This week Lucy Prebble reunites with her Enron director Rupert Goold for The Effect, a play about love, brain chemistry and pharmaceutical research, which will be staged in a Headlong co-production at the National Theatre with a cast including Billie Piper and Tom Goodman-Hill.
The Globe’s all-male productions of Richard III and Twelfth Night, both starring Mark Rylance, as Richard and Olivia respectively, transfer from the wooden ‘o’ on the south bank to the Apollo Theatre in the West End. Nick Payne’s fractal two-hander, Constellations, starring Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins, also makes the leap to the West End, the latest Royal Court play to transfer to the Duke of York’s after Posh and Jumpy.
The current wave of Theatre Uncut plays will be performed this week at the Young Vic. There’s an international theme to this latest group of plays, with contributions from Neil LaBute and David Greig, as well as writers from Syria and Greece. There will be a live link up from London with some of the many performances around the world
This week’s Bush Theate Radar platforms include a discussion on new ways to develop plays on 12th November – with speakers including Sabrina Mahfouz and Jon Spooner – while Che Walker chairs a talk on theatre and community on the 15th.
At the Almeida, Richard Eyre directs The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, Nick Dear’s play about the life of the poet, Edward Thomas, is at the Almeida with Pip Carter (Auden to Matt Smith’s Isherwood in the BBC 4 adaptation of Christopher and His Kind) as Thomas. Anya Reiss’ Isle of Man update of Chekhov’s The Seagull opens at Southwark Playhouse – you can read more about this production in Catherine Love’s interview with Reiss here – and the Gate Theatre’s Aftermath season begins with an ambitious production of The Trojan Women starring Louise Brealey and (in a pre-recorded film sequence) Tamsin Greig and Roger Lloyd Pack.
A new stage version of Stanislaw Lem’s classic sci-fi novel Solaris is at the Courtyard Theatre and the latest Blast Off night of sci-fi shorts, curated by Jonathan Brittain, Lucy Jackson and Claire Turner, is at Soho Theatre on the 12th November.
Shaky Isles’ production of Stella Duffy’s play Ordinary Darkness is at the Hen and Chickens, the Tristan Bates Theatre present Nirjay Mahindru’s Golgotha, in a production directed by Iqbal Khan, and Mehmet Ergen directs a cast including David Bamber in the Arcola production of The Sweet Smell of Success, a musical version of the 1957 film noir.
The Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond presents the London premiere of Ibsen’s early play Love’s Comedy – we spoke to actor and director David Antrobus about this production back in October, and why he thinks the play is only now being brought to the stage.
Noah Birksted-Breen’s production of One Hour Eighteen Minutes, a play based on real events which explores the underbelly of modern Russia, is at the New Diorama and The Sleepwalk Collective is in the Barbican Pit with the cinematic As the Flames Rose we Danced to the Sirens, the Sirens. Dom Coyote’s “apocalyptic fairy tale”, The Raun Tree is at Jackson’s Lane and there’s another chance to a share an Oh Fuck Moment at The Albany. Jasmin Vardimon presents the premiere of her new work, Freedom at Sadler’s Wells and Wayne McGregor and Random Dance perform Far at the ROH’s Linbury Studio.
