The Week Ahead: The National's ANNA and The Lehman Trilogy and Lenny Henry in King Hedley II

I'm heading to Skiathos, a Greek island which was one of the principal locations for the making of the movie version of Mamma Mia! (when it wasn't being filmed at Pinewood Studios back here, that is), tomorrow and looking forward to taking in some of the sights, like St. Nikolaos Bell Tower, where Sophie posts her wedding invitations to her three possible dads, the Old Port where the dads first meet each other, and - a short boat ride away - St John's Chapel, the hillside location where the wedding took place.

This is all by way of early preparation for Mamma Mia! The Party, an immersive theatre experience that transfers from Stockholm (where I saw it a few months ago, in Swedish) to a purpose-built space at the O2 Arena in late August.

I'll be missing a few openings over here, of course, but LondonTheatre.co.uk will be there, as Victoria Ferguson will be on hand to cover some of these openings.

This Week in Theatre

On Monday 20th May, Coral Browne: This F***ing Lady!, a one-woman show written and directed by Maureen Sherlock about the late Australian-born film and stage star features another Aussie actor Amanda Muggleton in the title role, opens at the King's Head. In an interview with Muggleton for LondonTheatre.co.uk, she told Will Longman, "Coral Browne's life is fascinating. She was ambitious, brave, daring and so colourful. A pioneer in theatre from Australia, she paved the way for so many who followed her. Her career spans the world. Australia, England, Europe and America. She is part of English theatrical royalty."

On Tuesday 21st May, Phoebe Fox plays the title role in ANNA, a new play created by playwright Ella Hickson with sound designers and composers Ben and Max Ringham, opening at the National's Dorfman. Natalie Abrahami directs a cast that also includes Paul Bazely and Diana Quick in a thriller which uses individual audio headsets to give the audience intimate access to events as they unfold over one evening.

On Wednesday 22nd May, Ellen McDougall (artistic director of London's Gate Theatre) direct a new production of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town to open the summer season at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. The cast includes Pandora Colin, Tom Edden, Laura Rogers and Nicola Sloane.

Also on Wednesday, The Lehman Trilogy transfers from its sell-out runs at the National and in New York to the West End's Piccadilly with its original cast Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles reprising their performances in the title roles of the brothers who founded the finance firm, in Sam Mendes's production. (Dominik Tiefenthaler will replace Miles from August 5).

On Thursday 23rd May, Stratford East Theatre Royal present a new production of August Wilson's King Hedley II, originally premiered on Broadway in 2001, with a cast led by Lenny Henry in a play that's described as "a quest for redemption for one man and a whole community." It is directed by artistic director Nadia Fall.

Also on Thursday, Glen Walford directs Ian Redford, Marlene Sidaway and Kevin Tomlinson in Tom Glover's Beneath the Blue Rinse, opening at the Park Theatre. As Glover comments, "I hate little old ladies - the ones you see in dramas who are pottering, harmless cardigan-wearing biddies. I wanted to write a piece which challenged that cliché and packed a punch demonstrating that age is no barrier to radicalism and relevance."

Top shows of the weeks

Musicals

Rip it Up
Garrick Theatre

Last chance to see a jukebox celebration of 60s pop hits, with a cast featuring ex-Olympic gymnast and 2012 Strictly Come Dancing winner Louis Smith, McFly band member and winner of the 2011 series Harry Judd, Diversity member and Strictly Christmas Speical winner Aston Merrygold, and The Wanted singer and 2015 Strictly champion Jay McGuinness, the latter of whom is set to return to the West End as star of Big at the Dominion. It closes on June 2nd.

Fiddler on the Roof
Playhouse Theatre

This forever-great Broadway musical from 1964, an eternally relevant story of displacement and family, has returned to the West End in a new production that transferred from the Menier Chocolate Factory to a specially reconfigured Playhouse Theatre. Read our five-star review for LondonTheatre.co.uk here.

Mamma Mia!
Novello Theatre

Last month Mamma Mia! celebrated the 20th anniversary of its West End opening. This week I'll be in Skiathos, where some of the location shooting for the hit film version took place. I never tire of the show.

Plays

Orpheus Descending
Menier Chocolate Factory

It may be rarely seen, but this Tennessee Williams play (last seen in London at the Donmar nearly twenty years ago) packs a powerful punch. As I put it in my review for LondonTheatre.co.uk,"The play is an alternately bleak portrait of the commodification of human desire in their relationships with each other and a rollercoaster ride towards the possibility of redemption in love. It's weird and overwrought at times, but it is also rather brilliant - Williams, as ever, captures the attention with his deep embodying of the world they are trapped in, with the poetic intensity of the central pairing matched by a beautifully painted canvas of finely-etched supporting characters."

The Last Temptation of Boris Johnson
Park Theatre

Hardly a day goes by without the shameless self-publicist Boris Johnson making the headlines, and now he's made it into the title character of a fast and funny new comedy at the Park. As I put it in my review for LondonTheatre.co.uk, "Journalist turned playwright Jonathan Maitland is more even-handed than I'd be in portraying him not just as the familiar buffoonish figure of fun but also a person who our collective failure to take more seriously may yet see him governing our country." And, ominously, current polls of Tory voters do indeed put him as the frontrunner to take over the party leadership from Theresa May. Laugh now, because we may not be laughing so easily soon.

Emilia
Vaudeville Theatre

Last chance to see Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's play, transferred from the Globe, that I described in my review for LondonTheatre.co.uk as "a vibrant history play about one of Shakespeare's contemporaries Emilia Bassano Lanier, who may have been one of his muses - and, it is suggested here, a poet that Shakespeare named a character in his play Othello after and even may have borrowed lines from."