The best theatre shows in London for 2024 not to miss

Director Dominic Cooke's stellar National Theatre revival of Sondheim's ‘Follies’ had much to recommend it, but one of its highest points was Imelda Staunton's performance as a wistful former showgirl, haunted by regrets. Now, Staunton and Cooke are reuniting for a crack at another classic musical, ‘Hello, Dolly’, which hasn't had a London revival in over a decade.

Inspired by interviews with actual pop star fangirls, Yve Blake’s transferring cult musical follows Edna, a 14-year-old Australian girl madly in love with one ‘Harry’, a member of a massive-selling pop group (hmm, rings a bell). When the band comes to Sydney she’s determined to meet Harry – at any cost.

There were understandable logistical reasons why the National Theatre never got it together to restage all three of Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s ‘Death of England’ plays…

Despite the late Irish titan’s estate being famously resistant to any sort of major innovation when it comes to revivals of his work, Samuel Beckett’s existential masterpiece ‘Waiting for Godot’ still gets wheeled out semi-frequently: it’s too good and too singular to bother fretting over whether or not you can radically reinvent it or not (NB, you can’t). This is the first time it’s had a full-on West End production since Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart did it in 2009, though, as heavyweights Lucian Msamati and Ben Whishaw take on the role of tramps Estragon and Vladimir, lolling about in a no-man’s land while kidding themselves that the mysterious Godot is going to visit them sometime soon. The great director James Macdonald – renowned for his work with the likes of Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane and Annie Baker – will helm things while trying not to annoy the Beckett estate.

Kwame Kwei-Armagh’s swansong at the Young Vic is this ambitious new musical adaptation of the cult classic 1957 film of the same name with songs from new wave icon Elvis Costello…

Screen star David Oyelowo makes his debut in the National Theatre’s huge Olivier to play the role of Shakespeare’s heroic Roman general turned embittered national foe after his distaste for the plebs becomes public knowledge. NT regular Lyndsey Turner will direct, her first shot at a Shakespeare play since her blockbuster Benedict Cumberbatch-starring Hamlet back in 2015.

Mark Rosenblatt’s John Lithgow-starring ‘Giant’ looks set to be the defining piece of programming of David Byrne’s Royal Court tenure, or certainly of the first year.

In one heck of a coup for Tim Sheader’s first season running the Donmar, Oscar-winner Adrian Brody will make his UK stage debut (and we think anywhere stage debut) in US playwright Lindsey Ferrentino’s  adaptation of David Sington’s documentary film of the same name. 

Last seen in London a little over a decade ago at the National Theatre, this is an altogether bigger revival for Seán O’Casey’s classic tragicomedy about an unusual family struggling through the chaos of the Irish civil war. J Cameron Smith – aka Gerri from ‘Succession’ – will star as quick-witted matriarch Juno with the might Mark Rylance as her absurd, posturing, drunken husband Jack.

Jodie Whittaker returns to the stage with playwright-director Zinnie Harris’s 2018 adaptation of John Webster’s Jacobean gorefest ‘The Duchess of Malfi’.

This heavily adapted version of Sophocles’s ‘Oedipus Rex’ by erstwhile Almeida wunderkind Robert Icke stars Mark Strong and Lesley Manville. A modern version, it’s set on the night of politician Oedipus’s great electoral victory – but some very disturbing revelations will come to light about his wife.

On the face of it a stage version of Stanley Kubrick’s immortal Cold War satire 'Dr Strangelove’ is as hubristic a conceit as adapting ‘2001’ or ‘Full Metal Jacket’. Nonetheless, here we are: the Kubrick estate has given the stage rights to master satirist Amando Iannucci (‘The Day Today’, ‘I’m Alan Partridge’, ‘The Think of It’, ‘Veep’. ‘The Death of Stalin’, etcetera etcetera) to adapt Kubrick’s classic about a rogue American general who decides to pre-emptively nuke Russia. Iannucci has in turn cast his old mucker Steve Coogan as the lead.

A director who truly feels at the top of her game right now, Emma Rice’s adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's classic semi-autobiographical novel about a young Asian man’s outrageous coming-of-age in ’70s suburban London scored ecstatic notices when it premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon recently in a co-production between the RSC and her Wise Children company.

Elton John’s musical adaptation of the fabulous Meryl Street and Anne Hathaway-starring fashion industry satire relaunches in London in revamped form, with US singer and actor Vanessa Williams starring.

The NT hasn’t tackled Oscar Wilde’s immortal comedy since the early ’80s, but here, intriguingly it is, finally getting a splashy Christmas revival that’ll star newly-minted Timelord Ncuti Gatwa as lusty young idler Algenon, who alongside his BFF Jack (Hugh Skinner) must infiltrate the stately home of the formidable Lady Bracknell in order to go a-wooing. 

Of all the Broadway musicals of the twenty-first century to have not come over to London, Dave Malloy’s ‘Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812’ feels like the great one that got away…

Reese Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s long-running BBC comedy horror anthology ‘Inside No. 9’ may be wrapping up on our screens but the duo don’t seem to be in any hurry to step away from it: this new live spin-off entitled ‘Stage/Fright’ premieres in the West End in 2025. 

The Bridge’s first show ‘back’ post ‘Guys & Dolls’ will be a new production of Richard II starring ‘Bridgerton’ hearthrob Jonathan Bailey as the dithering monarch.