July on the London Stage: Ben Platt in Midnight at the Never Get, Arcadia Returns & More

It’s been heat wave time in London, but playhouses for the most part have been welcoming and cool. Whatever the weather, July on the London stage promises its usual bounty, from a revival of a grimly pioneering play to the transfer of a beloved 1990s classic as well as fresh sightings of Atticus Finch and J. Edgar Hoover: the latter in, wait for it, a musical. For more on these offerings and others, read on.

Bird Song
To Kill A Mockingbird is rarely long absent from the stage, and Bartlett Sher’s hit Broadway production is back on the West End once again, with Richard Coyle (Ink, Don Carlos) stepping into the role of the vaunted lawyer, Atticus Finch, previously played on the West End by Rafe Spall and Matthew Modine. The play has booked a summer run at Wyndham’s Theatre through September 12. “I feel like it’s probably more prescient and more necessary than ever to present this message to the world,” Coyle told Broadway.com in an interview, “and to show a positive male role model who’s striving for justice.” Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-winning novel spawned a legendary 1960 film starring Gregory Peck, but Coyle spoke eloquently of his need to make this widowed legal crusader his own: “There’s something profoundly important to me about this character. I feel very protective of Atticus and very involved in trying to tell his story; this play is a real privilege to do.”

Class Act
Carrie Cracknell’s Old Vic revival of Arcadia has been one of the defining pleasures of this theatrical year, and here it is afresh at the Duke of York’s Theatre, re-opening July 1 and boasting new cast members like Nikki Amuka-Bird and the wonderful Oliver Chris. On board once more is the remarkable Seamus Dillane as the tutor, Septimus Hodge, whose relationship with his teenage protégée, Thomasina Coverly (the Olivier-nominated Isis Hainsworth), drives the play. “I wanted to have another go at Tom Stoppard”—the play’s legendary author, who died last fall—“and wrap my mouth once again around those words,” said the charismatic actor, whose father, Stephen Dillane, won a 2000 Tony Award for The Real Thing on Broadway. “We looked at Arcadia a bit,” the young Dillane said of his dad, “but just from the point of view of what I was bringing to it. I’m very lucky to have him there [for reference], but he was aware that I’m a different person to him and with different feelings.” Best of all, Dillane continued, is the chance to live anew within the extraordinary landscape of a play that fully engages the heart alongside the head: “Among all the chaos theory and the science and the maths, there is love”—as there is from an audience towards this show.

Come From (Far) Away
A musical about J. Edgar Hoover, the one-time director of the FBI? Why not, said Bryan Batt, the American theater and TV stalwart (Jeffrey, Mad Men), who is fulfilling a lifelong dream by making his London stage debut in the world premiere of Here Comes J. Edgar!, opening July 16 at North London’s King’s Head Theatre. Batt has the title role, with Marc Elliott (Urinetown) as his co-star. “It’s hysterical and very timely, too,” the engaging performer told Broadway.com of this collaboration between Harry Shearer, Tom Leopold and Peter Matz; the fast-rising Josh Seymour (We Had A World) directs. “Hoover was a nefarious public official, and the sad thing is he really got away with it, [but] when you have these horrible situations,” said Batt, “the best way to skewer them is through insane comedy.” We’ll come together in laughter to that.

Finding Never Land
You don’t expect to see Ben Platt headlining an off-West End venue seating fewer than 200 people. But that’s the sizable attraction of Midnight at the Never Get, which opens July 20 at the small-but-mighty Menier Chocolate Factory following an entirely separate off-Broadway premiere in 2018. "There’s got to be room for big names to go, 'I would love to be subtle in a small space,'" the new production's director, Tony winner David Cromer (The Band’s Visit), said of his Tony-winning star. (As it happens, Platt's husband Noah Galvin is appearing on the London stage concurrently in Hit Machine.) Mark Sonnenblick’s chamber musical uses a Greenwich Village gay bar as the setting for its commingling of sexuality and song. “Broadway shows are too big and too goddamned expensive,” said Cromer, sounding thrilled that a London public can encounter Platt in this context. “Ben’s got such raw nerve as an actor, and that’s the nature of this character; [the match of role with actor] is a real slam dunk.”

Raising Kane
The dramatist Sarah Kane died in 1999, age 28, leaving behind a formidable output of provocative plays. Among them is her characteristically take-no-prisoners Cleansed, which premiered in 1998. It is being revived for a July 29 opening at the Almeida, as the last show at this prestigious address from director Rebecca Frecknall before she moves across town to the Old Vic. The sterling cast includes Jack Riddiford, Leo Bill and Pearl Chanda, the last of whom is marking her sixth collaboration with Frecknall and third performing the work of Kane. “It’s all up for grabs; that's what’s so exciting about it,” Chanda said of Cleansed, which at different times requires rats onstage, and daffodils, too. Set in an abandoned university compound, the play offers “an impressionistic template of what being alive feels like—which can be very funny, beautiful, brilliant and violent.” And if audiences react strongly, that’s part of the point as well, added an impassioned Chanda. “I’m truly bowled over by how radical Sarah Kane is 30 years after her death. I think audiences want to see live work, and this is incredibly live; you are seeing theater in its truest form.”