July on the London Stage: Rachel Zegler in Evita, Orfeh in Burlesque and More

Temperatures are rising, and so is the energy across London theater this month. The lineup includes a stage adaptation of a Cher film vehicle, a radical retake on a beloved British musical, a play about a wedding that doesn’t go quite as planned and a series of cabarets that tackle climate change and other urgent themes. It’s a varied and vibrant mix of what’s ahead.

COME TO THE CABARET
Janie Dee has won two Olivier Awards, but the protean actress is just as committed to the world around her. Her latest project, Janie Dee’s Beautiful World Cabarets, runs from July 5 to 13 at the Charing Cross Theatre. The show brings together performers united by a passion for storytelling, song and social engagement, from climate change to broader humanitarian concerns. “Spiritually, I don’t think I’ve ever felt stronger about anything,” Dee said of curating a lineup that includes Maureen Lipman, Olivia Williams, jazz singer Ian Shaw and many others. (She’ll headline a few shows herself and be in attendance throughout the run.) “Each show is gorgeous and fun. Cabaret has always been a way historically for the political situation to be expressed in entertainment.” Expect to laugh, be moved and leave inspired to make a difference.

OH WHAT A SHOW
Director Jamie Lloyd has proven his affinity for Andrew Lloyd Webber with the Olivier and Tony-winning revival of Sunset Boulevard, starring Nicole Scherzinger, which finishes its Broadway run this month. But as one door closes, another opens with this week’s bow at the Palladium of the same maverick showman’s scorching revival of Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita. The stars this time out are a high-octane Rachel Zegler as Eva Peron and the superb Diego Andres Rodriguez as Che, the show’s narrator (and conscience), who in this production comes to a devastating end.

Rodriguez played Artie and understudied Tony nominee Tom Francis in Sunset in New York and has now come to London for a staging that’s sure to be the talking point of the summer. “It’s been pretty cool to make my debut on Broadway and in the West End the same year,” the warmly engaging Rodriguez told Broadway.com during rehearsals for a bold reappraisal of Evita that finds Che, by the finish, like Joe in Sunset, stripped to his underwear and battered by events. A recent graduate of the University of Michigan, Rodriguez said he was “super-grateful as a younger actor that the [creatives] trust what I can bring to the table.” As for his leading lady, Rodriguez said Zegler “carries that image and that icon status of Eva and sings like I haven’t heard from anyone. I can’t wait for her to take over the West End.”

STARRY STARRY NIGHT
Beth Steel’s fifth play, Till the Stars Come Down, is also her first to reach the West End, following an acclaimed run at the National Theatre early in 2024. Set in the English Midlands, the story centers on a family whose lives shift when one of three sisters marries a Polish immigrant. The production is transferring across the Thames to the elegant Theatre Royal, Haymarket, where it opens July 9. “I feel like the luckiest person of the world,” Steel told Broadway.com, speaking from her play’s new auditorium. “I just ran to the mirror to sort out my mascara because I’m in tears”—of joy. The play has clearly tapped into the zeitgeist, with productions planned for Tokyo, Athens and Prague, among other destinations. “I’m overwhelmed, excited and nervous,” she said, pausing to credit her director, Bijan Sheibani. “What Bijan has done is great in its complete simplicity: this is one of the most incredible experiences of my life.”

SING OUT, DUBLIN
The stage version of the 2016 Irish movie Sing Street was set to transfer to Broadway in spring 2020 when, like the theater world as a whole, it was shut down by the pandemic. Now it returns, recast and ready to take flight at west London’s Lyric Hammersmith, opening July 18 and directed, as it was Stateside, by 2017 Tony winner Rebecca Taichman (Indecent). “There’s a lyric in one of our songs about ‘a second chance [at] life,’ which is truly what this feels like,” said an open-hearted Taichman, admitting to having felt “great sadness that the piece might not be able to survive all the storms that have come at it.” Instead, John Carney’s story of young love in 1980s Dublin returns with a new company packed with fresh talent, delivering a score by Carney and Gary Clark and a book by Enda Walsh (Once). Might this staging finally get the show to Broadway? “The hope would be that this production has a long life,” said Taichman. “Time will reveal that, as it always does.”

THE STRIP
The 2010 Steve Antin-directed film Burlesque has gained a cult following, and now it arrives on stage for a summer run at the Savoy, opening July 22. Orfeh and Jess Folley step into the roles made famous on screen by Cher and Christina Aguilera. Todrick Hall directs, choreographs, co-stars and has contributed to the score. “This is my summer in London, and I couldn’t have asked for anything else,” the delightful Orfeh told Broadway.com, marking her debut in a fully staged London show after previous concert appearances. “This is built to be a musical, even though it happened to be a film first.” The icing on the cake: Orfeh is playing the part originated by her real-life godmother, Cher. “I’ve known Cher since I was a child; she basically raised me in the entertainment business.” Synergy has rarely sounded so sweet.