Wyndham's Theatre

Having signed his life over to a little show called ‘Succession’ for six years, Brian Cox is both making up for lost time and gleefully cashing in his move from ‘well-respected actor’ to ‘bona fide superstar’.  Last autumn he warmed up by starring as JS Bach in new play ‘The Score’ at Theatre Royal Bath. And now he returns to the West End for the first time in a decade to headline Eugene O’Neill’s masterwork ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’.  Hopefully he’s got a bit more in the tank after this, as despite a superb supporting cast, I’d say Cox doesn’t quite nail the role of James Tyrone, the patriarch of a disintegrating family, heavily based on O’Neill’s own dad (the playwright famously refused to allow the play be staged until after his death). Cox is decent, but I found his performance diffused by the production: director Jeremy Herrin takes a typically forgiving view of the Tyrones, which pays off elsewhere, but I think blunts Cox’s James; a successful actor embittered by creative failure and his failure as a father and husband. There‘s also another issue: fair or not, it’s hard to shake comparisons to Logan Roy - speaking in the same fruity brogue and in a role that’s very much about a father attempting to relate to his troubled sons who he himself has fucked up, there’s just something a bit… unhelpful about the resonance. The men are not the same: James is a frailer figure than the monstrous Logan (he certainly swears a lot less). But aspects of his Logan blur into his J

This review is from August 2023. ‘Next To Normal’ transfers to Wyndham’s Theatre in June 2024. The entire Donmar cast will return. It’s taken Broadway indie smash ‘Next To Normal’ a walloping 15 years to make it to London. I’m not totally sure why: probably something to do with investors getting spooked by the West End failure of the not-dissimilar ‘Spring Awakening’. But this UK debut for Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s Pulitzer winner has been a long time coming. And outgoing Donmar Warehouse boss Michael Longhurst matches the pent-up demand with a sensational production – even if I’m doubtful whether the musical itself lives up to the hype. In particular, it’s a privilege to see Broadway star Caissie Levy in the lead part of bipolar mum/mom Diana, whose inability to get over a tragedy that occurred 18 years ago is the engine of the story. She is remarkable in a role that requires her to shift between emotional extremes at the drop of a pin, and has a tremendous voice, pure and clean and cutting. In a very real sense she is the show: it’s her total belief in Diana that keeps the whole thing soaring in spite of some very questionable writing. Jamie Parker is excellent as Dan, Diana’s loyal husband, who has sacrificed his own happiness in order to look after her, but has seemingly confined them both to a cage wrought from his good intentions. And there’s fine work from Eleanor Worthington-Cox as Diane and Dan’s daughter Natalie, who has grown into a deeply neurotic young woman un

This heavily adapted version of Sophocles’s ‘Oedipus Rex’ by erstwhile Almeida wunderkind Robert Icke first premiered in a Dutch language version for Internationaal Theater Amsterdam way back in 2018. Its journey to the London stage has been a fairly fraught one: it was due to arrive here in 2020 with Mark Strong in the title role and the great Helen Mirren as Oedipus’s mother-slash-wife Jocasta. Although there were efforts made to push it back to 2021, the pandemic essentially put paid to Mirren's involvement and it’s presumably now at least reasonably likely that her stage days are behind her. Four years on, however, and Strong has stayed the course and will be joined by the magnificent Lesley Manville (technically too young to be Strong’s mother, but we’ll allow it). Like all Icke’s adaptations, his ‘Oedipus’ is entirely contemporary in terms of setting and language, aiming to convey the essence of the story and not the period trappings. This is set on the night of politician Oedipus’s great electoral victory – but some very disturbing revelations will come to light about his wife. Further casting is TBC.