s flamboyant artistic director Timothy Sheader be the man to drag it into the twenty-first century? He helms up this major revival, which Sheader directs and Drew McOnie choreographs.

The team behind the Open Air Theatre’s enjoyable puppet-based family show ‘Dinosaur Zoo Live’ move onto more mystical territory with this new family show, which explores creatures from myth and legend.

‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ is a burst of joy in the heart of the West End. This new British musical, transferring from the Sheffield Crucible, is the real deal. Watch out, tired revivals: there’s a new kid in town. Inspired by a 2011 BBC documentary about a teenager who wanted to be a drag queen, the show follows 16-year-old Jamie on his journey to be himself – out of a classroom in a working-class part of Sheffield, away from the bigotry of a deadbeat dad, and into high heels. Director Jonathan Butterell’s production is a high-impact blaze of colour, combining video projections with seamless scene changes and a live band above the stage. It captures the frenetic energy of being a teenager. Every element of this show works beautifully together. The music, by The Feeling frontman Dan Gillespie Sells, is a deft mix of irresistibly catchy, pop-honed foot-tappers – try not to hum ‘And You Don’t Even Know It’, I dare you – and truthful, heart-wrenching numbers. This is Sells’s first foray into writing for musicals, but he’s always excelled at telling stories in song. He is matched by the show’s writer and lyricist Tom MacRae. Apart from notable exceptions like Punchdrunk’s ‘Doctor Who’-themed kids’ show ‘The Crash of Elysium’, he’s largely written for TV, but this works well here. His dialogue is punchy, funny and often lands with a sting. While most of the characters exist to orbit Jamie, they still have their own stories and these are crisply told. As Pritti, Jamie’s best

This review is from August 2019. ‘Evita’ returns in June 2020, casting tba. Forget everything you know about ‘Evita’: this one properly rocks. Gone are the romanticised shots of sun-soaked South America, sliced out are the filler numbers clogging the score and deleted is the simpering, blonde starlet. Instead, Jamie Lloyd’s production wipes the gloss off Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical, creating a pumping, sped-up ‘Evita’ edged with dirt, rust and grime. It starts literally with a bang. Grey confetti falls like funeral ashes blasted from a cannon, marking Eva Peron’s death. From there, it’s a mass celebration of blue-and-white streamers, flares, cheerleaders and names on placards. The feel is more Maradona than Madonna, a tribute perhaps to a country England knows best through the World Cup. Or, a clever nod to the overlap between the unified chanting and colour coordination of a political rally and the behaviour inside a football stadium.  It’s a more critical portrayal of the Peróns than, for example, Alan Parker and Oliver Stone’s film provides. Yet one of the best aspects is how Samantha Pauly’s Evita owns her reputation and herself. Bounding around in a white slip dress and sneakers – the costume department definitely got the ’90s revival memo which also includes boyband braces and baggy suit pants – Pauly looks like an Insta influencer who gives no fucks about other people’s snark. Trent Saunders’s Che-in-a-Che-T-shirt has flashes of an earnest Political Scie

In the unlikely event you were worried a leap to the stage for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series would result in it becoming aggressively highbrow, self-consciously arty or grindingly bereft of magical high jinks, just chill the hell out, muggle.  ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is an absolute hoot, a joyous, big-hearted, ludicrously incident-packed and magic-heavy romp that has to stand as one of the most unrelentingly entertaining things to hit the West End. Writer Jack Thorne, director John Tiffany and a world-class team have played a blinder; if the two-part, five-hour-plus show is clearly a bit on the long side, it’s forgivable. ‘The Cursed Child’ emphatically exists for fans of Harry Potter, and much of its power derives from the visceral, often highly emotional impact of feeling that you’re in the same room as Rowling’s iconic characters.  There’s also a sense that this story of wizards and witches is being treated with the respect its now substantially grown-up fanbase craves. No disrespect to D-Rad and chums, but the leads here are in a different acting league to their film counterparts’: Jamie Parker and Alex Price are superb as battered, damaged, middle-aged versions of old enemies Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Sam Clemmett and Anthony Boyle are a fine, puppyish, sympathetic engine to the play as their awkward sons Albus and Scorpius, trying to escape their parents’ shadows. It is a bit of a sausage (wand?) fest in terms of the lead parts, although in the most

Director Dominic Cooke's stellar National Theatre revival of Sondheim's ‘Follies’ had much to recommend it, but one of its highest points was Imelda Staunton's performance as a wistful former showgirl, haunted by regrets. Now, Staunton and Cooke are reuniting for a crack at another classic musical, ‘Hello, Dolly’, which hasn't had a London revival in over a decade. 'Hello, Dolly' will have a limited (but nonetheless pretty chunky) 30-week run at Adelphi Theatre. Staunton will play s staunch matchmaker who finds a bride for her millionaire friend, then embarks on a hunt for a love of her own. It's got music and lyrics by Jerry Herman (‘La Cage aux Folles’) including the wonderful title number, plus 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes' and 'Before the Parade Passes By'. Book tickets here with Time Out. 

