London Spotlight: May 2006

If you’re stopping by this column to find out what the month’s absolutely-must-see is, you’re about to learn. It’s the West End opening of Sunday in the Park With George at Wyndham’s. This is the transfer of the Menier Chocolate Factory’s celebrated south-of-the-Thames revival. The show is Stephen Sondheim’s and James Lapine’s enthralling treatise on the all-too-frequent disconnect between art and life.The first act, which is a perfect piece of writing, is perfectly directed by Sam Buntrock, who does an equally perfect job with the slightly less well-written second act. Daniel Evans repeats his fine job as the two Georges, and Jenna Russell takes over as the jokily-named Dot.

Once you’ve got the Sondheim under your belt, you may very well want to trot to Sadler’s Wells where impresario Ian Marshall Fisher has now located his Lost Musicals programs. (This is the enterprise that inspired Manhattan’s Encores! series.) The ebullient fellow is giving one of his soigné concert readings to Cole Porter’s Nymph Errant on May 7. This is the show in which Gertrude Lawrence sang “The Physician,” “Experiment” and “It’s Bad for Me” for the first time and Elisabeth Welch won kudos for debuting “Solomon.”

Elsewhere, Michael Frayn’s 1976 comedy, Donkey’s Years will be revived these many seasons after he’s added Noises Off, Clouds, Copenhagen and Democracy to his long list of intelligent, challenging, sometimes knee-slapping plays. At Trafalgar Studios 1, Nancy Meckler’s Shared Experience interpretation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre unfolds with its stark beauty. Maxim Gorky’s Enemies has been adapted by the ubiquitous David Hare for the Islington-headquartered Almeida. At the Kilburn-based Tricycle, where something provocatively political is always electrifying the air, The Field by J. B. Keane is revived.

New items at the National Theatre are down to one this go-round. It’s a play by J T Rogers called The Overwhelming, and it’ll be directed by Max Stafford-Clarke, a former artistic director at the Royal Court. Meanwhile, the Bard returns for the 2006 Globe season, under the stewardship of new artistic director Dominic Dromgoole. His first helming task is Coriolanus with Jonathan Cake. A second May opening is Titus Andronicus with Douglas Hodge, who recently strutted around a West End stage as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls.

Over at the Royal Court — where Christopher Shinn’s Dying City is having a run — they’re still making a big deal about the 50th anniversary of the theatrical earthquake caused by John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. If you want to hear a scrum of theater folks, including actors who’ve appeared in the play, analyze Osborne top to toe, hasten over to the Sloane Square site on May 7.

The Theatre Museum on the Covent Garden is hosting an exhibit called Unleashing Britain: 10 Years That Shaped the Nation 1055-1964. The establishment has also inaugurated a once-a-month cabaret series called Transatlantic Talent: Best of Both Worlds. On May 4, Holly Penfield, an American-born London performer, will appear with Ray Jessel, who was born in Cardiff but now lives in California. She goes for shocks, he goes for yuks.

Traveling not that far from the West End to the Richmond Theatre in Richmond, you have the opportunity to catch any number of productions. A musical based on Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom starts the month and is aimed at children. Adults are courted for the rest of the month when Patricia Routledge shares the stage with Roy Dotrice and Michael Pennington in Hugh Whitemore’s The Best of Friends. Then the Oxford Stage Company dramatizes John Milton’s Paradise Lost (in which Satan has the juicy part, of course), then Noel Coward’s bubbly and baubly Star Quality with Nicola McAuliffe, then the polymath Simon Callow in dear Noel’s Present Laughter. If you like your Coward saucy and sassy, McAuliffe and Callow are bound to oblige.