The best new London theatre for 2023 – shows not to miss

After blockbuster success on Broadway, the Sam Mendes-directed epic returns to the West End for another run, with casting TBC.

Hotshot director Simon Stone’s version of the Phaedra myth finally arrives at the National, with ‘Ozark’ star Janet McTeer in the lead.

Richard Hawley and Chris Bush’s musical paying tribute to three generations of life on Sheffield’s Park Hill Estate was due to transfer to the NT in 2020 following the wild acclaim its original Sheffield run received in 2019. The pandemic inevitably messed that up good and proper, but three years on and the transfer is finally going to happen.

The programming at the West End’s newest and worst-named theatre really kicks up a notch with Dominic Cooke’s revival of Euripides's ‘Medea’, staged from the 1946 adaptation by US poet Robinson Jeffers. Heavyweights Sophie Okonedo and Ben Daniels will star as Medea and Jason/Creon/Aegeus in the ancient Greek tragedy about the jilted, desperate Medea who kills her and Jason’s children as an act of shocking revenge. 

I’m struggling to think of a hornier theatre production than Daniel Fish’s radical revamp of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1943 musical ‘Oklahoma!’.

This cosy musical celebration of the beloved baking show and the people who go on it sounds about as edgy as a soggy bottom, but pure musical comfort food to fans of the show, ie about half of the UK population.

Sheridan Smith is back on stage with a role she could have been born to do: the eponymous heroine of Willy Russell’s celebratory monologue ‘Shirley Valentine’ about a housewife who dreams of escaping her humdrum life and marriage… and does so. The hyper-busy Matthew Dunster is on directing duties.

For 2023 the Bridge is betting the farm on a massive immersive production of Frank Loesser’s all-time classic musical ‘Guys and Dolls’, which will start an open-ended run from February…

Super-director Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s mega-selling novel ‘A Little Life’ makes its English language debut for a West End run starring James Norton as the story’s deeply troubled central character, Jude, along with Luke Thompson (Willem), Omari Douglas (JB), Zach Wyatt (Malcolm).

Simon McBurney’s legendary theatre company Complicite returns with its first major theatre show since it mind-blowing ‘The Encounter’…

A proper fringe theatre success story, ‘Operation Mincemeat’ has played numerous London theatres over the last several years and in March 2023 will finally make it to the West End, dethroning ‘The Woman in Black’ at the Fortune Theatre after a 33-year-run.

Sam Mendes directs Jack Thorne’s dramatisation of the complicated relationship between Richard Burton and John Gielgud. Johnny Flynn stars as Burton, with Mark Gatiss as Gielgud and Tuppence Middleton as Elizabeth Taylor. 

The great Lenny Henry stars in his own one-man show – his debut as a playwright! – about charming a West Bromwich fruit seller August Henderson, who faces deportation to Jamaica after getting ensnared in the burning injustice of the Windrush scandal. 

Martin McDonagh’s legendary dystopian drama ‘The Pillowman’ finally makes it to the West End after 20 years, with Lily Allen starring as Katurian, a writer questioned over a spate of killings with an uncanny similarity to her gristly short stories.

‘Crazy for You’ is a golden age musical comedy that’s actually from 1992: writer Ken Ludwig took a load of classic songs by George and Ira Gershwin – largely from the 1930 musical ‘Girl Crazy’ – and spun them into a shimmeringly delightful retro confection that’s almost indistinguishable from the era it’s paying homage to, the odd knowing flourish aside. 

Long-running Nickelodeon cartoon ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ is pretty weird, as is this eccentric Broadway musical adaptation spin-off.