American writer Aleshea Harris’ award-winning play centres on two vengeful sisters, who set off an epic roadtrip through the California desert to square up to their past. Harris draws on an eclectic arrange of inspirations, including spaghetti Westerns and Afropunk, to tell the story of their dysfunctional family. 'Is God Is' gets its UK premiere at the Royal Court after winning the prestigious Relentless prize in 2016, and landing strong reviews in New York. Ola Ince directs 

'Joseph' returns to the Palladium in Summer 2020; this review is from its July 2019 premiere. Casting tba. There are some very cool new versions of the early works of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice doing the rounds in London at the moment.  ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’ isn’t one of them. It remains sweet, silly, reasonably lovable ‘Joseph…’, in a lavish but lightweight revival from Laurence Connor, director of Lloyd Webber’s recent smash ‘School of Rock’. Of course you’re not going to get much grit out of ‘Joseph…’, which was written as a primary school play back in 1968. And Connor and his team have fun playing with the Book of Genesis-inspired musical’s origins. Despite the obviously enormous budget, there’s a wilful am-dram larkiness to the whole thing: the cast is peppered with child performers, several of them playing adults and wearing crappy false beards, while many of the props – camels made from bicycles, towering golden statues – manage to simultaneously look incredibly expensive and like they cost about 5p.  Sure, the actual Old Testament tale that ‘Joseph…’ is based on is kind of dark. But Rice’s lyrics put an irreverently jolly spin on the whole thing. (Short version: Joseph is given a fancy coat by his dad, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers then grafts his way to the top of Egyptian society through his powers of dream interpretation.) It also has gigantic tunes, energetic and varied songs, which are given a sumptuous orchestration her

‘& Juliet’ is a heavily ironic Shakespeare rewrite based on the songs of super-producer Max Martin. And with the gift of that knowledge, I can fairly confidently state that you’ll probably like ‘& Juliet’ almost precisely as much as you expect to like ‘& Juliet’. Me, I grew up with Martin’s greatest hits: Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys dominated the radio when I was at school, and while I’ve never spent a single penny on his music, I’ve probably spent days of my life listening to it. These were Big Tunes to start with, and in ‘& Juliet’ they sound immense, reconfigured into lush new Tudor-nodding arrangements (a harpsichord features prominently). Most crucially, in a musical that Martin is heavily involved with, they’re deployed in ways that always find some emotional connection to the plot (by no means a given in a jukebox musical – *takes a long, hard stare at ‘Mamma Mia!’*).  The plot is fun provided you refuse to take any of what happens seriously. It’s basically ‘Romeo & Juliet’ rewritten into a sort of woke panto. The Bard of Avon (Oliver Tompsett, channelling a mid-tier ‘Love Island’ contestant) is very pleased with himself for having written the play. But his wife Anne Hathaway (Cassidy Janson, scene-stealingly bolshy) has other ideas. She browbeats Will into allowing Juliet to survive then persuades him to let her rewrite the play as an empowering feminist road trip for Juliet and her gal (and non-binary) pals. A lot of wilfully silly, somewhat subversive, occasi

I would seriously question whether any other show on the planet bar ‘Les Misérables’ could get away with junking its original production and carrying on as if nothing had changed. But ‘Les Mis’ could be transposed to space, or underwater, or to the height of the Hittite empire and it would basically be the same show as long as the singing was on point. In case you missed it: the world’s longest-running musical that’s still playing shut for six months recently while the Sondheim Theatre (née Queen’s Theatre) was renovated by proprietor and producer Cameron Mackintosh. It has returned, not in the original Trevor Nunn RSC production, but a new(ish) one from Laurence Connor and James Powell that has already been rolled out around the globe, with London the last bastion of the ‘classic’ ‘Les Mis’. The ditching of the original has caused disgruntlement in certain quarters: hardcore stans distraught that the exact show they grew up with no longer strictly exists; and the original creative team, notably director Nunn, who understandably feel a little betrayed by the whole affair. All I can say is: yup, I really dug the old revolving stage too, but its loss is bearable. The songs are the same, the score is the same (accepting that it was tweaked to make it a bit less ’80s a few years back), the costumes are the same, many of the current cast are veterans of the original production, and the text is still Nunn and John Caird’s adaptation of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s o

