Small Island National Theatre, 17th April to 10th August
Rufus Norris, artistic director of the National Theatre, could do with a big summer hit. He plumps for an adaptation, by Helen Edmundson, of Andrea Levy’s rousing epic family drama about the Windrush generation finding its feet in post-war Britain. Hope meets stubborn reality as a new day dawns in 1948. The play might echo the recent scandal over immigration bureaucracy but will also celebrate the novelist herself, who died in February and remains best known for this, her fourth, and multiple prize-winning, novel.
Rosmersholm Duke of York’s Theatre, London, 24th April to 20th July
Ibsen’s tragic love story of a widowed pastor and his young housekeeper is a complex and psychologically enthralling play, rarely seen. (Eric Porter and Peggy Ashcroft led an RSC revival in 1960; the National did it in 1987.) Duncan Macmillan, in a new adaptation, finds contemporary resonance in “a country on the brink.” Ian Rickson directs a fine cast: Tom Burke and Hayley Atwell, with Lucy Briers, Peter Wight and Olivier-award winner Giles Terera.
The Tiger Lillies: Devil’s Fairground The Stables, Milton Keynes, from 12th May, and on tour
Glorious, Brechtian punk cabaret The Tiger Lillies take a 30th anniversary tour from Milton Keynes to Bath, stopping off at Coventry, Cambridge, Birmingham, Durham, Brighton, Manchester, Leeds, Norwich and Taunton. Finding inspiration in Kurt Weill, George Grosz, Edgar Allan Poe and Aleister Crowley, the musical trio founded by Martyn Jacques, are not to be missed.
Rufus Norris, artistic director of the National Theatre, could do with a big summer hit. He plumps for an adaptation, by Helen Edmundson, of Andrea Levy’s rousing epic family drama about the Windrush generation finding its feet in post-war Britain. Hope meets stubborn reality as a new day dawns in 1948. The play might echo the recent scandal over immigration bureaucracy but will also celebrate the novelist herself, who died in February and remains best known for this, her fourth, and multiple prize-winning, novel.
Rosmersholm Duke of York’s Theatre, London, 24th April to 20th July
Ibsen’s tragic love story of a widowed pastor and his young housekeeper is a complex and psychologically enthralling play, rarely seen. (Eric Porter and Peggy Ashcroft led an RSC revival in 1960; the National did it in 1987.) Duncan Macmillan, in a new adaptation, finds contemporary resonance in “a country on the brink.” Ian Rickson directs a fine cast: Tom Burke and Hayley Atwell, with Lucy Briers, Peter Wight and Olivier-award winner Giles Terera.
The Tiger Lillies: Devil’s Fairground The Stables, Milton Keynes, from 12th May, and on tour
Glorious, Brechtian punk cabaret The Tiger Lillies take a 30th anniversary tour from Milton Keynes to Bath, stopping off at Coventry, Cambridge, Birmingham, Durham, Brighton, Manchester, Leeds, Norwich and Taunton. Finding inspiration in Kurt Weill, George Grosz, Edgar Allan Poe and Aleister Crowley, the musical trio founded by Martyn Jacques, are not to be missed.
