From Sophocles to Sarah Kane: theatre and dance to look forward to in 2025

Have we got a complex about Oedipus?

No sooner has Robert Icke’s rewrite of Sophocles’ tragedy moved out of the West End than up steps another new version. This time it is Ella Hickson adapting the ancient Greek myth, with Rami Malek and Indira Varma as the unlucky couple who find out far more than they want to know about the true nature of their relationship. They’re directed by Matthew Warchus and Hofesh Shechter in what is likely to be a pulsatingly physical production. SH

Brie Larson makes her West End debut

Sophocles really is man of the moment. Along with two versions of Oedipus and a recent reworking of Antigone (The Other Place at the National Theatre), here is Elektra retold by poet Anne Carson. This time the miserable House of Atreus is the cursed, dysfunctional family under scrutiny. When her long-absent brother Orestes finally returns, Elektra — played here by Brie Larson — urges him to avenge their father’s murder. Directed by Daniel Fish, who staged a hit, radically revised Oklahoma! SH

Star-studded exploration of sex and monogamy

It’s 15 years since Mike Bartlett premiered his play Cock, which discussed the complexities of sexuality through the story of a gay man becoming involved with a straight woman. Now he returns to the tricky issues of monogamy and sex in a new work starring Nicola Walker, Erin Doherty and Stephen Mangan. Directed by James Macdonald, that maestro of subtle intricacy on stage. SH

A skirmish of wit for Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell

It’s one of the oldest and best-loved romcoms: Shakespeare’s tale of Beatrice and Benedick, who can’t live without each other though they refuse to believe it. In his latest star-studded production Jamie Lloyd directs Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell as the on-off lovers in this comedy about truth, betrayal, love and loyalty. SH

Jonathan Bailey takes the throne

Since March 2023, the Bridge Theatre has been home to Nicholas Hytner’s brilliant staging of Guys and Dolls. In 2025, it’s finally making way for a new show in a very different vein: Shakespeare’s tragic exploration of leadership and fitness to rule. Jonathan Bailey plays Richard II, a king who believes he is divinely appointed but who is fundamentally unsuited to running the country. SH

Cate Blanchett and Tom Burke in Chekhov masterpiece

Leading German director Thomas Ostermeier was last in London with his contemporary response to Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. Now he directs Cate Blanchett (as Arkadina) and Tom Burke (as Trigorin) in Chekhov’s masterpiece of artistic hope and thwarted ambition. SH

Extra time for ‘Dear England’

England’s footballers are back on the pitch in the return of James Graham’s hugely popular drama about the role of the national team in the country’s psyche, the decades-long struggle to win a major international trophy (for the men’s team) and what success really means. SH

The hunt for Raoul Moat

Robert Icke’s recent shows have been sizzling reworkings of classic plays (Oedipus, The Doctor, Player Kings) but Manhunt sees him tackle a true, recent story — the case of Raoul Moat. In 2010, Moat was released from Durham prison, where he’d served a sentence for assault. Nursing a deep grudge against the police, he went on the run and shot several people, prompting one of the biggest manhunts in UK history. SH

Alas, poor Yorke

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has reworked the band’s album Hail to the Thief for this fast-paced blend of music and words which explores Shakespeare’s Hamlet from a new angle. Elsinore has become a surveillance state where ghosts reveal the depths of corruption to Hamlet and Ophelia. A cast of 20 musicians and actors will perform the work, a co-production between the RSC and Factory International. SH

Stephen Sondheim’s swansong

The UK premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical, written with playwright David Ives and inspired by two surrealist films by Luis Buñuel. A group of wealthy friends attempt to go out for brunch but end up with more than indigestion as the end of the world appears to erupt around them. Joe Mantello, who staged the show’s New York production, directs. SH  

A trip down ‘London Road’

As part of his swansong season, outgoing National Theatre director Rufus Norris brings back the cutting-edge musical he first staged here 13 years ago. The show, written by Alecky Blythe and with music by Adam Cork, brings the methods of verbatim theatre to a musical. The team set the words of residents in Ipswich, caught up in the aftermath of serial killings in the town, to music, creating a potent and moving sense of what it is like to be at the centre of a tragedy. SH

