What Play should you see first in London?
We have compiled this list to save you the trouble of working it out! It’s just our view – and everyone has one – based on our Reviewers’ thoughts. We will update the list regularly so new productions get on your radar and when original casts change that is factored in.
Plays which have been running for more than three years are not included – this is a list for new or relatively new productions running in London.
So go see them!
1. A View From The Bridge
At the centre of the maelstrom of human experience that whips up and around and in Jan Versweyveld’s spare set is the towering, mesmerising and faultless turn from Mark Strong. Lean, muscular, a volcano approaching breaking point, Strong’s extraordinary Eddie is a once-in-a-generation performance.
Read Our Review | Book Tickets
2. Taken at Midnight
This is a terrific piece of new writing; spare, engaging, brimming with interest and history. It does what all great plays about actual historical events do: takes you to the time and lets you experience that time through the souls of the characters who propel the narrative, but in a way that is modern, fresh and zinging with power.
Read Our Review | Buy Tickets – Last Week
3. Man and Superman
Front and centre, shouldering a Herculean workload of complicated, dense dialogue, is Ralph Fiennes in absolutely cracking form. He has unflagging energy and although he rattles the text at a remarkable speed, he gives full value to each word and makes clear, uncomplicated sense of every passage. He is phenomenal, like a bolt of electricity confined to the stage. Simon Godwin’s stunning production makes Shaw’s play, a philosophical tennis match of volleyed ideas and ideals, burst with wit, innovation and utter delight.
Read Our Review | Book Tickets
4. My Night With Reg
Some of the performances are deliberately bigger, determinedly more overtly comic, less confrontational than they were at the Donmar. This lessens the dramatic sense of the play in unsatisfactory ways, while ostensibly appealing, presumably, to the expected middle class audiences in the West End. Some of the acting remains first-rate and the inherent power of the writing, while diminished, is far from lost. Lewis Reeves, Richard Cant and Matt Bardock are even better than they were at the Donmar
Read Our Review | Book Tickets
5. Shakespeare in Love
It is difficult to recall, at least over the course of the last seven years, a commercial production of a new play which has opened directly in the West End and which is as funny, dramatic, enthralling and educational.
Read Our Review | Book Tickets
6. Farinelli and the King
It is a slight, but quite beautiful, play, perfectly suited to the intimate grandeur of the space, and quite intoxicating, so perfectly judged is everything about it. . The gifted Sam Crane takes on the acting burden of Farinelli , but when it comes time to sing, he is either joined onstage or replaced there by Purefoy, costumed precisely to match Crane. Purefoy has a strong, rich and agile counter-tenor. He is a delight to hear.
Read Our Review | Transferring To The West End Soon
7. The Ruling Class
James McAvoy is a true, blistering, white-hot star who lights up every moment he is on stage, whose smile and darting, impressive eyes can say whatever he wants them to say; utterly mercurial, hilarious and wild one moment, malevolent and disturbed in the next, then sad or insane or calculating or sexy – or all of those at once.
Read Our Review | SOLD OUT
8. Kill Me Now
Brad Fraser’s play, Kill Me Now, is an eye-opener. It approaches difficult, taboo even, topics with unerring candour. As the inaptly named Sturdy family face up to the overwhelming vicissitudes of life, with as much grace, tension, sympathy and anger as can be expected for a small family, each blow seems horrific but inevitable, and a workable solution to joint woes more impossible to fashion. But the love and humour which lacerates and laces them together permits a solution which is both tender and devastating.
Read Our Review | Book Tickets
9. Happy Days
Happy Days is not a happy play. It is Beckett at his most confronting, most understandable, relentlessly surreal and disturbing. Essentially a monologue, it is an endurance test for both actress and audience.
Read Our Review | Book Tickets
10. Di and Viv and Rose
Russell is the key to the trio, the ebullient, man-hungry, life-grabbing, and casually irritating Rose. Outhwaite is forthright and calming and when her world collapses, the pain is clear, bruising and sensitively conveyed. Her funeral oration in Act Two is especially good. Spiro imbues the most difficult character of the three with insight and understanding. Her final scene with Outhwaite is powerful indeed.
Read Our Review | Book Tickets – Last Week