This spectacular puppet-driven stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s bestselling novel was a massive success when it premiered in Sheffield in 2019. Festooned with five-star-reviews, a West End transfer looked inevitable, and Cameron Mackintosh is doing the honours, with the promise that Wyndham’s Theatre will be ‘transformed’ to accommodate Max Webster’s production, which is adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti and has puppets by Finn Caldwell.  The novel, if you somehow missed it, concerns Pi, an Indian boy who ends up adrift on the ocean with a small group of animals – a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan… and a giant Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

The Old Vic’s first musical in a little while is this hook up with Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre for a stage adaptation of the classic 1983 Scottish comedy about a Texan oil executive who gets far more than he bargained for when he tries to buy up an entire Scottish village. It's adapted by Bill Forsythe (who wrote and directed the film), Lyceum boss and playwright David Greig, with music by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame. It’s already played in Edinburgh to warm reviews.

Erstwhile young scamps Mischief Theatre have spun their pleasant ‘Noises Off’ knock-off ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’ into a veritable empire: not only is the original backstage farce still going strong on the West End and off-Broadway, not only do they have another sizeable long-runner in ‘The Comedy About a Bank Robbery’, and not only do they now have an actual BBC1 TV show in the form of ‘The Goes Wrong Show’, but they’ve also won a whole host of US celebrity fans, including JJ Abrams – who co-produced this latest show – and magicians Penn & Teller, who’ve helped them write it.And it’s… okay. There is something charmingly unchanging about the core Mischief players, who are presumably now all millionaires several times over but always attack each new venture with the pure elan of a fledgling university sketch troupe. They’re both winsome and limited, and ‘Magic Goes Wrong’ feels caught at a strange crossroads between Mischief’s bumbling Englishness and Penn & Teller’s edgier interjections.The plot is pretty much contained in the title: neurotic magician Sophisticato (Henry Shields) is throwing a charity magic gala in his late father’s memory, and he’s rustled up some truly terrible acts to perform, notably Henry Lewis’s hack mentalist The Mind Mangler, and Dave Hearn’s entertaining The Blade, an amusing send-up of faux-edgy ‘alt’ magicians.That this somehow stretches on for two-and-a-half-hours without really having a plot is not ideal, not least because the ambling pace burie

Emma Rice’s adaptation of Enid Blyton’s ‘Malory Towers’ is the second show from her Wise Children theatre company, and scored warm reviews on national tour last year. A London transfer was always a matter of when not if, and so it comes to pass that it will rock up to the Southbank Centre for the 2020 summer holidays. It follows hijinks at all-girls’ boarding school in remote Cornwall, centring on hot-tempered new girl Darrell Rivers, though this being Rice it’s a grandiose, music-heavy and generically tricksy take on the subject. It stars Rosie Abraham as Sally Hope, Alison Arnopp as Gwendoline Lacey, Georgia Bruce as Bill Robinson, Mirabelle Gremaud as Irene Dupont, Bobbie Little as Alicia Johns, Naomi Morris as Mary Lou Atkinson and Alice Vilanculo as Darrell Rivers, with Katy Ellis and Stephanie Hockley. Ages eight-plus. Children can go half-price if they book before March 1.

Judy Craymer's bold idea of turning the insanely catchy songs of ABBA into a musical has paid off splendidly, in every sense – box office figures for 'Mamma Mia!' are as eye-watering as its outfits. This is largely because Catherine Johnson had the sense to weave the 1970s into her script, and director Phyllida Lloyd to cast accordingly. Heroine Donna Sheridan lived the free love dream (if only because her boyfriend ran out on her), wound up pregnant and survived to see her daughter, Sophie, reject all her principles in favour of a white wedding and the kind of certainty that comes from knowing which of your mother's three consecutive lovers ought to be walking you down the aisle. If you wanted to, you could see this as a conversation about feminism. But you'll look pretty silly debating patriarchal oppression while on your feet clapping to 'Dancing Queen'. Some of the songs are oddly static, but when the choreography does get going – for instance, when Donna's friend Tanya stylishly quashes a libidinous local puppy in 'Does Your Mother Know?' – it's terrific, and makes great use of props: I wonder if the producers can assure us that no electric drills or hairdryers were harmed in the making of this musical? The current cast appear to have been chosen more for their singing voices than their serious acting ability. But who needs dramatic conviction when you have purest pop to do the convincing for you? Given the songs, a story just about solid enough to stay upright on its pl

