As London slowly emerges from winter, a bevy of stars—from Hollywood stalwarts to theater veterans and rising abilities—are lining as much as storm the West Finish stage. They’re set to reimagine Shakespearean classics; delight audiences with showstopping musical numbers, each new and acquainted; make us weep with their takes on Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill; and convey to life the work of a number of the most fun younger writers within the trade as we speak. These are the ten hottest tickets on the town.
The complete title of Ryan Calais Cameron’s profoundly shifting, Olivier Award-nominated examination of race, psychological well being, and fashionable masculinity is For Black Boys Who Have Thought of Suicide When The Hue Will get Too Heavy—and whereas this will likely sound somber, this thrillingly dynamic present is something however. It’s lighthearted and creative, hovering and impressive, devastating after which totally life-affirming—the story of six younger Black males who meet for group remedy and delve deep into their passions, hopes, and traumas, clashing and connecting with one another as they ponder life’s greatest questions. After final yr’s sold-out manufacturing at London’s Apollo Theatre, the play is again within the West Finish with a model new solid: Tobi King Bakare, Fela Lufadeju, Albert Magashi, Mohammed Mansaray, Posi Morakinyo, and Shakeel Haakim, the latter of whom is a Royal Academy of Dramatic Artwork scholar who was really working part-time as an usher on the Apollo throughout For Black Boys’s final run. If his story, and this transcendent piece of theater, don’t make you shed tears of pleasure, nothing will.
Till Might 4
Stage legend Sheridan Smith returns to the highlight with this new musical based mostly on John Cassavetes’s blistering 1977 movie of the identical identify, about an actor on the top of her powers whose newest play is heading to Broadway when her life begins to spiral uncontrolled. Grammy nominee Rufus Wainwright has penned over 20 new songs for the event, Tony-winning visionary Ivo van Hove is directing, and the supporting solid consists of Unorthodox’s Shira Haas, however all eyes, presumably, might be on its main girl. “It’s going to be actually near the bone,” Smith advised British Vogue of the expertise of enjoying somebody who struggles with anxiousness and alcoholism, very like she herself has previously. Her purpose? “Catharsis.”
Till July 27
Cabaret on the Playhouse Theatre
Since this immersive and opulent West Finish reimagining of the traditional Kander and Ebb musical first opened in 2021, the likes of Jessie Buckley, Madeline Brewer, Aimee Lou Wooden, Maude Apatow, and Self Esteem have all stepped into Sally Bowles’s thigh-highs to belt “Mein Herr” and “Possibly this Time.” (A Broadway iteration of the manufacturing opens on the August Wilson Theatre in April.) The most recent to succeed them within the half might be none apart from the electrifying Cara Delevingne, who will make her West Finish debut on the delightfully debauched Package Kat Membership, supported by Luke Treadaway because the gleeful Emcee. Our setting is Berlin on the twilight of the Jazz Age, because the Nazis are gaining energy, and the workers and regulars at a seedy cabaret are navigating their ever-changing world—and having quite a lot of enjoyable doing it. In case you’re in some way but to see this exuberant reinterpretation, which set an Olivier document as probably the most awards-laden revival in historical past with its seven wins, now could be the time.
