London Datebook: A Basement Ode to Barbra, Imelda Staunton Returns as Mama Rose & More March Picks

The play for once really is the thing in a London month that puts musicals on the back burner for a change—well, that is until Gypsy begins previews—and lets the plays take center stage instead. The talent involved includes Americans and Brits, Tony winners and nominees, and well-known TV names. For more on an ever-eclectic London line-up, read on.

MARCH 9-15
Teale Time: Those who saw it are unlikely to forget the 1997 Broadway revival of A Doll’s House that won Tony Awards for stars Janet McTeer and Owen Teale. The strapping Teale is back on the London stage starting March 12 in a rare sighting of the Jacobean tragedy, The Broken Heart, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe. Caroline Steinbeis directs a cast that includes Amy Morgan from TV’s Mr. Selfridge.

ALSO: The 2015 Olivier Award nominees are announced March 9, so check back to see if your favorite play or player has made the cut. Di and Viv and Rose plays its final performance at the Vaudeville Theatre March 14, with a cast including Samantha Spiro and Jenna Russell; the Southwark Playhouse revival of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, with Olivia Poulet, also concludes its run March 14.

MARCH 16-22
Funny Guy: Ugly Betty star and New York theater regular Michael Urie brings his hugely acclaimed solo performance in the Jonathan Tolins play Buyer & Cellar to the Menier Chocolate Factory, opening March 19. The play, revolving around its hero’s singular obsession with Barbra Streisand, is coming to the capital where Tolins’s earlier The Twilight of the Golds was seen in 1997 with none other than Streisand’s son, Jason Gould, heading the cast.

ALSO: Broadway veteran Zoe Wanamaker opens March 16 at the Hampstead Theatre in Stevie, playing the English poet Stevie Smith in a revival of the 1977 Hugh Whitemore play that also stars Chris Larkin, one of the two actor-sons of the great Maggie Smith. Mel Brooks takes to the Prince of Wales Theatre for a one-night-only solo show on March 22—a rare opportunity to see the legendary funnyman, now 88, in action.

MARCH 23-29
Learning the Rules: Marianne Elliott seems to strike gold with every production she directs at the National Theatre, as War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time have proven. So all eyes will be on her latest venture, Rules for Living by Sam Holcroft, opening March 24 in the Dorfman auditorium. Tony nominee Stephen Mangan (The Norman Conquests) heads the cast.

ALSO: Staying with the National, Nicholas Hytner looks back on his distinguished tenure running this address in an early-evening Q&A on March 27, within days of handing over the artistic directorship of the building to Rufus Norris. Mary Chase’s perennial comic favorite Harvey opens at the Haymarket on March 23 with James Dreyfus (The Producers) playing the bunny-loving Elwood P. Dowd.

MARCH 30–APRIL 5
Phys(ics) Ed: The so-called “father of the atomic bomb,” the American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, gives his name to Tom Morton-Smith’s acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company play, Oppenheimer, transferring from Stratford-upon-Avon for a London run that opens March 31 at the Vaudeville and with the wonderful John Heffernan in the title role. Angus Jackson, whose credits include the Frank Langella King Lear on both sides of the Atlantic, directs.

ALSO: More than 40 years after Angela Lansbury played Momma Rose in London, Gypsy finally gets another West End revival, with performances starting March 28 at the Savoy Theatre. Imelda Staunton repeats her triumphant Chichester Festival take on this most legendary of stage mothers, with Sherlock’s Lara Pulver in the title role and Peter Davison joining the cast to play Herbie.