For the price of a ticket to ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’, an immersive Abba-themed dinner experience set in a ropey taverna on an idyllic Greek island, you could fly out to an actual idyllic Greek island and probably find a ropey taverna playing Abba songs.Okay, there are some practical reasons why you probably wouldn’t do that on a school night. And sure, it’s not like these are the only expensive theatre tickets in town. But the fact is most London theatre shows have a bottom price of £15 or thereabouts; ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’ starts ten times higher than that.Of course, dinner theatre is a somewhat different game to theatre theatre. And the fact is that there are plenty of people who can afford it: the London debut of ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’ is a roaring sellout success already. Masterminded by Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus, it’s an established hit back in Stockholm. Which is not really a surprise: people love Abba, and ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’, though not formally affiliated to ‘Mamma Mia!’ (the blockbuster musical), is pretty much the same idea, except with the plot mostly replaced by food. After a prodigious wait to get in, we’re spirited away to an attractive, convivial mock-up of a taverna on the island of Skopelos, where the ‘Mamma Mia!’ movie was filmed. The wittiest touch of the whole production is to make it ‘post’ the film: the walls are bedecked with dodgy mocked-up Polaroids of the cast of the show posing with Meryl Streep et al, and the wafer-thin plot revolves around the prem

The Globe’s 2020 outdoor season continues apace with another crowdpleaser: archetypal romcom ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. As of season announcement, we don’t know much about this production, including who will play iconic couple Beatrice and Benedick. But it will be directed by Eleanor Rhode, who recently helmed a well-received ‘King John’ for the RSC, and the suggestion from the blurb is that it will be interpreted as a play about healing after trauma.

Yes, it is a big mistake. Yes, it is a huge mistake. It wafted over from Broadway on a miasma of bad reviews, so I was braced for this musical version of the clearly quite dated 1990 Julia Roberts smash to be a touch problematic.  In fact, ‘Pretty Woman: The Musical’ is so witless that it defies any serious attempt to scrutinise its politics. Telling the story of Edward, a ruthless businessman whose life is changed on a visit to LA after he picks up Vivian, a free-spirited hooker, it is in fact no more about capitalism or sex work than it is about sports cars or cruise liners – all of these things are just plot points as Gary Marshall and JF Lawton’s book hauls itself wearily through its ‘Pygmalion’-like paces.  The film, of course, had Julia Roberts and Richard Gere to style it out. With the best will in the world, leading man Danny Mac is no Gere. But he doesn’t have much to work with. His Edward is a respectful, teetotal, pleasant guy whose only discernible personality traits are a fear of heights and being a remorselessly destructive vulture capitalist, something that is vaguely intimated as being down to daddy issues, but goes unexplored.  By the same token, Aimie Atkinson can hardly hold a candle to Roberts. But her Vivian is winningly goofy and the clear highlight of the production. Yet bulked out with songs, the whole set-up is baffling. Edward hires Vivian for six days on the grounds that he needs a dinner date, and a live-in hooker is less hassle than a girlfriend; 

Rising star Josh O'Connor has won an avid fanbase for his roles in 'God's Own Country' and 'The Durrells', and there was a notable buzz when it was announced he'll play a young Prince Charles in the forthcoming new season of 'The Crown'. He's set to woo new audiences to the National Theatre by playing Romeo in August 2020. He'll play alongside fellow screen star, the Irish singer and actor Jessie Buckley, who's starred in hit series 'War and Peace' and 'Chernobyl', as well as movies 'Wild Rose' and 'Judy'. 'Romeo & Juliet' is a contemporary spin on Shakespeare's classic that's set in modern Italy, where secular twenty-first-century values collide with Catholic tradition. Seasoned Shakespeare director Simon Godwin is at the helm, after turning out a blockbuster 'Antony & Cleopatra' for the NT last summer.  Exact dates are TBA, and will go on sale in 2020.

