Opening: Cumming’s Car, Vanya, World, Katrina

Amongst the major London openings – in the West End and further afield – in this shortened Bank Holiday week are:
OPENING TONIGHT, Tuesday 1 September 2009, Union Theatre revives Cloud Nine, Caryl Churchill’s 1970s play about changing sexual behaviour, for a run to 26 September.

OPENING WEDNESDAY, 2 September 2009 (preview 1 September), Alan Cumming brings his cabaret show I Bought a Blue Car Today, which revolves around his application for US citizenship, to the West End’s Vaudeville Theatre for eight performances only (See News, 8 Jul 2009). It’s Cumming’s first musical performance in London since Sam Mendes’ 1998 Donmar Warehouse production of Cabaret, which famously launched his US career.

ALSO ON WEDNESDAY, Lee Hall’s award-winning play The Pitmen Painters touches down again at the National’s Lyttelton Theatre, for 24 performances in rep, before more touring.

ALSO ON WEDNESDAY (previews from 26 August), Sam Holcroft’s new four-hander Vanya, a stripped-down version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, premieres at west London’s Gate Theatre, directed by joint artistic director Natalie Abrahami. It runs until 26 September.

OPENING THURSDAY, 3 September 2009 (previews from 29 August), Trevor Griffiths’ new play, A New World, about the British revolutionary Thomas Paine, premieres at Shakespeare’s Globe, where it continues in rep until 9 October.

ALSO ON THURSDAY (previews from 1 September), George Bernard Shaw’s Too True to Be Good, written in 1932 after the last major economic collapse, receives a rare outing at the fringe Finborough Theatre, where its season continues until 26 September.

OPENING FRIDAY, 4 September 2009 (previews from 1 September), Jonathan Holme’s Katrina, composed of personal accounts of the hurricane that hit New Orleans in 2005, is performed in promenade at the Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf, for a run to 26 September.