The State of the London Stage: What's Coming in June 2021

And they're off! London theatres have been open for several weeks now, and the reviews are once again coming hard and fast as a glance at this very site will confirm. Quick off the mark have been the smaller-sized shows: solo plays like Cruise or Harm or a three-person West End entry like Amy Berryman's Walden (though that title was beset by pre-opening dramas of its own, more of which below). But as the big musicals prepare their own re-emergence on to an eclectic landscape staked out already by the producer Sonia Friedman's RE:EMERGE season (of which Walden is the first of three shows to open), excitement is in the air. The question now remains as to who, precisely, the audience is likely to be for these shows, given the difficulty for many in travelling to the UK: playgoers from overseas may be disinclined to attempt a theatre tour if they are going to have to spend most of their time here in quarantine.

But the rules, and the protocol to go alongside them, are changing hard and fast, and theatres are being correspondingly elastic. One notes, for instance, the Orange Tree in Richmond adding more seats to each production as it moves across the summer, and comfortable though it may be to enter the auditorium only to find a taped-off seat next to you (or no seat at all), such conditions are clearly not viable longterm, however briefly they may approximate the theatrical equivalent of flying first-class: legroom! Place to put a drink! Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella (its creatives pictured above) is due to start previews June 25, which falls mere days after the magical June 21 date on which this country returns to a supposed normalcy. But that was before the Indian variant of the coronavirus threw a potential spanner in the works, since which time the need for theatre-makers to think on their feet has only redoubled. For that reason, amongst many others, these artists deserve our applause as audience and actors come together once more to share a space.

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Online and On Form

There's been some talk that the return of live performance will put an end to the plethora of online entertainment that has kept performances going for the last 15 months or so. In fact, it would appear that online is here to stay, both as a complementary prospect to being inside an actual playhouse (many shows are allowing livestreamed options to seeing a show in person, so that they can attend from the safety of their homes) or as a complete experience in itself.

A film-theatre hybrid known as The New Group Offstage has made waves in New York with a starry version of Waiting for Godot, with Ethan Hawke heading the cast, and Jessie Cave and Tony winner Robert Lindsay are amongst the names populating the online world this month: Cave has her solo show Sunrise available to view via Soho Theatre On Demand through June 8, whilst Lindsay is narrating a fresh take on the redoubtable Three Musketeers tale, with a cast including Wicked alumna Dianne Pilkington and streaming 15-20 June. More than ever, it seems as if the way we receive entertainment will continue to diversify: out of the depredations of the pandemic has come a creative impulse beyond compare.

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Crowded Out

As proof that audiences can make up in enthusiasm what they may lack in numbers, consider the welcome noise made by the thinned ranks amongst whom I watched a recent weekend matinee of the lively Sean Holmes production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, at Shakespeare's Globe. Much has been made of this of all audience-intensive theatrical destinations playing to a quarter or so of its usual capacity, the 900-strong cluster of Bardolators in the yard replaced by spectators grouped here and there around tables in seats that are nonetheless priced at an astonishingly low 5 pounds.

I have to say that the giddy clamour accompanying the curtain call seemed to emanate from a far greater number of people than were in fact present, the diminished ranks compensated for by real lung power. Audiences elsewhere have been asked to be resilient in ways that once wouldn't have been thought possible when a preview of Walden was cancelled at the last minute in due obeisance to COVID-era protocol. That incident, happily, has turned out (so far anyway) to be a blip on the screen, all the while reminding us that adaptability is the name of the game.The show, it seems, really will go on, unless by absolute necessity it cannot.

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Ageless Talent

Could it be due to the fact that Alan Ayckbourn has long based himself away from London that this venerable writer, now 82, tends to be left out of the roll call of the greatest-living senior English scribes even as the London-centred Caryl Churchill, Tom Stoppard, and Alan Bennett jockey for position. All the more reason to herald the start of performances June 4 (through July 3) of The Girl Next Door, which marks - can one even believe it? - this protean talent's 85th play.

Directed by the author, whose The Norman Conquests was revived not that long ago in glory both at the Old Vic and on Broadway, the show will be presented with two casts, so as to ensure it is COVID-secure: the new engagement of The Mousetrap on the West End has done much the same. The venue, the Stephen Joseph Theatre in the Yorkshire coastal town of Scarborough, was for many years run by Ayckbourn, before he passed it on to Paul Robinson, who is artistic director now. But playgoers looking for a British staycation might want to keep this title in mind in the hope that Sir Alan keeps racking up the numbers, in art and in life.

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What to See and When

Ok, you've got your vaccine/s and are craving live performance again, so what can you see during the summer and when? And what is on hold or - dare one say it - gone for good? Check out our listings below, to be amended and updated every month to keep pace with events.

