August on the London Stage: Christine Lahti, Cats, Death Note: The Musical & More

August is often a time for theatrical hibernation, but not in London. This summer finds the capital busier than ever, as it plays host to Oscar, Tony and Olivier Award winners across a range of enticing titles—some familiar, others brand new. For more on this late-summer superabundance, read on.

Ready, Set, Smile
Oscar and Emmy winner Christine Lahti (Swing Shift, Running on Empty) has been a regular presence off-Broadway and on but is only just now making her London stage debut, at the Marylebone Theatre through August 29 with her self-penned play, The Smile of Her. (The autobiographical piece premiered at the Berkshire Theatre Group in Massachusetts in 2023.) “I’m not sensing a difference here,” the immediately warm actress told Broadway.com with regard to British audiences as opposed to American ones: “Women come up to me and say, ‘I feel seen’ and that to me is everything; my work is done.” And at age 76, she was quick to voice the appeal of the stage at this time in her life. In movies, she said, “ageism is still rearing its ugly head, especially for women, [whereas] the theater offers extraordinary challenges. It’s amazing to be able to play this part that is moving audiences in the way it seems to be; it’s so gratifying at my age to be able to do that.”

Glass Very Much Full
Phelim McDermott won a 2023 Olivier Award for directing the still-running My Neighbor Totoro, based on the Studio Ghibli film, and the multi-hyphenate can now add to that hit show his dual assignment as author, performer and co-director (with Kirsty Housley) of Tao of Glass, at @sohoplace for a limited run through September 12. Seen off-Broadway in 2023, the performance piece-concert hybrid is scored to music by the protean opera and film composer Philip Glass (Satyagraha, The Hours), who is now 89. “It’s touching to have two shows in the West End,” the ever-amiable McDermott said in an interview of titles conjoined, he said, by “sensational music and puppets and how surprising it is that both have ended up here at the same time.” As for re-teaming with Glass, “It’s a dream to be working with your musical hero,” McDermott said of a talent whose work he knows from the opera repertoire and elsewhere, too. “I’m proud of Totoro which after four and a half years is as good as it ever was, but really [Tao of Glass] is the show I’m proudest of.”

Nine Lives
The felines are frolicking everywhere these days. Just as the acclaimed Cats: The Jellicle Ball finishes its too-short run on Broadway, the Andrew Lloyd Webber stalwart is resurfacing in an entirely separate production, opening August 6 at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Drew McOnie is the director-choreographer, and Rachael Wooding and Melanie La Barrie head the cast as Grizabella and Old Deuteronomy, respectively. “This is one I never expected in a million years would come my way,” said the exuberant La Barrie, whose credits range from & Juliet and Hadestown to the Witch this past spring in Into the Woods. “It’s a unique gift to be entrusted with the care of this company, this story, to be trusted to be matriarch,” said the performer of a part taken by Judi Dench in the 2019 movie. As for her own kitty connection, La Barrie has “two little tuxedo cats who we rescued last year, and I had a cat for 15 years before that.” Have things changed between herself and her pets since taking on this show? “What happens is they wake up in the morning and regard me with curiosity,” she said, laughing. “They can sense I’ve been exploring my inner cat.”

Death Becomes Him
Frank Wildhorn has been represented of late onstage in London with Bonnie and Clyde and Your Lie in April, and now the 67-year-old New York-born composer is lending his talent to the first full British production of Death Note: The Musical, opening August 11 at the Barbican. Its source is the popular Japanese manga series of the same title by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, and Xander Pang and Colin Ryan head the cast. “Manga is this gigantic treasure chest of stories and legends and myths with larger-than-life characters and ridiculously crazy circumstances,” an effusive Wildhorn said via Zoom from his home in Hawaii of the appeal of the project, “but with an Eastern slant.” Previously seen in Korea and Japan (and in concert in London), the show is ready, he said, for this latest iteration: “This has been a wonderful adventure because we didn’t really know when we started how [Far Eastern audiences] would feel about me playing in their sandbox.” And now? “It’s really been a dream, you know? I think this one’s going to have a hell of a life.”

Half Time
The venerable Alan Ayckbourn, 87, is too rarely seen these days on the West End. All the more reason to welcome the Old Vic revival of his 1969 comedy How the Other Half Loves, opening August 11 in an in-the-round staging and starring Roger Allam, London’s first Javert in Les Misérables. Philip Breen directs. “When I first started going to the theater in the ‘70s, there was so much Ayckbourn around and the plays were wonderful, and it’s been a revelation to come across [his work] again,” said Allam, here marking his first ever Ayckbourn role. “It’s very, very funny but my god it’s hard,” added the actor, who clearly likes a challenge: In spring 2027, he will headline a repertory season at West London’s Orange Tree Theatre of King Lear and Richard II.

He's on Fire
Simon Stephens won Tony and Olivier Awards for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but the prolific dramatist is popping up everywhere this season—often well away from the mainstream. “I’m a horrifying completist; I want all of them,” he noted wryly with regard to a breadth of venues that includes the August 25 opening of A Slow Fire at Jermyn Street Theatre. This autumn, his reimagining (with Jay Miller) of King Lear at London’s Yard Theatre will star an indefatigable Ian McKellen, now 87. A new play, Three Ghosts, bows in October at Tokyo’s Parco Theatre, in Japanese. “I don’t think any artist is ever able to have that moment where they go, ‘this is great,’” the 55-year-old said of a burst of activity defined “by a kind of restlessness.” Of the three shows, the post-apocalyptic A Slow Fire began in a 40-seater in Dublin and has now graduated to a 70-seater in London. “I’m profoundly honored to have had my plays on the West End and Broadway, but part of my heart will always belong to [Dublin's] Glass Mask Theatre and Jermyn Street; they're f**king great.”