The Line-up: May 2026
Care homes, horse puppets, and a second chance for Beckett
A rundown of everything worth seeing in May. There is a revival at the National, new writing at the Bush, a Korean musical in Elephant & Castle, a literary ballet, and a triumphant return for the best play of last year.
Booking Ahead
The tickets to book now:
Rosa Salazar and Indira Varma lead an all-female cast in the Old Vic’s staging of Glengarry Glen Ross.
Internationaal Theater Amsterdam brings its Ivo van Hove-directed reworking of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America to Edinburgh. A seminal play in the hands of an iconic director.
Meera Syal is heading to the Lyric Hammersmith for a revival of Lucy Kirkwood’s excellent The Children. I last saw this in Portland, Oregon with questionable English accents.
Christine Baranski is gracing London with her presence alongside Richard E. Grant in Hay Fever, but I haven’t found a ticket I can stomach paying for yet.
Superstar adapter Robert Icke tackles Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others with Keira Knightley and Mild Concern’s beloved Luke Thompson.
Finally, The National Theatre have announced their next five shows: the legendary Cate Blanchett in Electra/Persona, the incomparable Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, the devastating Anne-Marie Duff in Some Woman, the unstoppable Francesca Mills in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, and the distinctively Portuguese Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists.
Now, onto more immediate concerns.
1536 - Ambassadors Theatre
Tudor England.
A field in Essex.
Three women hurry to their childhood meeting place, thirsty for gossip from London.
Word spreads of a clash between King Henry VIII and his Queen, Anne Boleyn. And closer to home, another rumour begins to catch fire.
Do I point you to my five-star review or when I named 1536 the best play of 2025? Since this innocuous play opened last summer, it has not stopped gathering momentum. It now arrives in the West End with Margot Robbie added to the producing team and a BBC adaptation in the works. 1536 made the people in history textbooks feel human to me for the first time.
Care - Young Vic
A single mum, two feuding pre-teens, and their gran. When Grandmother takes a fall, she is hastily moved to a care home she doesn’t want to be in, surrounded by other elderly people longing for comfort and missing home.
But as time passes, she comes to see what really matters in life and between loss and loneliness, we glimpse the unexpected joy in life’s everyday moments.
Writer and director Alexander Zeldin is one of a kind. His work at the National Theatre is unparalleled, with Faith, Hope and Charity, Confession, and The Other Place filling me with hope, sadness, and dread, respectively. Here he brings his humanist gaze to the UK care system with a play that will no doubt be more entertaining than the poster lets on.
I’m Not Being Funny - Bush Theatre
She’s signed them both up. Her and her husband. For stand-up comedy.
So tonight they’re locking themselves in their living room until they’ve got a ‘tight five’, delving through their past for material. But some jokes hurt and laughter isn’t always the best medicine.
With the clock ticking and nothing but a baby monitor for an audience, Billie and Peter wrestle with the spotlight as questions about their future are forced to the surface.
It’s back to the Bush for some new writing. I’m particularly excited to see Tia Bannon, who was excellent in the provocative and sublime Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner. A couple unpacking their relationship for comedy: what could possibly go wrong?
The Last Man - Southwark Playhouse, Elephant
A mysterious virus spreads across the globe. Cities fall silent. The undead roam.
In a bunker beneath the streets of Seoul, one survivor takes shelter – alone. As days turn to weeks, supplies begin to dwindle. As weeks turn to months, isolation warps their sense of reality. Time fractures. Memories resurface. Fear rises. As the power fails and monsoon rains fall, they must make a choice: to survive, or to live.
Having sold out to audiences in Seoul, this one-person musical has been translated and brought over to London. In Korean theatre style, there is a rotating cast of two solo leads. Having gone to South Korea in March, mostly to watch theatre, I can’t skip this more conveniently located production.
War Horse - National Theatre, Olivier
At the outbreak of the First World War, young Albert’s beloved horse Joey is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. Too young to enlist, Albert refuses to forget him, embarking on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of wartime France – determined to bring Joey home.
I’ve long resisted this modern theatrical classic, convincing myself that this wartime drama featuring life-sized horse puppets simply wasn’t for me. But it’s time for me to put that to the test as the ‘global phenomenon gallops home’. If nothing else, it will give me a chance to talk about meeting Michael Morpurgo.
Gentleman Jack - Sadler’s Wells, Angel
A powerful Yorkshire woman often referred to as ‘the first modern lesbian’, it was only after her death when her secret diaries were decoded that a truly exceptional life was uncovered.
Anne lived, dressed and loved as she desired, not as 19th century society expected her to. With her words dancing across the pages, she vividly chronicled her adventures, heartbreaks and triumphs with striking honesty and wit.
I only made two New Year’s resolutions this year: one was to stop drinking the grim coffee from the machine at work, and the other was to watch some ballet. The good news is that I sleep a lot better now and I’m finally making my ballet audience debut with an extremely well-reviewed adaptation of Gentleman Jack by Northern Ballet.
Krapp’s Last Tape / Godot’s To-Do List - Royal Court, Downstairs
‘Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now.’
On his 69th birthday, a man sits alone and listens to the echoes of his younger self.
I have been very open about my struggles with Beckett, and when I saw Krapp’s Last Tape at the Barbican last year, I loathed it. Two elements of this production have lured me back. The first is that it is directed by, and stars, Gary Oldman. The second is that the play will be paired with a new short play called Godot’s To-Do List. So if nothing else, I will get to spot a celebrity and enjoy some fresh writing.
Are You Watching? - Royal Court, Upstairs
‘He undresses. He stands behind the camera and presses record. He approaches.’
Porn. Deepfakes. Disappearing girls. A journalist wired to a machine. A mother’s grief sold for clicks.
As the lines blur between entertainment and abuse, technology and sex, violence and voyeurism - who’s complicit and who is in control? And are you watching?
In the same space that held the excellent Porn Play comes a debut play that appears to delve into a similar topic, but with a view from both sides of the camera. I anticipate an intense hour in the Royal Court’s attic.
Hmm, War Horse. It's very long, or so it seems. I treated all seven of my, and my new wife's, children to it. I could have bought a small racehorse with the money. They hated it. So did we. They all mocked it outrageously in the interval and afterwards ("Joe-eeeeeee!"). A good bonding exercise then. I'd like to damn it to hell, but the horses were excellent.