Letter from London: September 2006

Is it just me, or does everyone look at the calendar at this time of year and wonder what happened to summer? We pull out the long sleeves, put away the sandals and become filled with regret that we didn't take advantage of more barbecues and beach time. Oh, how we wasted those precious days even more precious in notoriously rainy London of sunlight! I think theatrical producers must have a similar sort of longing for the season because many in the West End have decided to extend their summer productions and stars though the autumn.

Summer Lovin'

The fantastic Rock 'N' Roll is enjoying a six-week extension in the West End to November 5. This is the sort of production that you could attend over and over and still learn something new each time. As star Rufus Sewell said in his long it's a tome—but a fascinating read—fix yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy Q&A with Theatre.com's Matt Wolf, "It's like [playwright Tom Stoppard] loans you his intellect for a few hours until you get home and then suddenly it starts to vaporize." The reliable David Calder replaces the ever-brilliant Brian Cox in the show on September 16, but the rest of this tight ensemble remains intact throughout the extension.

Speaking of brilliance, there is no shortage of actors here who deserve to be described with over-the-top adjectives, and Sir Derek Jacobi is at the top of that heap, which is no small feat in the land of McKellens, Gambons and Denches. Jacobi's current vehicle, A Voyage Round My Father has also extended summer a bit by transferring from the Donmar Warehouse to the Wyndham's Theatre, where it will inevitably find a wider audience of admirers.

Other extensions of summer gigs include Patrick Swayze as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, new booking periods for Les Misérables, Avenue Q and the hilarious Donkeys' Years, which will feature new cast members Janie Dee, Karl Theobald and Hamish Clark. By the way, if you want more silly fun, you must see four actors including movie regular Catherine McCormack—read more about her here playing 150 parts in Patrick Barlow's adaptation of The 39 Steps you know it from the Hitchcock film. The slapsticky show is also a summer extension—it transfers from the tiny Tricycle Theatre in North London to the West End's Criterion Theatre on September 15.

Autumn Leaves

Of course, this time of year is not only about looking back at the hazy, lazy, crazy days, it's also about shaking the sand out of your shoes and looking forward. And this being 1 fall and 2 London, there is so much to look forward to this month that as Cabaret's Fraulein Schneider might say, my head is shpinning.

I know what you're all thinking, so I will just get to what's on your mind here and now. One word: Wicked. Yes, ladies and gentleman and green tweens everywhere, Idina Menzel is here and ready to defy gravity. The Tony winner looked happy and relaxed at a recent party complete with snappy new bangs and winning trademark smile. I recently bumped into Tony-winning costume designer Susan Hilferty, who said that the cast is rehearsing far from the madding crowd at Three Mills Island in East London, and that they are really clicking. You are probably not very familiar with the cast's blond girl, Helen Dallimore, but I guarantee that if you keep checking Theatre.com, you will get to know the whole London cast and fall in love with the show all over again. Yes, we are planning mucho content for all of you adorable Wicked-heads out there.

But there is more to September than Wicked well, for some of us, anyway. In fact, if you yearn for sophisticated offerings, you're in luck this month. Topping the must-see list of serious productions is Kevin Spacey, recent Olivier winner Eve Best and recent cast addition Colm Meaney in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Old Vic. The reunion of Spacey, director Howard Davies and the words of master playwright O'Neill—a combination that triumphed in The Iceman Cometh a few years ago—is something to be excited about.

Other serious September fare that is turning my head includes the chance to enjoy another unsettling tale from Dublin former wunderkind and now gracefully mature playwright Conor McPherson. His new play, The Seafarer, opens at the National at the end of the month. McPherson regular Jim Norton will be a part of what looks like a smashing cast. The National is also presenting the ever-talented and always employed Simon Russell Beale in The Alchemist. Biography lovers will want to catch Will Keen and Frances O'Connor in the Almeida's Tom and Viv, the story of poet T.S. Eliot and first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood. It's described as "an impossible love story," which is my favorite kind to watch—not to experience, obviously. There is also the stage adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated at the Hampstead Theatre, Tony winner John Doyle's production of Amadeus and Kelly Reilly and Alicia Witt in Terry Johnson's Piano/Forte at the Royal Court. What about Bent, Cabaret, The Cryptogram, Summer and Smoke, Caroline, or Change, Dirty Dancing, Spamalot and Porgy and Bess, you ask? Well, that's all in October. If any of you are thinking of sending me a care package you were, right?, please send caffeine!