Opening: NT Guvnors, Open Air Flies, Pygmalion
Amongst the major London openings, in the West End and further afield, this week are:
Titled One Man, Two Guvnors, Bean’s version transports the action to London’s East End, and runs in rep in the NT Lyttelton until 26 July.
ALSO ON TUESDAY (previews from 19 May), the 2009 sell-out production of Kafka’s Monkey, adapted by Colin Teevan and starring Olivier Award winner Kathryn Hunter, returns to the Young Vic following a world tour, continuing until 11 June.
OPENING WEDNESDAY, 25 May 2011 (previews from 19 May), a new staging of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, marking the Nobel prize-winning author’s centenary, opens the new season at the Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park.
The production, which reunites the creative team behind last year’s production of The Crucible, promises to rediscover the story in the “unparalleled atmosphere of theatre in the open air” and runs until 18 June 2011.
ALSO ON WEDNESDAY (previews from 12 May), the Chichester Festival Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw’s classic Pygmalion, starring Rupert Everett as Professor Henry Higgins alongside Kara Tointon, Diana Rigg and Peter Eyre, transfers to the West End’s Garrick Theatre.
OPENING THURSDAY, 26 May 2011 (previews from 21 May), Jeremy Herrin directs Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare’s Globe, with a cast featuring Eve Best and Charles Edwards as warring lovers Beatrice and Benedick. Running as part of the venue’s The Word is God season, it continues in rep until 1 October.
OPENING FRIDAY, 27 May 2011 (previews from 24 May), following their acclaimed productions of Les Enfants du Paradis and The Living Unknown Soldier, simple8 transports The Four Stages of Cruelty – a story of wanton cruelty “as pertinent and as visceral as when Hogarth first scratched it” – to the Arcola stage. Until 24 June.
