The best theatre shows in London for 2023 and 2024 not to miss

An RSC stage version of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel ‘Hamnet’ was clearly always going to end up in the West End, and as it happens Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation has announced that it’s playing a limited 14-week West End run before its long-sold-out Stratford-upon-Avon run has even started.

Screen stars Lily James and Kristin Scott-Thomas join forces to star in Penelope Skinner’s ‘flipped’ revenge tragedy about a reclusive actress’s attempt to make a comeback.

It’s been a very long time since Kenneth Branagh last graced our stages with his eponymous company’s 2016 rep season.But finally he’s back, and really, it’s like he’s never been away. A self-directed production of Shakespeare’s ‘Lear’ is classic Branagh, then: certain of his status as a star draw, confident in his ability to both take on one of the most demanding roles in the Western canon and serve as its director, and in true Sir Ken fashion, being a bit on the young side for the role.

The National Theatre hasn't hosted a major musical in some time, with the troubled Christmas show ‘Hex’ being something of a pandemic-era stopgap. ‘The Witches’, though, is much more serious stuff, being a major adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved dark kids’ novel about a young boy who lives with his grandmother and stumbles across a conspiracy of villainous witches hoping to turn the world’s children into mice. 

A real treat here, as the great playwright Alice Birch returns to the National Theatre for her biggest show to date. Harriet Walter heads up the cast of Birch’s adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s classic tragedy about the eponymous domineering matriarch, who imposes a stifling eight years mourning period upon her five oppressed daughters after the death of her second husband.

A second chance to catch the RSC’s glorious Studio Ghibli adaptation.

Probably the most brilliant American playwright of her generation, every Annie Baker play is a joy. We know relatively little about ‘Infinite Life’ at this stage, but apparently it’s a ‘dreamlike’ play about five women on chaise longues, that constitutes ‘a surprisingly funny inquiry into the complexity of suffering, and what it means to desire in a body that’s failing you.’

Director Jamie Lloyd’s recent journeys through virtually the entire Pinter canon have meant that after a glut of the revivals for the great playwright, there’s not been much in the last few years bar a couple of cheeky productions of ‘The Dumb Waiter’. Maybe that’s changing now, however, as the Young Vic revives ‘The Homecoming’ as its de facto Christmas show.

Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis star in a glossy revival for David Ireland’s outrageously provocative satire. 

The West End has played host to a Harry Potter sequel for years now – so why not a ‘Stranger Things’ prequel, eh?

David Tennant has played numerous villains on screen, but has steered relatively clear of them on stage, with his sundry Shakespeare credits not including any of the Bard’s many juicy villain roles… until now. 

US writer Lucas Hnath’s play ‘Dana H.’ was rapturously received by critics, but essentially too weird for mainstream Broadway audiences: it was forced to cut its 2021 run short. The Royal Court, however, would seem to be the perfect London home for the experimental show.

Matt Smith did a couple of West End runs in his pre-Doctor Who twenties, but since finding fame the actor has largely stuck to hipster stage projects: the Almeida’s ‘American Psycho’ musical, a surreal Anthony Nielson comedy at the Royal Court, and a short run with Duncan Macmillan’s modern indie classic ‘Lungs’ at the Old Vic.

However, he’s certainly found a way to make his first trip to Theatreland in 15 years appropriately cool. This isn’t any hoary old revival of Henrik Ibsen’s classic drama ‘An Enemy of the People’. It’s the English-language premiere of German director Thomas Ostermeier’s globally renowned production, which is noted for its townhall debate-style section in which the audience is invited to debate the ethics of the play with its protagonist, Dr Stockmann (Smith). 

If you’re unfamiliar, ‘An Enemy of the People’ is a truly great play, that sees local scientist Stockmann make a discovery about the waters of his hometown’s lucrative spa that brings him into devastating conflict with lifelong friends and acquaintances who don’t want to do the right thing and risk their livelihoods: a potent allegory for our current climate crisis.

Tickets go on general sale Thursday September 21.

And just like that, Sarah Jessica Parker will make her West End debut next year opposite husband Matthew Broderick in a revival of Neil Simon’s 1968 comedy ‘Plaza Suite’.

Last time Sarah Snook performed on the London stage was back in 2016, in the Old Vic’s revival of Ibsen’s ‘The Master Builder’. A lot has happened in the intervening seven years: the Australian actor has very much gone from ‘rising star’ to ‘star’, thanks to her unforgettable turn as Shiv Roy in HBO’s smash satire ‘Succession’. Now she’s returning to the West End, and frankly nothing says ‘I'm a big deal now’ like being able to stage a one-woman show in a 900-seat theatre in which you play all the roles.

The Scottish Play is always a popular choice, with 2023 revivals at the Globe and Donmar and now this: a Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma starring production directed by Simon Godwinthat will tour warehouses in Liverpool, Edinburgh, London and Washington DC.

Surely the most famous concert(s) in history and with a ready-made soundtrack of ’80s stadium rock hits, a musical adaptation of Bob Geldof’s 1985 Live Aid concerts does seem like a screechingly logical idea as soon as you think about it. 

As a playwright, Jez Butterworth has become an almost legendary figure – with his transcendent 2009 play ‘Jerusalem’ he kind of left the mortal world behind, and is now a vaguely mysterious figure who emerges from seclusion every few years to drop a new play on the world. We don’t know a huge amount about his latest, ‘The Hills of California’, but it’s set in Blackpool during the sweltering summer of ’76, as the Webb sisters return to the family guesthouse to see their dying mother one last time.

Despite the lengthy West End run for the cheap and cheerful revue ‘Thriller’, it’s taken a very long time for an official Michael Jackson musical to make its way to the stage…

Although it may seem a bit on the nose for Brian Cox to make his long-awaited stage return playing the ailing patriarch of an American family, this is absolutely not ‘Succession’. Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ is at the very least a strong contender for the greatest American play of all time, a three-hour-plus semi-autobiographical epic that O’Neill refused to share publicly in his own lifetime, and won him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1957.

Stage-loving Studio Ghibli fans are being treated like never before at the moment: hot on the heels of the RSC’s hugely acclaimed ‘My Neighbour Totoro’, here comes this spectacular Japanese production of Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 masterpiece ‘Spirited Away’. 

Elton John’s musical adaptation of the fabulous Meryl Street and Anne Hathaway-starring fashion industry satire relaunches in London in revamped form.