THE BEST OF LONDON THEATRE 2022


Stars making their West End debuts, award-winning collaborators reuniting and fresh takes on seasoned classics are among the best new plays coming to the London theatre scene in 2022. Here are the highlights announced so far…

PRIMA FACIE, HAROLD PINTER THEATRE

She restyled the image of a female assassin with her Emmy and Bafta award-winning portrayal of the off-beat, sexy, fashion-conscious Villanelle in hit BBC series Killing Eve. More recently, she tugged on our heartstrings and tear ducts playing a tough but bone-tired care worker in Jack Thorne’s pandemic drama, Help. Jodie Comer is one of the most exciting and versatile actors working today, so it’s thrilling news that the Liverpudlian is making her West End debut in Australian playwright Suzie Miller’s award-winning play, Prima Facie.

When: 15th April – 18th June 2022

THE HUMAN VOICE, HAROLD PINTER THEATRE

Six years after Ruth Wilson and Ivo van Hove collaborated on the latter’s critically-acclaimed, thoroughly modern revival of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler – a production which marked the Belgian director’s National Theatre debut and saw Wilson earn a Best Actress Olivier nomination for her performance in the leading role – the two are professionally reunited. Van Hove directs an adaptation of French writer Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice, which is running for just 31 performances at the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre this spring.

When: 17th March – 9th April 2022

THE SEAGULL, HAROLD PINTER THEATRE

Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke is swapping her dragons for a seagull as she makes her West End debut in a fresh take on Chekhov. Clarke will play Nina, the ambitious ingenue at the heart of 1896 play, The Seagull.

The show is the second production in the delayed three-play West End residency from the Jamie Lloyd Company, which is making its mark placing famous actors in bold re-interpretations of classic plays.

When: 29th June – 10th September 2022

THE GLASS MENAGERIE, DUKE OF YORK’S THEATRE

Six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams (Nocturnal Animals, Sharp Objects) makes her West End debut in a new production of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, directed by Jeremy Herrin (Wolf Hall trilogy, People, Places and Things) and designed by Vicki Mortimer (Follies, Wise Children). The production is the first from new theatre company Second Half Productions, which was launched in autumn 2021 by Herrin with his fellow former leader of Headlong Theatre (Angels in America, ENRON), Alan Stacey, and philanthropic supporter of theatre, Rob O’Rahilly. Paul Hilton (The Inheritance) and Tom Glynn-Carney (The Ferryman) also star, along with newcomers Lizzie Annis and Victor Alli.

When: 23rd May – 28th August 2022

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