Brollies at the ready: musical comedy gem ‘Singin' in the Rain’ is coming to Sadler's Wells for a limited five-week stint in Summer 2020. It's not a venue that typically hosts musicals but this show's fiendishly elaborate, rain-soaked tap routines mean it'll fit right in.  Director Jonathan Church's production started life at Chichester Festival in 2011, before playing the West End in 2012, and then setting off on international tour. It stars Adam Cooper as Don Lockwood, the silent movie star who finds himself embroiled in creating Monumental Picture's first 'talkie'. Its famous dance numbers (including 'Make 'Em Laugh' and the audience-splashing title number) will be choreographed by Andrew Wright. 

Oh happy day! Whoopi Goldberg is jetting into London next summer to reprise her second-to-nun performance in ‘Sister Act’. She'll get back into the habit in ‘Sister Act - The Musical’, which'll be her first ever live performance as Deloris. This newly revised stage version of the 1992 hit movie will bring a horde of singing, dancing women of god to Eventim Apollo Hammersmith. Jennifer Saunders is lined up to play Mother Superior, who casts a beady eye on Deloris's efforts to get a convent full of nuns singing disco hits.  ‘Sister Act - The Musical‘ features songs by superstar composer Alan Menken (‘Aladdin’, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’), lyrics by Glenn Slater, and a book by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner. This production is directed by Bill Buckhurst, whose breakout hit was an award-winning revival of ‘Sweeney Todd’ set in a real pie shop. The only thing to put a damper on the rejoicing? The top ticket price is an ouch-inducing £249.50 – get in there early to save your pennies.

‘Six’ returns to Arts Theatre in January 2019. This review is from August 2018. ‘Remember us from your GCSEs?’ It’s Henry VIII’s six wives – and they’ve back, bitch, to re-tell ‘her-story’ as a slick, sassy girl band. Think Euro-pop remixes of ‘Greensleeves’, Anne Boleyn spouting tweenage text-speak (‘everybody chill/it’s totes God’s will’), and K-Howard warbling #MeToo tales of gropey employers. ‘Hamilton' looms large here, and although ‘Six’ has its own moments of clever-clever hip-hop rhymes, it’s a tough comparison: this musical started life as a student show (Cambridge, obvs). But its creators, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, have succeeded in crafting almost brutally efficient pastiche pop songs – here a ballad, there a ballsy, blinging R&B number – performed with snappy dance routines by a talented, diverse cast (and all-female band). Since inception the show seems to have been given a good lick of gloss, too; it stands up in the West End. But beneath its super-shiny surface, ‘Six’ is totes vacuous. And so basic in its feminism that it’s hard to believe it’s written by, like, actual Millennials. The whole thing is staged as a deeply unsisterly competition, each wife getting a song in which to prove they’re the biggest victim, the one who suffered the most at Henry’s hands. This is treated weirdly as comedy though, OTT shrieks and snarks escalating until they’re actually in a catfight, pulling each other’s hair. Several of the wives are characterised as dim and ditzy; some a

Jake Gyllenhaal made his stage debut in London – in Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘This Is Our Youth’, back in 2002 – but has stayed away since, even as his star has risen and he’s become an increasingly regular presence on New York stages. Finally, though, he’s back, reprising his lead role in this recent Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant 1984 musical. It concerns two artist named George: one a fictionalised version of Georges Seurat, deeply absorbed in painting his masterpiece; the other is his cynical and troubled great-grandson, also called George. Gyllenhaal plays both in Sarna Lapine’s transferring production, alongside his Broadway co-star Annaleigh Ashford.

If season two of the Beeb’s ‘His Dark Materials’ seems horribly far away then fear not – your next hit of Philip Pullman’s fantasy world is coming sooner than you think. One of Nicholas Hytner’s first big successes at the National Theatre was directing an epic stage adaptation of Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’. And now: hooray! Seventeen years later he’s moved on to the (still incomplete) follow up trilogy ‘The Book of Dust’ at his new gaff the Bridge. This time Bryony Lavery adapts ‘La Belle Sauvage’, which serves as a prequel to ‘His Dark Materials’, and follows the very early adventures of a six-month-old Lyra Belacqua, as two young people – Malcolm and Alice – find themselves tasked with keeping the infant safe as they flee the malevolent forces of the Magisterium on the eponymous boat.Hytner will direct, though otherwise it’s a totally different creative team to ‘His Dark Materials. Bob Crowley is on design and Barnaby Dixon on puppets – suggesting that while the basic idea of the world’s animal ‘daemons’ being represented by puppets remains, it’s unlikely to be of an explicit visual piece with the NT’s trilogy. Casting is TBA; tickets go on sale to the general public 10am Nov 22.

