Frontmezzjunkies reports: The May 2026 London UK Theatre Adventure

By Ross

This May’s London Theatre Trip began the way the best ones always do: with a slightly reckless ticket purchase and a group text that immediately spiralled into plans. A row of seats to see Jinkx Monsoon in End of the Rainbow, booked without hesitation, felt less like an impulse buy and more like a mission statement. Any trip that starts with Judy Garland, drag royalty, and a room full of friends already feels charmed. Jinkx (Broadway’s Pirates!), somehow, has that rare ability to hold tragedy and comedy in the same breath, and Peter Quilter’s play-with-music lives or dies on that balance. If anyone can make Garland’s final months feel both devastating and defiantly alive, it’s her. From that moment on, the trip stopped being hypothetical and became a thrilling countdown.

From there, the schedule quickly filled with the kind of casting that makes London theatre feel thrillingly unavoidable. Sadie Sink (Broadway’s John Proctor…) and Noah Jupe (“Hamnet“) in Romeo & Juliet promise a youthful, volatile urgency, sharpened by the steadfast, clinical, pressure-cooker approach of Robert Icke (Broadway’s Oedipus). The idea of Shakespeare unfolding against a literal digital countdown feels like a provocation I’m curious to wrestle with, especially at the Harold Pinter, one of my favourites, where intimacy can turn inevitability into something terrifying. Just as enticing is Rosamund Pike (“Saltburn“) in Inter Alia, reuniting the creative forces behind Prima Facie. Pike, as a High Court judge navigating power, motherhood, and moral compromise, feels like casting with intent, not novelty, and I’m eager to see how this new play interrogates ambition and balance without slipping into platitude.

Then there’s the sheer theatrical audacity of Cynthia Erivo (Broadway’s The Color Purple; “Wicked“) in Dracula. A one-person adaptation, 23 roles, live performance fused with video design, is exactly the kind of formal risk that gets my pulse going, and we are all very excited to snag these seats for this artistic spectacle. The work of Kip Williams (Broadway’s …Dorian Gray) thrives on fractured identity and visual invention, and Erivo is an artist who can command stillness as ferociously as spectacle. Pair that with a stroll over to the Old Vic to take in Clint Dyer’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Aaron Pierre (Globe’s Othello) and Giles Terera (NT’s Blues for an Alabama Sky), and suddenly the trip takes on a sharper political edge. Dyer’s promise of a radical re-examination of colonialism, psychiatry, and dissent suggests a production less interested in nostalgia than in confrontation. Performed in the round, no less. So naturally, we say, ‘yes, please‘. Times three.

There’s also the delicious anticipation of what we haven’t locked in yet. There is possibly some Pride: A New Musical at the National Theatre, which feels like one of those rare adaptations where the original creators’ return actually matters. The story of LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) is already theatrical by nature, thanks to the 2014 film version. Still, the idea of protest anthems colliding with Welsh choral traditions has the potential to soar or explode, and hopefully both. I’m equally hungry for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a play I just saw performed at the Stratford Festival, but this time round it will unravel, hopefully magnificently, with Lesley Manville (Bristol Old Vic/BAM’s A Long Day’s Journey…) and Aidan Turner (West End’s Lemons Lemon…). And under the thrilling direction of Marianne Elliott (NT/Broadway’s Angels in America), this revival promises ice-cold precision and erotic warfare rather than polite period drama. There is also the period piece, Grace Pervades, transferring to the West End with Ralph Fiennes (Broadway’s Faith Healer) and Miranda Raison (West End’s Strangers on a Train) intact, which feels like a love letter to theatre itself, with actors playing actor-managers, combined with legacy, ego, and the messy inheritance of genius.

Luke Brady is Hercules. Photo by Matt Crockett.

And because no London trip is complete without some West End indulgence, there’s the strong temptation of a returning favourite. Oliver!, now firmly re-entrenched in the West End, remains one of the great delivery systems for theatrical joy. At the same time, Hercules continues to surprise me by how unapologetically it courts family audiences without condescension. These are the shows you add not because you should, but because you want to remember how good it feels when a theatre crowd collectively exhales into delight.

Even beyond May, my name already sits nervously on waitlists for the future. Josh O’Connor (“The History of Sound“) in Golden Boy at the Almeida feels like a collision of star power and political rage that could burn hot. While Tilda Swinton (Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door“) returns to the stage in Man to Man at the Royal Court, carrying the weight of theatrical history repeating itself, not out of nostalgia, but necessity. That’s the thing about planning a London theatre trip: it never really ends. It just keeps expanding and evolving right into the next one.