THE FAMILIAR

*The Mousetrap, ongoing and this time with a starry cast when, for decades, the play itself has been the star: there are in fact two casts in case one is beset by COVID

*Abba Mania, (through 6 June), get out the Spandex and the sequins

*Death Drop, ongoing and not to be confused with the long-running Ira Levin-scripted Broadway mainstay, Deathtrap, of a bygone vintage: the Tuck Island team have returned

*Love Letters, ongoing: everyone's favourite two-hander is back, socially distanced desks intact

*Everybody's Talking About Jamie, ongoing: the sleeper hit musical is back even as the film version gets ready itself to land courtesy Apple in due course

*Les Miserables the Staged Concert, ongoing: stars aplenty keep this 1985 long-runner atop the British musical behemoth tree

*Magic Mike Live, ongoing: the boys are back (and the prosecco, too!)

*Six the Musical, ongoing: the little show that could keeps on chugging

*Amelie the Musical, ongoing: West End upgrade for successful fringe airing of Broadway flop

*The Play That Goes Wrong, from 18 June: even our upside-down times can't dent enthusiasm for this crazy-pants play

*Hairspray, from June 21: Michael Ball back in first of his Olivier-winning roles

*Heathers, from 21 June: return visit to its erstwhile West End home for adaptation of 1989 film

*Tina the Musical, from 24 June: Anna Mae Bullock herself may be opting to step out of the spotlight but the show honouring her life and art continues

*Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, from 1 July: the best Joseph in my experience, Jac Yarrow, returns to the stage that made him a star

*The Prince of Egypt, from 1 July: a musical about (among other topics) a plague reopens in the immediate wake of a plague

*Pretty Woman, from 8 July: change of venue but presumably the same stylish clothes for this film-turned-stage fable

*The Book of Mormon, from 12 July: South Park-style satire more than ever should be balm for the soul

*Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, from 21 July: the play that feels like a musical is back where it began

*The Phantom of the Opera, from 21 July: a new look is promised for this recordbreaking long-runner (and, yes, I was at the 1986 opening night)

*Jersey Boys, from 28 July: Four Seasons and what looks to be nine theatrical lives for the unstoppable Frankie Valli juggernaut

*Back to the Future, from 20 August: Roger Bart makes his West End debut

*Mamma Mia! from 25 August: the mother of all ABBA-themed parties rocks on

*The Woman in Black, from 7 Sept: the shrieks continue into a new decade

*Matilda the Musical, from 16 Sept: why wait for the film when the show exists in all its glory

*& Juliet, from 24 Sept: Shakespeare given a top-40 spin

*Only Fools and Horses, from 1 Oct: reopening in time to mark 40 years of the vaunted TV sitcom that gave the stage show life

THE FRESH

*Cruise, (through 13 June): Jack Holden's self-penned solo play can be seen live having been available during April as a very lively livestream

*RE:EMERGE, through 31 July, a season of new plays produced by Sonia Friedman and featuring an enticing array of stars including Gemma Arterton, Gabrielle Brooks, and The Crown's own Princess Diana, Emma Corrin

*Cinderella, from 25 June, Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest in which the protean Emerald Fennell, the musical's newly Oscar-lauded book writer, diversifies her talent yet again

*Be More Chill, from 30 June, "geek chic" phenomenon gets a West End perch

*Frozen the Musical, from 27 August, whereby Drury Lane will be thawed to the stage savvy of Disney

*The Ocean at the End of the Lane, from October: National Theatre hit gets a West End perch -- the next Curious Incident?

PLUS seasons aborning at such diverse addresses as the National Theatre, Almeida, Shakespeare's Globe, Hampstead, Bridge, Soho, and the Kiln, while the likes of the Donmar, Print Room, and Menier Chocolate Factory, amongst others, are sure to weigh in soon

THE FORGOTTEN (but not by us!)

*Manor: Moira Buffini's thriller was amongst the especially exciting-sounding entries that was stopped dead in its track by the pandemic and we'll have to await the announcement of The National Theatre's forthcoming season to see if it has made back on to the schedule. (The fact that is says "postponed" online and not cancelled gives one hope.) In the meantime, posters for the play remain visible here and there on the tube network, and one can only salivate at the onstage pairing of two wonderful actors, Nancy Carroll and Ben Daniels, the second of whom has had especially bad luck of late viz. the coronavirus: a second NT show to which he was attached, a revival of The Normal Heart, went on to be scuppered (for now anyway) by the contagion.

*4000 Miles: Amy Herzog's Pulitzer-nominated play, a success Off Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater, sold out its planned London premiere last year at the Old Vic on the back of the British stage debut of Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet, who was due to star alongside a living theatrical legend in Dame Eileen Atkins. Word has it that the venture is very much active and could still well land at the historic venue in the latter half of 2022, which only makes next year loom that much brighter.

Main image c. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella

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