Eileen Atkins in The Sea
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Opening: Love, Vertical, Happy, Sea & Hall’s Rose

Amongst the major openings in London this week are:

OPENING TONIGHT, Monday 21 January 2008 (previews from 17 January), Let There Be Love, the latest play by actor-playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah who just completed his National Theatre “state of the nation” trilogy with Statement of Regret in November, receives its world premiere at north London’s Tricycle Theatre, where it has a limited season to 16 February (See News, 10 Oct 2007). Set against the music of Nat King Cole, the new piece revolves around a West Indian pensioner and his new, recently immigrated Polish cleaner. Joseph Marcell stars in the production directed by the author.

ALSO TONIGHT, the one-man show entitled An Audience with a Mafia arrives at the West End’s Apollo Theatre for three weeks to 16 February (See News, 6 Dec 2007). Narrated by “The Mercy Man”, a character based on an assassin employed by the mob, the piece charts the American mafia from its birth a century ago through prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, the building of Las Vegas and Frank Sinatra.

OPENING TUESDAY, 22 January 2008, Indira Varma and Anton Lesser star in the UK premiere of David Hare’s The Vertical Hour (See News, 29 Oct 2007), which runs at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs until 1 March 2008. Former war reporter Nadia Blye knows exactly what her stance is on Iraq – until she meets an equally opinionated and lethally charming man, her boyfriend's father, over a weekend in Shropshire. The play had its world premiere on Broadway in November 2006, in a production starring Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy and directed by Sam Mendes. The new Royal Court production is directed by Jeremy Herrin.

ALSO ON TUESDAY (previews from 17 January), real-life couple Julian Glover and Isla Blair play former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa in the premiere of Penny Gold’s new drama The President's Holiday, which runs at north London’s Hampstead Theatre until 16 February 2008 as the first in a series of five Russian-themed plays (See News, 13 Dec 2007).

OPENING WEDNESDAY, 23 January 2008 (previews from 16 January), Jonathan Kent directs the second offering in the inaugural in-house season at the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket, a revival of Edward Bond’s 1973 black comedy The Sea, which runs until 19 April (See News, 15 Oct 2007). In a small East Anglian seaside village in 1907, a wild storm sets off a series of events that changes the lives of all the residents.

Multiple Olivier Award winner Eileen Atkins (pictured) stars as town matron Mrs Rafi in a cast that also features Marcia Warren, Mariah Gale, Russell Tovey and - continuing at the Haymarket after the opening production of Restoration comedy The Country Wife, for which he has been Whatsonstage.com Award-nominated (click here to vote!) – David Haig.

OPENING THURSDAY, 24 January 2008 (previews from 16 January), Lucinda Coxon’s new play Happy Now? premieres at the National Theatre, running in rep in the NT Cottesloe. Olivia Williams is Kitty, who has a chance encounter at a conference hotel, which leaves her struggling to balance personal freedom with family life, fidelity and a testing job. Thea Sharrock directs a cast that also includes Anne Reid, Dominic Rowan and Stanley Townsend.

OPENING FRIDAY, 25 January 2008 (previews from 16 January), Sir Peter Hall’s new English Touring Theatre production of Chekhov’s 1899 classic Uncle Vanya inaugurates the newly completed Rose Theatre, Kingston, the director’s long-championed new £11 million theatre modelled on Elizabethan London’s Rose Theatre (See News, 8 Nov 2007). Neil Pearson and Nicholas Le Prevost star in the production, which in Kingson until 9 February before kicking off a regional tour.

- by Terri Paddock

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