The best new theatre shows opening in London September 2019

It’s a big month for immersive theatre in London, with the launch of ‘Mamma Mia: The Party’ and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. Still, for sheer ambition this 200-room zombie horror experience has to take the proverbial biscuit. After a hefty delay, ‘Variant 31’ has to quietly be one of the biggest theatre shows London has ever hosted.

Director Alexander Zeldin and his hardhitting devised dramas have been one of the real success stories of the Rufus Norris-era National Theatre. ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ brings together a truly excellent cast – including Cecilia Noble and Susan Lynch – to devise a drama about a struggling community centre.

This is a nice little coup for the Menier, as it secures the London premiere of Laura Wade’s acclaimed, arch Jane Austen adaptation ‘The Watsons’. Austen didn’t finish the book - so suddenly a writer called Laura is tasked with resolving everyone’s fates…

It’s astonishing, watching this overwhelming, at times almost unbearable one-woman show to think that Caroline Horton is the same artist who first made a splash nine years ago with ‘You’re Not Like the Other Girls, Chrissie’, a winsome but ultimately fairly lightweight monologue about her French grandmother…

Incoming Hampstead boss Roxana Silbert kicks things off with a new thriller by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig ('Snow in Midsummer', RSC). 'The King of Hell's Palace' is a twisty drama set in 1992 China, where a young female Ministry of Health official uncovers a seriously dodgy trade in blood plasma, bought from impoverished farmers.…

Incoming Bush Theatre boss Lynette Linton starts her reign by directing 'Chiaroscuro', poet Jackie Kays's 1986 debut play. Linton will stage a gig-theatre style take on this female-led story, which is set at a dinner party and explores debates around lesbian and black identity…

Rachel O’Riordan’s big, bold first season in charge of the Lyric Hammsmith kicks off with a new adaptation of Ibsen’s masterpiece from Tanika Gupta. She has radically transposed the action to imperial Calcutta, with heroine Nina now Niru, a young Bengali woman married to Tom, an English colonial bureaucrat. 

Federíco Garcia Lorca’s ‘Blood Wedding’ is a fringe staple that’s not had a major revival in years. Now, following on from the transatlantic success of the Young Vic’s recent production of Lorca’s ‘Yerma’, here comes a new version of this bleak rural revenge tragedy, adapted by Irish playwright Marina Carr (‘By the Bog of Cats’) and directed by the great South African Yaël Farber, whose overwhelmingly intense style is perfectly suited to the great tragedies.

Seven years since 2012’s dazzling ‘The Effect’, the great Lucy Prebble finally returns to the theatre with a completely audacious metatheatrical rewrite of Luke Harding’s book about the poisoning of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.

Britain’s greatest living playwright Caryl Churchill is back, with four short plays, which will be directed by James Macdonald and designed by Miriam Buether. We have no idea what to expect: the fourth play, ‘Imp’ wasn’t even part of the original announcement. But as ever with Churchill, expect the boundaries of theatre and language to be pushed far, far back.

Hyperprolific Frenchman Florian Zeller has notched up an impressive six UK premieres since 2015, all translated by Christopher Hampton. I’m going to be honest and say that, ‘The Father’ excepted, Zeller’s success has always slightly mystified me: he seems ubiquitous without being beloved…