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

Ah wella wella… it’s back! ‘Grease’ returns for 2022 in a brand new production from Nikolai Foster, with choreography by Arlene Philips. We’re promised a different side to ‘Grease’ than the last, play-it-safe revival, with a grittier edge and songs and script from the original production restored.

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!

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.

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…

This is a curious announcement from the Royal Court: its next main house show will be ‘That Is Not Who I Am’, a thriller about stolen online identities from the unknown Dave Davidson, allegedly a first-time playwright who has ‘worked in security’ for the last 38 years and refuses to share any photographs of himself for security reasons…

Yup: ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’ is indeed a sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 proto-feminist masterpiece ‘A Doll’s House’. The brilliant Noma Dumezweni will play Nora, in her first stage role since her Olivier-winning turn as Hermione Granger in ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’.

Prolific American playwright Theresa Rebeck has had her biggest successes across the pond – indeed, many of her Broadway hits have never even made it over to the UK. But here’s a rare world premiere in. the West End for one of her works, albeit one that’s anchored by two heavyweight American actors: David Harbour and Bill Pullman star in ‘Mad House’, a dark comedy about a group of siblings who converge on their dying father’s rural Pennsylvania home, with one eye on divvying up his inheritance. Harbour will play Michael, one of the siblings; Pullman will play Daniel, the dying father. Rebeck’s regular collaborator Moritz von Stuelpnagel directs.

Although all Globe outdoor shows are equal, some are clearly more equal than others, and it’s hard not to see this production of ‘King Lear’ starring the great Kathryn Hunter in the title role as anything other than the flagship play in the 2022 season…

‘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…

Oh happy day! This long-delayed revival of ‘Sister Act - The Musical’ would appear to finally be upon us after being scuppered twice by the pandemic.

‘My Neighbour Totoro’ is a lavish new adaptation of the legendary Japanese animation Studio Ghibli’s 1988 film about a pair of young sisters who move to the countryside for the summer while their mother recovers from an illness. There, they encounter a world of magical creatures, including the eponymous Totoro, an ancient forest protector.

Belgian director Ivo van Hove returns to the Young Vic with the UK premiere of his adaptation of Édouard Louis’s book ‘Who Killed My Father’. An angry, tender portrait of the author’s father’s decline, Van Hove has adapted the book into a monologue which will be performed by the great Dutch actor Hans Kesting. 

If the National Theatre under Rufus Norris has steered relatively clear of straight versions of canonical classics by anyone other than Shakespeare, then a massive revival of Arthur Miller’s seminal allegorical drama about the Salem witch trials never goes amiss. Brendan Cowell stars as troubled hero John Procter, and Eric Doherty will play Abigail.

The Donmar’s 2022 season is notable for two huge UK premieres of US smashes: first Lucas Hnath’s Ibsen sequel ‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’, and then this ten times Tony-winning musical by David Yazbek and Itamar Moses. 

Robert Icke's acclaimed final show as Almeida associate director gets its extremely long-awaited West End transfer.

Does the world need an all-singing version of the life story of Nelson Mandela? We’re about to find out! 

Thirty years on from the cult musical film and ten from the unexpectedly successful Broadway version, Disney’s ‘Newsies’ is finally coming to London…