Top 5 shows to celebrate Pride in London

Queer Theatre

National Theatre, 6 to 10 July

In partnership with Pride in London, the National Theatre will stage rehearsed readings of five seminal queer plays. these include Sarah Daniel's Neaptide, Tarell Alvin McCraney's Wig Out, Peter Gill's Certain Young Men. Martin Sherman's Bent and Mae West's The Drag. Each one boasts a stellar cast, too, including the likes of Adrian Scarborough, Tom Edden, Niamh Cusack, Jonjo O'Neill and Jessica Raine. It's been a long time since some of these plays were seen on stage, so this is a great opportunity not to be missed.

Rotterdam

Arts Theatre, until 15 July

Jon Brittain's Rotterdam is a heart-warming play about sexuality and identity. It's about one character who is a lesbian, and her girlfriend who actually identifies as male. In our five-star review of the production, we called it a "very important story" and by the story's end "in many ways, love wins". It started out at Theatre503 in 2015, and via a run off-Broadway, it now runs at the Arts.

Click here to read our five-star review of Rotterdam

Hir

Bush Theatre, until 22 July

Hir (pronounced 'here') is Taylor Mac's exploration of gender and its relationship with language. It's about an average American family as their son Isaac (Arthur Darvill) returns home from war, and his sister Maxine begins transitioning to Max. Max decides to be referred to by the pronouns 'ze' rather than 'she' and 'hir' instead or 'her' (Mac prefers the pronoun 'judy').

Click here to read our interview with Taylor Mac

Yank

Charing Cross Theatre, 3 July to 19 August

This World War II play follows Midwestern kid Stu who is drafted for the war in 1943. To make his already tough basic training all the more complicated, he falls for his fellow soldier Mitch. The musical, which has music and lyrics by brothers Joseph and David Zellnik, gets its name from a weekly magazine published by the military during the war which, in the musical, Stu becomes a photographer for.

Click here to read more about Yank

Queers

Old Vic, 28 to 31 July

Join Mark Gatiss as he curates an evening of monologues based on some of the most poignant moments of gay male history over the last 100 years. The pieces, which commemorate the 50th anniversary of the the Sexual Offences Act, are written by Matthew Baldwin, Jon Bradfield, Jackie Clune, Michael Dennis, Brian Fillis, Mark Gatiss, Gareth McLean and Keith Jarrett. In partnership with the BBC, the performances will be filmed and screened on BBC Four later this year. Casting is yet to be announced.