Cast reunite 25 years on for Sarah Kane’s final work

Speaking of returning modern classics: here’s the team reuniting for this groundbreaking Sarah Kane play 25 years after it premiered at the Royal Court. James Macdonald directs Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter in Kane’s unflinching, extraordinarily poetic piece that draws the audience into the mind and experience of a protagonist struggling with severe depression. SH

Rebecca Frecknall turns to Eugene O’Neill

Rebecca Frecknall has staged some sumptuous productions of Tennessee Williams’ plays and now she tackles another American giant of drama: Eugene O’Neill. Ruth Wilson and Michael Shannon star as two characters trapped by their inherited past, in O’Neill’s sequel to his mighty Long Day’s Journey Into Night. SH

Lynette Linton and Lynn Nottage return to the Donmar

A few years ago Lynette Linton directed a superb, award-winning production of Lynn Nottage’s play Sweat at the Donmar. Now the pair reunite at the same venue to stage Nottage’s play Intimate Apparel about a Black seamstress in 1905 New York. She stitches exquisite lacy undergarments for other women but dreams of love and happiness for herself. Starring Samira Wiley. SH

Royal Ballet revives two beloved works

Story time at Covent Garden this spring when the Royal Ballet revives two of its most popular works. Onegin, created in 1965 by John Cranko, is a three-Kleenex telling of Pushkin’s verse novel about a worldly cynic who regrets spurning the love of the teenage Tatiana. Set to a clever collage of anything-but-the-opera Tchaikovsky — notably the soaring theme from Francesca da Rimini — the ballet is packed with tender solos and passionate, almost acrobatic duets. LL

Onegin will be followed by 29 performances of Kenneth MacMillan’s 1965 favourite Romeo and Juliet set to Prokofiev‘s marmoreal score. The 10 casts announced so far include Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov (whose partnership will be live streamed in cinemas internationally on March 20). LL

Eclectic triple bill

Meanwhile, below stairs in the Opera House’s Linbury Theatre, Natalia Osipova will present an eclectic triple bill. Boldest of the three short works will cast her as Ariadne in Errand Into the Maze created in 1947 by American modern dance legend Martha Graham. The Minotaur will be danced by Marcelino Sambé (also scheduled to partner Osipova in Romeo and Juliet in May). The former Bolshoi ballerina will additionally take on another 20th-century pioneer with her reading of Frederick Ashton’s tender, evocative Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan plus a new commission from witty and interesting Norwegian dancemaker Jo Stromgren. LL

Dance’s eastern promise

Sadler’s Wells continues its bid for world domination when it opens its fourth venue: Sadler’s Wells East, a new theatre and studio complex in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford. There will be a strong emphasis on education and outreach and the wide-ranging 2025 line-up offers performances ranging from Birmingham Royal Ballet to Olivier-winning Ivan Michael Blackstock. LL

National Ballet of Japan debuts at Covent Garden

The National Ballet of Japan makes its European debut at Covent Garden this summer with Giselle, the tragic tale of a pretty peasant girl who returns from the grave to redeem her faithless aristocratic lover. The production has been created by former Royal Ballet principal (and house favourite) Miyako Yoshida OBE, Director of the Tokyo company since 2020, together with former Royal Ballet soloist Alastair Marriott. LL

On the trail of Mary, Queen of Scots

Christopher Hampson’s Glasgow-based Scottish Ballet began marking its 50th anniversary in 2019 with Five in Five — a bold programme of five new full-evening works in five years. The finale will be a production of the life and loves of Mary, Queen of Scots, created by the company’s resident choreographer Sophie Laplane. The action will, inevitably, focus on the battle of wills between Mary Stuart and her nemesis Queen Elizabeth I. The awkward fact that the two cousins never actually met has never bothered dramatists, but Laplane intends to reconfigure the narrative, reimagining the story from the point of view of the English Queen on her deathbed. Casting will be fluid and various dancers will take the role of Elizabeth including veteran Swedish guest artist Charlotta Öfverholm. The production premieres at the Edinburgh International Festival in August followed by a Scottish tour. LL

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