The best new London theatre for 2022 – shows not to miss

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Well, maybe not without dinner first. But now you have the option to spend your evening at ‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’, the acclaimed Broadway stage ‘remix’ of Baz Lurhmann’s fabulous jukebox musical feature film. Forced to cancel its December 2021 opening night, ‘Moulin Rouge!’ is currently due to open in early January.

The National Theatre’s first big musical of the pandemic era is ‘Hex’, an all-singing adaptation of the Sleeping Beauty myth. Originally due to open just before Christmas, it’s been pushed back to January following disruption from Covid.

Jamie Lloyd’s superb production returns for a limited season, complete with star James McAvoy.

Alistair McDowall hit upon a rich, dark seam of magical realism (or surrealism) with the Lovecraftian ‘Pomona’ and the brain-melting sci-fi ‘X’. The follow-up to ‘The Glow’ sounds like it will continue down that path.

Caryl Churchill’s chillingly prescient 2000 cloning drama ‘A Number’ is back again. In this production, Lennie James stars as Salter, with Paapa Essiedu as the clones.

In 1984, an ageing Andy Warhol, long past the peak of his fame, persuaded rising star Jean-Michel Basquiat to collaborate with him. Kiwi playwright Anthony McCarten’s new play ‘The Collaboration’ imagines their New York workshops together. Paul Bettany plays Warhol, with Jeremy Pope playing Basquiat.

Whimsical auteur Emma Rice directing Emily Brontë’s darkly elemental romance is a match made in pure heaven.

Film star Taron Egerton makes his West End debut opposite ‘Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey in the first major revival for Mike Bartlett’s brilliant 2009 sexual satire.

Eight years after ‘The Drowned Man’, the mighty Punchdrunk – hands down the best immersive theatre company in the world – finally return with this immense new show…

Colloquially known as ‘Sexy Oklahoma’, US director Daniel Fish’s stripped back, smoulderingly intense, radically inclusive new version of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic took Broadway by storm in 2019 and would probably have come over here earlier if it weren’t for you-know-what…

Jeremy Herrin directs the magnificent Amy Adams as she makes her London stage debut in the role of monstrous southern matriarch Amanda Wingate in Tennessee Williams’s classic play.

Jodie Comer makes her stage debut in a monologue about a brilliant, competitive young working-class barrister whose upwards ascent is suddenly stalled when a colleague rapes her…

Mark Rylance reprises the greatest performance of the twenty-first century as the original production of ‘Jerusalem’ returns for 2022.

Ah wella wella… it’s back! in a brand new production from Nikolai Foster, with choreography by Arlene Philips. 

Twenty-one years after Cameron Mackintosh’s acclaimed but troubled 2001 West End production of Lerner & Loewe’s musical classic, ‘My Fair Lady’ is back!

It was a sensation when it stormed the West End back in 2009 with Sheridan Smith in the lead role and – omigod you guys! – now ‘Legally Blonde the Musical’ is back…

‘The Seagull’ flies again! The Jamie Lloyd Company’s 2020 production of Chekhov’s masterpiece marked the West End debut of Emilia Clarke: and it started previews before being shuttered by the pandemic on the week it was due to open. Now it’s it’s back, with a largely unchanged company headed by Clarke…