September on the London Stage: Kerry Ellis Belts, Samuel D. Hunter Arrives, The Weir Returns

Great writing is the order of the day as London heads into an astoundingly busy theatrical autumn, with shows jockeying for position, and multiple openings sometimes landing on the same night. September’s bounty includes a first-time writer’s fresh take on a Euripides classic alongside two local debuts from American playwrights and the return of an intimate Irish drama set in a pub but possessed of resounding power. Oh, and some knockout singing, too. For more on all these offerings, read on.

It’s Better with a Band
London is always a brighter, brassier place when Kerry Ellis is singing, and the Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner and onetime star of Wicked, We Will Rock You and Anything Goes is appearing with the Fulltone Orchestra for one night only, September 1 at Cadogan Hall. She performed with the same 65-member troupe in Devizes in Wiltshire, west of London, in July 2024. “There’s always a sense of occasion,” an excited Ellis told Broadway.com of delivering her signature belt alongside a big band, “and the beauty is that it never gets old.” Audiences can expect time-tested musical classics along with songs associated with Streisand and Garland and evergreens like “Born Free.” What of new musicals for a performer who heads to Shanghai this fall to star in Lady M, about Lady Macbeth. “I’m in touch with various shows,” said Ellis, who performed If/Then in concert at the Savoy this past February and has been mentioned for the West End bow of Death Becomes Her. “Musicals take so long to put on, and these things change by the day as we know.” In the meantime, she’s a happy mother to two sons, ages nine and 11. Fame becomes her, and family does, too.

Author! Author!
You might not expect an American woman to pen a two-hander about such iconic English males as William Shakespeare and Christopher (Kit) Marlowe, but that’s what Liz Duffy Adams has done with Born with Teeth, opening September 2 at Wyndham’s Theatre under the direction of two-time Olivier Award winner Daniel Evans. Ncuti Gatwa, a.k.a TV’s fifteenth Doctor Who, joins Killing Eve’s Edward Bluemel in the cast. “I’m a playwright because I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 15,” the engaging Adams said. “The first play I ever saw was Twelfth Night in Beverly, Massachusetts.” This co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company is in a class of its own. “I’m just some random American,” said Adams, “and it’s like the mothership has called me home: I am physically unable to believe this is happening.” As for a play inspired “by how artists and their works survive under an authoritarian regime,” such topics, the author added, “feel nowadays all the more relevant.”

Only Connect
Conor McPherson’s Olivier-winning The Weir premiered in 1997 in London before heading to Broadway and making a star out of the Irish dramatist, now 54 and this theater season’s busiest playwright. He’s had two shows in a row at the Old Vic and is adapting The Hunger Games for its stage debut in November. The volume of activity “doesn’t seem to knock a feather out of [McPherson],” noted the eloquent Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, who is one of a five-person ensemble headed this time round by Brendan Gleeson. “As an artist, Conor is so brilliant in the true sense of the word: he can spin all these plates and hold all these worlds in his head.” As for the spooky, mood-shifting nature of the play, Vaughan-Lawlor said he finds the writing “mind-blowingly perceptive and wise and mysterious and cosmic: this is a timeless play about people coming together to find connection and vulnerability.” The surely bonding opening night is September 19 at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

Fresh Start
The National Theatre’s eagerly awaited production of Bacchae marks the first production under the stewardship of its new artistic director, Indhu Rubasingham, who is directing the Euripides classic. It also marks the playwriting debut of the 32-year-old actor Nima Taleghani, an alumnus of Jamie Lloyd’s productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Romeo and Juliet who has penned a new take on this title that will, he told Broadway.com, “merge the epic and the personal, the classical and the modern.” The marketing for the production shows cast member Clare Perkins with bloodstained lips, alongside the tag line “this ain’t no classic play bitches.” So how is the protean Taleghani feeling six weeks into rehearsal about landing such a high-profile writing gig? “I try not to think about it too much since I don’t want to feel like I’ve jumped some queue,” said the actor turned author, who had never previously seen or even read the play. “I’m just trying not to f*ck it up.”

Double Vision
Samuel D. Hunter makes his Broadway debut this fall with Little Bear Ridge Road, starring Laurie Metcalf, and in the meantime, the much-lauded author of The Whale and A Case for the Existence of God is marking his London debut with the premiere of his 2018 off-Broadway play, Clarkston. TV star Joe Locke (Heartstopper) heads the cast and opening night is September 25 at the Trafalgar Theatre. “This feels like a dream; I’m waiting for the sky to fall down,” the warmly spoken Hunter told Broadway.com. “I’m 19 plays into my career, and to have the West End thing and the Broadway thing at once is amazing and overwhelming at the same time.” With specific regard to the three-character Clarkston, directed here by Jack Serio, Hunter called London “a nut I’ve wanted to crack for so many years”—The Whale was seen in the U.K. in 2018 only in Bath. The play’s themes of “an aging empire and what that conquest has actually given us” will, Hunter hopes, resonate with a British audience, and the author speaks glowingly of Locke: “Something about Joe’s sensibility fits the character of Jack like a glove; he’s perfect for the role.”