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Theatre

The best plays of 2021: London's theatre highlights

By Holly O'Mahony on 20/12/2021

In a year that's seen theatres bravely programme what they can despite the looming threat of being forced to close at a moment's notice, there have been some remarkable, resourceful productions.

From superstar directors giving the classics a fresh spin to adaptations of novels delighting anew on stage, here are our top 10 London shows of 2021.


Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Eddie Redmayne 'The Emcee' and Jessie Buckley 'Sally Bowles'. Photo: Marc Brenner

Cabaret, The Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre ★★★★★

Director Rebecca Frecknall (Summer and Smoke, and plenty more at the Almeida Theatre) revives Joe Masteroff, John Kander and Fred Ebb’s 1966 musical Cabaret in an immersive production that invites its audience into the glitzy, sordid debauchery of Berlin’s Kit Kat Club. A starry cast comprising Eddie Redmayne, Jessie Buckley and Omari Douglas make it soar.

Read more ...
WHEN
Monday 15 November 2021 – Saturday 1 October 2022, Performances, 7:30pm; additional 2pm matinee
WHERE
Playhouse Theatre, Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5DE
Tori Burgess, Isobel McArthur, Hannah Jarrett-Scott, Christina Gordon, Meghan Tyler in Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of). Photo: Matt Crockett.

Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of), Criterion Theatre ★★★★★

Writer, director and actor Isobel McArthur delivers a thoroughly modern retelling of Jane Austen’s celebrated 1813 novel, complete with sparky storytelling, gutsy humour, feisty feminism and impassioned outbursts of karaoke.

Read more ...
WHEN
Tuesday 2 November 2021 – Sunday 17 April 2022, performances, 7:30pm; additional 3pm matinees on Thursdays and Saturdays
WHERE
Criterion Theatre, 218-223 Piccadilly, Piccadilly Circus, London W1V 9LB
Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare's Globe. Photo: Rebekah Murrell as Juliet. Credit: Marc Brenner

Romeo & Juliet, Shakespeare’s Globe ★★★★★

Trailblazing director Ola Ince delivered a contemporary take on Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe, marrying scenes with stats on a broad range of social justice issues.

Read more ...
WHEN
Saturday 26 June 2021 – Sunday 17 October 2021
WHERE
The Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, London SE1 9DT
The Tragedy of Macbeth. Saoirse Ronan and James McArdle. Credit: Marc Brenner

The Tragedy of Macbeth, Almeida Theatre ★★★★★

Celebrated director Yaël Farber returned to London with one of the most eagerly anticipated adaptations of the year: an elemental production of Macbeth, starring Saoirse Ronan and James McArdle as the ruthlessly ambitious couple.

Read more ...
WHEN
Saturday 2 October – Saturday 20 November 2021
WHERE
Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, Islington, London N1 1TA
Anything Goes, Barbican Theatre review. Photo: Samuel Edwards, Sutton Foster, Robert Lindsay. Credit: Tristram Kenton

Anything Goes, Barbican Theatre ★★★★★

Director-cum-choreographer Kathleen Marshall’s show-stopping revival of Anything Goes glided across the Atlantic to perk up the spirits of a London recovering from pandemic blues.

Read more ...
WHEN
Friday 23 July – Sunday 31 October 2021
WHERE
Barbican Theatre, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Best of Enemies, Young Vic theatre review. Photo: Wasi Daniju

Best of Enemies, Young Vic Theatre ★★★★★

Reviewer Natasha Sutton Williams says: 'James Graham’s Best of Enemies, currently showing at the Young Vic, is dexterous and perfectly balanced play on political debate. It's a play for our fractured times, and it just so happens to be set in 1968, the year when arch-conservative William F Buckley and razor-sharp liberal Gore Vidal went head to head live on television in the battle to embody America’s soul through their intellectualism, articulation and wit.'

Read more ...
WHEN
Friday 10 December 2021 – Saturday 22 January 2022, 7:30pm-10pm
WHERE
The Young Vic, 66 The Cut, Waterloo, London SE1 8LZ
Anoushka Lucas in After Life at National Theatre (c) Johan Persson

After Life, National Theatre ★★★★★

Writer Jack Thorne, director Jeremy Herrin and designer Bunny Christie joined forces to bring Hirokazu Kore-eda’s tender movie After Life to the National Theatre’s Dorfman stage. It was this moving production that reopened the theatre for the first time in six months following the winter lockdown.

