London Datebook: Bow Down to Prince Benedict, Book a Room at Grand Hotel & Long Live McQueen

Some theater capitals go on late-summer hiatus, but not London, which has saved the year’s biggest opening for the dog days of August. (Not that there are tickets still to be had for Benedict Cumberbatch’s eagerly awaited Hamlet unless you’re willing to try your luck for returns.) In the meantime, here are some further enticements confirming London as the stage town that never sleeps.

AUGUST 3-9
People Come, People Go: That lyric from its opening number catches the prevailing spirit of Grand Hotel, the 1989 musical whose latest revival opens August 5 in a new Southwark Playhouse staging from the same creative team behind the theater's 2013 revival of Titanic. Thom Southerland directs the cast of 17, which should make for an intimate experience in the bijou playhouse.

ALSO: A busy season for real-life father-son stage pairings finds one duo packing up just as another begins. John Shrapnel and his son Lex finish their Young Vic run August 8 in director Michael Longhurst’s revival of Caryl Churchill’s haunting play A Number. Meanwhile, James Fox and his son Jack open August 3 at the Apollo Theatre in Dear Lupin, the actor Michael Simkins’ stage adaptation of the book of letters from Roger Mortimer to his son Charlie.

AUGUST 10-16
The Clothes Make the Man: James Phillips’ play McQueen, on the other hand, tells the story of the man who made the clothes—in this case, British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who committed suicide at age 40 in 2010. After premiering earlier this spring at the St. James Theatre, John Caird’s production gets a West End upgrade that by rights should make a star out of its first-rank leading man, Stephen Wight. Performances start August 13 at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, with Carly Bawden joining the cast as the female lead.

ALSO: It's the first full post-opening week at north London’s Park Theatre of Crossing Jerusalem, writer-director Julia Pascal’s play told across 24 hours in Jerusalem in 2002. David Ricardo Pearce—an actor better-known for his work in such musicals as Anyone Can Whistle and Saturday Night—heads the cast.

AUGUST 17-23
“Good” News: Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 play Our Country’s Good has established itself as a modern classic and now gets a large-scale revival directed by Nadia Fall and starting performances August 19 on the National’s Olivier stage. Set in Australia in 1788, the piece about the healing power of art here stars Caoilfhionn Dunne (late of Conor McPherson’s The Night Alive) and Jason Hughes, whose Royal Court performance in Violence and Son remains one of the highlights of this year.

ALSO: August 20 marks the final performance of The Motherf**ker with the Hat at National’s Lyttelton, the Stephen Adly Guirgis play that hopped the Atlantic to rave reviews, not least for the Tony-nominated Yul Vazquez, who is reprising the role of Cousin Julio. Denise Van Outen and Michael Xavier head up a concert performance of Sweet Charity running August 19-22 at the Cadogan Hall in Chelsea.

AUGUST 24-30
The Great Dane: ...Or will he be? We’ll know come August 25, when Benedict Cumberbatch opens in director Lyndsey Turner’s Barbican Theatre production of Hamlet—by some measure the hottest ticket of this year. Can’t get to it in person? Fret not: the show will be screened in cinemas internationally on October 15, two weeks before the sold-out run comes to an end.

ALSO: You Won’t Succeed on Broadway If You Don’t Have Any Jews returns to London beginning August 25 after a run in Tel Aviv; the revue will play for two weeks at the St. James Theatre. August 29 marks the final performance of the irresistible Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre revival of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, starring the winning duo of Alex Gaumond and Laura Pitt-Pulford.