The best new theatre shows opening in London March 2020

Director and playwright Jude Christian has turned her hand to everything from experimental theatre starring live piglets to Lyric Hammersmith's annual panto. 'Hamlet' – which she adapts and  Tinuke Craig directs – will doubtless see her at the lighter end of the spectrum; it's a Shakespeare adaptation aimed at primary aged kids, with plenty of spooky adventures. 

One of Hampstead Theatre's heftier claims to fame is that it hosted the premiere of Harold Pinter's 'The Dumb Waiter', back in 1960. So a revival is an obvious choice to open the venue's 'Classics' season. Alice Hamilton will direct this unsettling story of two hitmen, hiding out in the basement of a derelict building as an electric dumbwaiter serves up periodic surprises. Philip Jackson and Harry Lloyd will play the two wannabe assassins.

Irish novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry's 'On Blueberry Hill' is a story of friendship set in a Dublin prison, produced by longstanding new writing company Fishamble. It comes to London after hit runs in Dublin and New York. 

Following her sly dystopia ‘The Sewing Group’, EV Crowe returns to the Royal Court with ‘Shoe Lady’, which would appear to be about a woman whose life starts to unravel somewhat after she loses a shoe. Katherine Parkinson stars.

A more intimate UK remounting of this fascinating drama from US playwright Paula Vogel about the ill-fated first Broadway run of the play ‘God of Vengeance’ by Polish-Jewish playwright Sholem Asch, which resulted in the entire cast being convicted on charges of obscenity. 

To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Robert Lepage has brought back this seven-hour-long epic, last seen at the National Theatre in 1996. The weighty drama follows a group of Hiroshima survivors and their descendents, and sims to show how the bomb changed the course of history.

OK Boomer: here’s a sure sign that we’re all getting old, Rachel O’Riordan's maiden season at the Lyric Hammersmith includes the first major revival of Mike Bartlett’s ‘Love, Love, Love’. It will be interesting to see how Bartlett’s caustic skewering about the selfishness of the ’60s generation lands in a post-Brexit world. O’Riordan herself directs.

You might technically call this a West End transfer for Josie Rourke’s Donmar Warehouse production of Cy Coleman’s pastiche film noir musical, although it has taken almost six years. Most of the original cast are reunited – including Rosalie Craig, Hadley Fraser and Rebecca Trehearn – alongside a few high profile newcomers, notably Vanessa Williams and Nicola Roberts.

A busy 2020 for the Jamie Lloyd Company kicks off with the West End debut of Emilia Clarke, who’ll be trading in dragon riding and romantic encounters with ghosts for the role of vain young actress Nina in Chekhov’s first great play ‘The Seagull’, starring opposite Daniel monks as Konstantin.  

The first-ever London revival of Lucy Prebble’s genius third play ‘The Effect’ – which questions whether love is just a chemical reaction and if that actually matters – couldn’t look more tempting, with arch surrealist Anthony Neilson directing, and the brilliant Kate O’Flynn taking on the role of Connie, the subject on a medical trial who finds unexpected romance there (or does she?).