Read more ...
WHEN
Wednesday 2 June – Saturday 7 August 2021
WHERE
National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1 9PX
and breathe... Almeida theatre review

and breathe... Almeida theatre ★★★★★

Reviewer Natasha Sutton Williams says: 'Writer Yomi Ṣode, Olivier award-winning director Miranda Cromwell and BBC/HBO’s Industry star David Jonsson tap into the universality of grief in and breathe…. The one-man show centres on Junior (Jonsson), a 23-year-old black British man who is deeply affected by the long-held secret of Big Mummy, a much-loved matriarch of his extended Nigerian family.'

Read more ...
WHEN
Wednesday 16 June – Saturday 10 July 2021
WHERE
Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, Islington, London N1 1TA
The Book of Dust, Bridge Theatre

The Book of Dust – La Belle Sauvage, Bridge Theatre ★★★★★

Theatre critic Lucy Brooks says: 'A fantasy Oxford, catastrophic floods and a menagerie of daemons come to the Bridge Theatre as Nicholas Hytner brings Philip Pullman's magic to the stage. La Belle Sauvage the play arrives more than a decade after Hytner enchanted audiences with his National Theatre production based on Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.'

Read more ...
WHEN
Thursday 2 December 2021 – Saturday 19 February 2022, 7:30pm-10pm
WHERE
Bridge Theatre, 3 Potters Fields Park, London SE1 2SG
Hymn at the Almeida. Picture: Adrian Lester. Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Hymn, Almeida Theatre online ★★★★★

Exquisitely written and emotionally charged: Lolita Chakrabarti’s Hymn at the Almeida Theatre, starring Adrian Lester and Danny Sapani, was the online theatre highlight of the long winter lockdown. A creative team led by director Blanche McIntyre (The Writer, A Winter's Tale) successfully reimagined the show for the screen and a virtual audience, but it did, thankfully, receive a subsequent in-person run at the theatre over the summer.

Read more ...
WHEN
Wednesday 3 – Tuesday 9 March 2021; available to stream on demand for 48 hours after booking
WHERE
Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, Islington, London N1 1TA

A HIGHLY COMMENDED 'ONE TO WATCH'…

Operation Mincemeat, Southwark Playhouse <span class="star-block"><span class="star">&#9733;&#9733;&#9733;&#9733;</span>&#9733;</span>

Operation Mincemeat, Southwark Playhouse ★★★★★

SpitLip's musical comedy Operation Mincemeat first had London audiences guffawing in 2019, but the company – a collaboration between Fringe favourites Kill the Beast and composer Felix Hagan – used the pandemic to re-write the show into something sharper, tighter and even funnier. Based on a real WWII operation that helped the Brits deceive Hitler and successfully invade Sicily, this smart, high-speed, song-filled remake is a wickedly entertaining riot. Catch it while you can at Southwark Playhouse next year.

Read more ...
WHEN
Returning Friday 14 January - Saturday 19 February 2022
WHERE
Southwark Playhouse, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD

BEST REVIVAL...

Joe Armstrong and Louise Brealey: Constellations UK tour

Constellations, Vaudeville Theatre ★★★★★

While aesthetically a carbon copy of the 2012 original, 2021's revival of Nick Payne's celebrated two-hander Constellations broke free from its former casting restrictions, offering audiences the chance to see one of four alternating duos – of differing ages, ethnicities and sexualities – play the focal couple.


Peter Capaldi (Doctor Who) and Zoë Wannamaker (Harry Potter, My Family); Omari Douglas (It’s a Sin) and Russell Tovey (Being Human, Years & Years); Anna Maxwell Martin (Line of Duty) and Chris O’Dowd (Bridesmaids); and Shelia Atim (Les Blancs, Twelfth Night) and Ivanno Jeremiah (Humans) each lent slightly different eccentricities to the pair – a clever reminder of the universality of the story.

Read more ...
WHEN
18 Jun 2021 – 12 Sep 2021, Performances times vary, run time 70 mins
WHERE
Vaudeville Theatre
404 Strand, London, WC2R 0NH
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