{"id":382861,"date":"2025-08-29T16:19:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/382861\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:19:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:19:18","slug":"september-on-the-london-stage-kerry-ellis-belts-samuel-d-hunter-arrives-the-weir-returns-broadway-buzz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/382861\/","title":{"rendered":"September on the London Stage: Kerry Ellis Belts, Samuel D. Hunter Arrives, The Weir Returns | Broadway Buzz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kerry Ellis, Ncuti Gatwa, Joe Locke, Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville
(Photos: c\/o SJB Marketing, Johan Persson and Emilio Madrid for Broadway.com)<\/p>\n

Great writing is the order of the day as London heads into an astoundingly busy theatrical autumn, with shows jockeying for position, and multiple openings sometimes landing on the same night. September\u2019s bounty includes a first-time writer\u2019s fresh take on a Euripides classic alongside two local debuts from American playwrights and the return of an intimate Irish drama set in a pub but possessed of resounding power. Oh, and some knockout singing, too. For more on all these offerings, read on.<\/p>\n

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\nKerry Ellis and the Fulton Orchestra (Photo: c\/o SJB Marketing) <\/p>\n

It\u2019s Better with a Band<\/b>

\nLondon is always a brighter, brassier place when Kerry Ellis is singing, and the Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner and onetime star of Wicked, We Will Rock You and Anything Goes is appearing with the Fulltone Orchestra for one night only, September 1 at Cadogan Hall. She performed with the same 65-member troupe in Devizes in Wiltshire, west of London, in July 2024. \u201cThere\u2019s always a sense of occasion,\u201d an excited Ellis told Broadway.com of delivering her signature belt alongside a big band, \u201cand the beauty is that it never gets old.\u201d Audiences can expect time-tested musical classics along with songs associated with Streisand and Garland and evergreens like \u201cBorn Free.\u201d What of new musicals for a performer who heads to Shanghai this fall to star in Lady M, about Lady Macbeth. \u201cI\u2019m in touch with various shows,\u201d said Ellis, who performed If\/Then in concert at the Savoy this past February and has been mentioned for the West End bow of Death Becomes Her. \u201cMusicals take so long to put on, and these things change by the day as we know.\u201d In the meantime, she\u2019s a happy mother to two sons, ages nine and 11. Fame becomes her, and family does, too.<\/p>\n

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\nNcuti Gatwa and Edward Bleumel in \u201cBorn With Teeth\u201d (Photo: Johan Persson) <\/p>\n

Author! Author!<\/b>

\nYou might not expect an American woman to pen a two-hander about such iconic English males as William Shakespeare and Christopher (Kit) Marlowe, but that\u2019s what Liz Duffy Adams has done with Born with Teeth, opening September 2 at Wyndham\u2019s Theatre under the direction of two-time Olivier Award winner Daniel Evans. Ncuti Gatwa, a.k.a TV\u2019s fifteenth Doctor Who joins Killing Eve\u2019s Edward Bluemel in the cast. \u201cI\u2019m a playwright because I fell in love with Shakespeare when I was 15,\u201d the engaging Adams said. \u201cThe first play I ever saw was Twelfth Night in Beverly, Massachusetts.\u201d This co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company is in a class of its own. \u201cI\u2019m just some random American,\u201d said Adams, \u201cand it\u2019s like the mothership has called me home: I am physically unable to believe this is happening.\u201d As for a play inspired \u201cby how artists and their works survive under an authoritarian regime,\u201d such topics, the author added, \u201cfeel nowadays all the more relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\nConor McPherson (Photo by Emilio Madrid for Broadway.com) <\/p>\n

Only Connect<\/b>

\nConor McPherson\u2019s Olivier-winning The Weir premiered in 1997 in London before heading to Broadway and making a star out of the Irish dramatist, now 54 and this theater season\u2019s busiest playwright. He\u2019s had two shows in a row at the Old Vic and is adapting The Hunger Games for its stage debut in November. The volume of activity \u201cdoesn\u2019t seem to knock a feather out of [McPherson],\u201d noted the eloquent Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, who is one of a five-person ensemble headed this time round by Brendan Gleeson. \u201cAs an artist, Conor is so brilliant in the true sense of the word: he can spin all these plates and hold all these worlds in his head.\u201d As for the spooky, mood-shifting nature of the play, Vaughan-Lawlor said he finds the writing \u201cmind-blowingly perceptive and wise and mysterious and cosmic: this is a timeless play about people coming together to find connection and vulnerability.\u201d The surely bonding opening night is September 19 at the Harold Pinter Theatre.<\/p>\n

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\nThe company of \u201cBacchae\u201d in rehearsal at the National Theatre (Photo: Marc Brenner) <\/p>\n

Fresh Start<\/b>

\nThe National Theatre\u2019s eagerly awaited production of Bacchae marks the first production under the stewardship of its new artistic director, Indhu Rubasingham, who is directing the Euripides classic. It also marks the playwriting debut of the 32-year-old actor Nima Taleghani, an alumnus of Jamie Lloyd\u2019s productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Romeo and Juliet who has penned a new take on this title that will, he told Broadway.com, \u201cmerge the epic and the personal, the classical and the modern.\u201d The marketing for the production shows cast member Clare Perkins with bloodstained lips, alongside the tag line \u201cthis ain\u2019t no classic play bitches.\u201d So how is the protean Taleghani feeling six weeks into rehearsal about landing such a high-profile writing gig? \u201cI try not to think about it too much since I don\u2019t want to feel like I\u2019ve jumped some queue,\u201d said the actor turned author, who had never previously seen or even read the play. \u201cI\u2019m just trying not to f*ck it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\u201cClarkston\u201d (Photo: Emilio Madrid) <\/p>\n

Double Vision<\/b>

\nSamuel D. Hunter makes his Broadway debut this fall with Little Bear Ridge Road, starring Laurie Metcalf, and in the meantime, the much-lauded author of The Whale and A Case for the Existence of God is marking his London debut with the premiere of his 2018 off-Broadway play, Clarkston. TV star Joe Locke (Heartstopper) heads the cast and opening night is September 25 at the Trafalgar Theatre. \u201cThis feels like a dream; I\u2019m waiting for the sky to fall down,\u201d the warmly spoken Hunter told Broadway.com. \u201cI\u2019m 19 plays into my career, and to have the West End thing and the Broadway thing at once is amazing and overwhelming at the same time.\u201d With specific regard to the three-character Clarkston, directed here by Jack Serio, Hunter called London \u201ca nut I\u2019ve wanted to crack for so many years\u201d\u2014The Whale was seen in the U.K. in 2018 only in Bath. The play\u2019s themes of \u201can aging empire and what that conquest has actually given us\u201d will, Hunter hopes, resonate with a British audience, and the author speaks glowingly of Locke: \u201cSomething about Joe\u2019s sensibility fits the character of Jack like a glove; he\u2019s perfect for the role.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kerry Ellis, Ncuti Gatwa, Joe Locke, Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville (Photos: c\/o SJB Marketing, Johan Persson and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-382861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}