Hampstead Theatre

This hugely enjoyable tech satire-slash-thriller from US playwright Aaron Loeb is so good at bamboozling you as to what it’s going to be about that I almost hesitate to get into the plot. It’s good! Go see it! Isn’t that enough of a review for you? Okay, there isn’t a massive rug-pulling twist in ROI. But there is some fun misdirection in what initially looks set to be a satire on ethical investment funds. Sassy but idealistic May (Millicent Wong) is the protege – or in his words, ‘work daughter’ – of Paul (Lloyd Owen), the seen-it-all boss of ethical investors the Montrose Fund. One day, she stumbles across a unicorn: Willa (Letty Thomas) is a nervy, spectrum-y doctor with zero people skills who wants an insane $30bn investment in her ideas. But what she’s proposing intrigues May: advanced gene therapy that could change the world by eliminating most genetic conditions (eg cancer, Alzheimer’s). Willa contends that big pharma has suppressed such technology because it would tank their profits. May persuades Paul to take the plunge. The whole play is pointing towards ethical venture capitalist May discovering that she’s more capitalist than ethical. But in fact she proves to be a spirited, unbending heroine, winningly played by Wong. Really ROI is about two things: the inevitably of technological change, and how ill-equipped flawed human beings are to be its avatars.  Loeb is clearly interested in tech and what the near future might look like. It’s not po-facedly THIS WILL...

One of the big British theatre hits of the ’90s – and probably the venerable British dramatic Michael Frayn’s most successful play – Copenhagan depicts a meeting in the afterlife between the Danish physicist Niels Bohr and his protégé, the German Werner Heisenberg. The subject matter is a real life, wildly speculated upon meeting the pair had in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen in 1941, where they discussed the ethics of making an atomic bomb. West Wing star Richard Schiff will play Bohr and Alex Kingston his wife Margrethe in Michael Longhurst’s first ever UK revival.

A celebrated wildlife photographer and Marcus – the latest in a long line of apprentices – attempt to photograph the elusive firewing bird in David Pearson’s debut play, which is directed by Alice Hamilton and stars Charlie Beck and Gerard Horan.

A big coup for Hampstead Theatre here, as it bags the UK premiere of the wildly acclaimed US indie musical Kimberley Akimbo. Created by composer Jeanine Tesori and writer David Lindsay-Abaire, it’s an all-singing adaptation of Adams’s relatively obscure 2000 play of the same name, which follows the eponymous heroine, a 16-year-old girl afflicted by a rare/essentially magical disease that makes her age four times faster than usual. This means she has the appearance of an elderly woman while essentially being a teen. And apparently it’s wonderful! It bagged multiple wins at the 2023 Tony Awards – including the all important best new musical – and ran for a year-and-a-half on Broadway. Now it’s headed over here, albeit in a brand new production from Michael Longhurst, who did such a bang up job at the same address a few years back with Tesori’s Caroline, or Change.