At the end of this elegant Agatha Christie thriller, the newly uncovered homicidal maniac steps into a sinister spotlight and warns everyone never to reveal his or her identity. The production recently celebrated its 60th birthday and although Wikipedia and Stephen Fry have both blown the murderer's cover, there is a remarkable conspiracy of silence over 'The Moustrap'. The real mystery of the world's longest-running theatre show is not whodunit but, in its currently mediocre state, whydoit at all? 'The Mousetrap's ticket prices are the only element of this show that isn't stuck fast in the 1950s – although the actors' strained RP does make the odd break for the twenty-first century. Otherwise, this is a walking, talking piece of theatre history and – at £39 for a full-price stalls seat – the most expensive museum exhibit in London. Christie's neat puzzler of a plot is easier to defend. It has defied the inevitably mummifying process of more than 25,000 performances and still possesses an uncanny precision worthy of the mistress of murder's chilling geriatric creation, Miss Marple. In the 60 years since it premiered, its premise, in which six Cluedo-like middle-class stereotypes are imprisoned by snow in a country house while they try to fathom which of them is a raving murderer, has become a cliché, just as the authorities' response to adverse weather conditions (skiing coppers? In Berkshire?) have become a nostalgic memory. It's fascinating to glimpse the ghost of Peter Cot

Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Pillowman’ is probably the greatest play of modern times to not transfer to the West End. Its original National Theatre – starring a pre-‘Doctor Who’ David Tennant – won massive acclaim at the National Theatre in 2003, and was restaged for Broadway with Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum, but for whatever reason the West End didn’t happen, and something or other went awry with a revival McDonagh promised during the press for his last big stage hit, 2015’s ‘Hangmen’. But now it’s happening: McDonagh’s latterday director of choice Matthew Dunster will direct Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Steve Pemberton will star in the first-ever UK revival of McDonagh’s sinister masterpiece set in a totalitarian state in which a writer, Katurian, is questioned over a spate of killings with an uncanny similarity to his gristly short stories. In a fairly novel scheme for the West End, there will be 20 tickets per performance available in person at the box office at 10am and 6pm on a pay-what-you-can basis.

‘The Prince of Egypt’ is the plucky, earnest underdog of ’90s animated movies: not even a celeb-heavy cast and a score of Stephen Schwartz bangers could save it from back-of-the-video-cabinet, cult flick oblivion. Until now? Well, sort of. This massive new stage show probably won’t add substantially to the film’s fanbase, but it’s a pacy, powerfully sung showcase for songs like ‘When You Believe’.Schwartz’s son Scott brings the ancient story of two Biblical brothers to the stage with dust-raising chaotic energy. Massive digital backdrops summon up the grandeur of its Ancient Egyptian setting with the monolithic graininess of ’90s PlayStation graphics. In front of them a huge, tumbling cast of physical theatre performers act as both the pyramid-building Hebrew slaves, and as the underdressed physical theatre incarnation of the story’s many ambitious plot points. There’s nothing this agile, ragged, bikini-clad crew can’t lend a kind of clumpy ’90s eroticism to. Sexy chariot race? Check. Sexy burning bush? Check. Sexy river of blood? Check.Philip LaZebnik’s book isn’t quite as limber. He pads the film’s taut story of Moses and Rameses’s rivalry with clumsy new scenes. The worst ones attempt to fill out these men’s relationships with their wives in disappointingly retro fashion, with Moses and Rameses bonding over their other halves being ‘difficult’. Here, Tzipporah becomes an Esmeralda-esque figure who specialises in hip-weaving dance movies and one-note defiance. She and Moses

