July on the London Stage: Kit Harington, Cherry Jones and Imelda Staunton Headline a Starry Summer

Plays take center stage in London this July after a musicals-heavy June, with a host of heavy-hitting American titles leading the charge. A Broadway phenomenon, Slave Play, crosses the Atlantic, this time boasting an impressive Anglo-American company, and The Grapes of Wrath returns to the National Theatre for the first time in over 30 years. Read on for more on these, as well as a couple of musicals that promise to hit the theatrical sweet spot.

DRAMA IN DETROIT
Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Primary Trust had been announced as the summer entry at the small but always-significant Donmar Warehouse, but in the end, for unspecified reasons, didn’t happen. In its place is another major American play from recent years—Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew—directed by Matthew Xia, who was also on course to helm Booth’s play. A 2022 Tony nominee for Best Play in a production that won Phylicia Rashad a Tony for her featured performance as Faye, the show, set in a Detroit car factory facing closure, here stars Pamela Nomvete in Rashad’s role; Racheal Ofori, Tobi Bamtefa and Branden Cook complete the cast. Opening night is July 3.

TONY TRANSFER
Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play had two separate Broadway runs on either side of the pandemic, earning 12 Tony nominations. His fierce, fearless play, running two hours with no intermission, has now crossed the pond in a hybrid production that includes English star Kit Harington (Jon Snow in Game of Thrones) alongside several veterans of the New York production who made the Tony shortlist. Opening night at the Noël Coward Theatre is July 10; Robert O’Hara once again directs.

The London run represents a dream come true for American cast member James Cusati-Moyer, a Yale drama school graduate marking his London stage debut with a play that first came his way in 2017. “It’s a tremendous honor, a gift; you never think you’re going to be attached to a play for so long,” he said in an expansive phone interview. And what of having a screen name in the theater-trained Harington—who gets alphabetical billing—along for the London ride? “It’s clear Kit has a great love for the theater and the craft of acting, and I’m so happy he’s with us; Kit’s a drama school kid at heart.”

MEADOWLARK
The much-revised musical The Baker’s Wife has so far never reached Broadway, despite music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) and a book by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof). In London, the portrait of village life in provincial France has been seen several times and is surfacing anew at the Menier Chocolate Factory, opening July 17. Clive Rowe, a onetime Olivier Award winner for Guys and Dolls, heads the cast alongside Lucie Jones, who was among the headliners of a West End concert version of Schwartz’s Pippin in April.

The director, Gordon Greenberg (The Heart of Rock and Roll), has staged The Baker’s Wife three times in the U.S. and remains in thrall to a musical whose score, he said in an interview, “is glorious and among Stephen’s best”: Let’s hear it for “Meadowlark!” Is Greenberg feeling pressure at finding himself back at the same venue that gave us the Merrily We Roll Along revival that found triumph on Broadway this season? (He revived Barnum at the Menier in 2017.) “The success of Merrily is indicative of what [the Menier] does best, which is taking shows perceived as having broken wings and making them fly again," said Greenberg, adding, "I hope everyone comes to see us.”

FOLLIES’ DOLLY
Hello, Dolly! stormed Broadway not long ago, with Bette Midler scooping up a 2017 Tony as the ever-endearing Dolly Gallagher Levi. Here Jerry Herman’s beloved 1964 musical is again, in a new English production directed by Dominic Cooke and choreographed by Bill Deamer—the team behind the National’s superlative revival of Follies, also in 2017. The irrepressible Dolly is being played by Follies alumna, Imelda Staunton, who has a hefty track record with American shows, and the West End’s recent Tevye, Andy Nyman, is on hand to play the crusty widower Horace Vandergelder. Jenna Russell and Tyrone Huntley complete a starry quartet of leads who will open July 18 at the Palladium, performing through September 6.

“You cannot define what Imelda is, other than one of the best actresses in the world,” Nyman told Broadway.com of Britain’s newly anointed Dame, sounding equally enthused about the show’s 40-strong cast and 21-piece orchestra. “This entire production has just been a ball of kindness from the second it started, and that’s what the show will be. It’s going to be a production people talk about for a long time.”

WESTWARD HO
Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath played the National Theatre originally in 1989, after which it went on to Broadway and won the Tony for Best Play. The Depression-era story of the Joad family’s westward journey is back once again, this time directed by Carrie Cracknell, whose triumphs at this same address include The Deep Blue Sea and Medea, both with the late, great Helen McCrory. The crucial role of Ma Joad—a career high point last time around for Lois Smith—is this time taken by the redoubtable Cherry Jones, a two-time Tony winner previously seen on stage in London in The Glass Menagerie: Her earthiness and robustness should be perfect for the role, and we’ll know come opening night, July 25.