Opening: Top Girls, Parade, BlueBirds & Potted Potter

Amongst the major London openings, in the West End and further afield, this week are:
OPENING TUESDAY, 16 August 2011 (previews from 5 August), Max Stafford-Clark’s revival of Top Girls, Caryl Churchill’s seminal play about feminism in the 1980s, transfers from Chichester Festival to Trafalgar Studios 1 with a cast including Suranne Jones and Catherine McCormack.

ALSO ON TUESDAY (previews from 10 August), Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Tony Award-winning musical Parade, examining race relations, class and prejudice in the American Deep South, is revived at Southwark Playhouse for a run to 17 September.

ALSO ON TUESDAY, The Two Most Perfect Things, a new musical celebration of the life and work of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, opens at Jermyn Street Theatre for a limited run to 21 August. Creators Adrian Fisher and Stuart Barham star alongside Charles Howell, Isabelle Roland and Margaret Preece.

OPENING WEDNESDAY, 17 August 2011, World War Two musical BlueBirds, centring on an ENSA entertainment troupe in the Blitz and featuring songs including “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, “ Every Time We Say Goodbye” and the inevitable “White Cliffs Of Dover”, opens at Victoria venue Above the Stag. Until 4 September.

OPENING FRIDAY, 19 August 2011 (preview 18 August), Potted Potter, Dan and Jeff’s whizz through all seven Harry Potter books, celebrates its fifth birthday with a run at the Garrick Theatre extended to 2 September.