It's been decades since this skillful adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 Gothic horror story first started setting West End audience a-shiver. 'The Woman in Black' remains perennially popular – particularly, it seems, with generally hard-to-please teenagers – which is testament to its rough-theatre appeal and the extraordinary and enduring potency, not of guts, gore or special effects, but of simple suggestion. Ageing Arthur Kipps is haunted by sinister events that befell him 30 years earlier. In an effort to exorcise his demons, he hires an actor to help him tell his story for an invited audience. As they rehearse, though, their staging itself becomes prey to supernatural visitations from the titular hatchet-faced, whip-thin, funereally garbed woman. Stephen Mallatratt's dramatisation and a deft production by Robin Herford exploit the peculiarly spooky atmosphere of an empty theatre, making us, as an audience, feel almost like spectral voyeurs. And the chills are irresistibly effective: swirling fog, a creaking rocking chair, a locked door, a pale visage looming out of the gloom. Only occasionally does the staging show its age. The projected image of the gaunt, sinister house of Kipps' tormented memory looks hopelessly cheap and crude, and a graveyard conjured with dust sheets struggles to convince, even within the low-tech aesthetic parameters of the piece. Yet the shrieks and gasps that greet the performance demonstrate that, even in the twenty-first century, this doughty lit

Aaron Sorkin’s stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s civil rights classic ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ took Broadway by storm – and caused a fair amount of controversy after the producers aggressively tried to shut down productions of other adaptations of Lee’s 1960 masterpiece. And now Bartlett Sher’s production is coming here, under the auspices of Sonia Friedman Productions, who are having set to have a very big 2020.  Rhys Ifans will star as principled white Southern attorney Atticus Finch, who defends black man Tom Robinson in a rape trial in deeply prejudiced Alabama. It’s slightly unusual casting, that will surely see the gifted but somewhat wild Welsh actor play defiantly against type. Still, the powers that be are presumably not leaving this to chance.  

A summer season of Shakespearean crowdpleasers continues at the Globe, with associate director Sean Holmes helming the beloved ‘Twelfth Night’. Expect a slightly more twisted than usual take on the melancholic mistaken identity comedy from the artsy Holmes. It’ll be performed by a version of the Globe Ensemble, who Holmes directed in his excellent recent Sam Wanamaker debut ‘Henry VI’ and ‘Richard III’.

The film world continues its love affair with werewolves, vampires and all things 'Twilight'. But theatre types have always known witches are where it's at. After its 2006 opening at Apollo Victoria, Oz prequel 'Wicked' continues to fill this massive theatre with an international crowd of voracious consumers (glass of champagne and a choccy for £16 anyone?). But this stylish and bombastic musical still delivers, sailing over its patchy score thanks to a gravity-defying performance from its current leading lady Rachel Tucker, as the intense green-skinned undergrad who goes on to become the Wicked Witch of the West. 'Wicked' is a spectacle that rises or falls around its central performance. In the midst of a gigantic production full of bangs, bells and whistles Tucker, with her small frame and searing vocal ability, simply flies off with the show. She's closely followed by Gina Beck, who plays good girl, Glinda. Glinda and Elphaba's relationship forms the heart of this story and, as the Good Witch, Beck is a consummate clown, playing up the silliness of her character at every turn. But she can raise a tear, too, and her final duet with Tucker, 'For Good', is genuinely heart-rending. The Tim Burton-inspired ensemble oscillate between the hypnotic and grotesque and a sweet but thin voiced Matt Willis charms as the rather superfluous Prince. As in classical ballet, this is all about the women and, even by previous lead Idina Menzel's standards, they are in soaring form here. This

It wasn’t all about Poirot’s little grey cells or Miss Marple solving murders at the vicarage. In her lifetime, crime writer extraordinaire Agatha Christie wrote 16 plays and a massive 73 novels. Apart from the immortal ‘Mousetrap’, ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ – which Christie adapted in 1953 from an earlier short story – is one of the most famous. Like most of Christie’s work, you can’t say much for fear of ruining the ending. Leonard Vole (a butter-wouldn’t-melt Jack McMullen) is on trial for murdering an older woman who has left everything to him in her will. He insists he’s innocent, but it all rests on the testimony of his wife, Romaine. What will she say on the stand? When Christie adapted her original story, she shifted the focus almost exclusively to the Old Bailey courtroom. Here, Lucy Bailey’s production has the gift of being in the main chamber of London County Hall. Big, austere and grand, it’s the perfect setting for the legal theatrics of Christie’s forensically precise plotting. Some audience members are even addressed as the jury. If the courtroom is a stage, this play is all about performance. Few are as good as Christie at leading us down the garden path, expectations-wise. She constructs her plot like Vole’s barrister, Sir Wilfrid Robarts QC (a charismatic David Yelland), builds his case, before knocking over apparent ‘revelations’ like dominoes. Bailey plays up the melodrama beautifully, in some scenes lighting the judge’s bench like something from a ho