The Week Ahead: BalletBoyz, Wife at the Kiln, and last chance to see two Broadway stars
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- Tonight (3rd June), the BalletBoyz swap their usual address at Sadler's Wells for a brief West End season, with the opening of Them/Us at the Vaudeville Theatre for a run to 15th June. A collaboration between the company's own dancers and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, both pieces are set to original scores and ask where we see ourselves in relation to the 'other'.
- Then tomorrow, the Kiln presents the world premiere of Wife, which despite its one-word title that describes a specific family role, is not actually by Florian Zeller whose previous plays The Father, The Mother and The Son were presented here. This new play is instead by Samuel Adamson, and is described as mapping "a constellation of four queer stories within four generations in one family". Set in 1959,1988, 2019 and 2042. It features four couples who intersect with a production of Ibsen's A Doll's House.
- On Wednesday, the Wardrobe Ensemble bring their 2017 Edinburgh hit Education, Education, Education (which won both a Scotsman Fringe First and a Stage Edinburgh Award) to the West End's Trafalgar Studios for a short season to 29th June. Set during the early days of the Tony Blair's reign as Prime Minister in 1997, the show is described as "a love letter to education in the 90s and is jam-packed with more hits than Now That's What I Call 1997 including Oasis, Katrina and the Waves and The Spice Girls, plus Teletubbies references, jokes about Take That and the Macarena."
- Also on Wednesday, the Young Vic presents Bronx Gothic, imported from New York. Okwui Okpokwasili, a 2018 MacArthur 'Genius Award' recipient, writes, performs and designs the sound for this coming of age story, which is said to be at the intersection of dance, theatre and visual installation.
Top shows of the week
Musicals
Amour
Charing Cross Theatre
Last chance to see the sadly curtailed run of this delicate French-flavoured musical scored by the late, great Michel Legrand before it closes on 8th June. In my review for LondonTheatre.co.uk, I awarded it a five-star rave, and declared, "The show may be about a man walking through walls, but I was walking through air as I left the theatre."
Waitress
Adelphi Theatre
It's also the last chance to catch Katherine McPhee in the title role of this Broadway musical, which she leaves on 15th June (to be replaced by the British Lucie Jones). As I wrote in my review for LondonTheatre.co.uk, she 'has an effortlessly natural acting style and an alternately soaring and throbbing singing voice, not least in the show's Act Two power ballad "She Used to Be Mine".'
Fiddler on the Roof
Playhouse Theatre
Last chance to see Broadway's Judy Kuhn in the role of Golde, who leaves the cast on 15th June (to be replaced by Maria Friedman). In my interview with her here, she said, "What's extraordinary about this show is that is about a very specific community at a very specific time, but it really speaks to all communities through all time. That's one reason why fifty-plus years on it is one of the most revived shows ever."
Plays
Rutherford and Son
National's Lyttelton
The National previously revived Gita Sowerby's 1913 play in 1994 in the smallest Cottesloe Theatre; now a new production by director Polly Findlay puts it center stage in the larger Lyttelton. As I wrote in my review for LondonTheatre.co.uk, I wrote: "It reveals yet again the enduring slow-burning, and eventually churning, power of this play, and now places it firmly in the reclaimed, rather than lost, corner of world drama."
The Starry Messenger
Wyndham's Theatre
Originally seen Off-Broadway in 2009, Kenneth Lonergan's play now comes to the West End with its original New York star Matthew Broderick reprising his role as an astronomy teacher. As I wrote in my review for LondonTheatre.co.uk: 'Director Sam Yates's production is definitely a slow-burner, but the slow reveal of the play's intricate patterns is deliberate, finding both the poetry and the drama in the seemingly banal.'
King Hedley II
Theatre Royal Stratford East
Part of the late August Wilson's massive ten-part cycle of plays chronicling the African-American experience of the twentieth century decade-by-decade, this entry premiered on Broadway in 2001. In her review for LondonTheatre.co.uk, Victoria Ferguson wrote: "The difficult subject is handled thoughtfully by an able cast, and this powerful play offers a clear and important message.
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