Under Milk Wood, National Theatre, 16th June to 24th July
Dylan Thomas’s 1954 radio play has often been done on the stage, but perhaps never so poignantly as in this post-pandemic version of the small Welsh village of Llareggub (“Bugger all” backwards) awakening with a renewed sense of community. The audience may be socially distanced, but the Olivier auditorium is reconfigured in-the-round. The cast is led by Michael Sheen and Siân Phillips, veterans of the piece on radio, television and film. Director Lyndsey Turner has assembled a crack cast to revive our memories of Captain Cat, Dai Bread, Organ Morgan, Polly Garter, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard and the rest.
Bach & Sons, The Bridge, 23rd June to 11th September
Simon Russell Beale plays Johann Sebastian Bach (and keyboards) in Nina Raine’s new play. Both Bach’s wives, and all his children, were musicians in the family firm: one of them, Carl Philipp Emmanuel (aka CPE) is less talented than dad but much more successful. This does not bode well for domestic harmony but may prompt a family comedy in the turbulent household of arguably music’s greatest ever genius—and one of its most cantankerous.
Hamlet, Theatre Royal, Windsor, 21st June to 4th September
Ian McKellen will be 82 when he opens as Hamlet, 50 years since he played him last—as a sickly, not sickening, romantic—at the right age (according to the Gravedigger, at least) but who cares? You’d have queued to see John Gielgud at whatever age he played the role, and the same may be true of McKellen. Sean Mathias’s cast includes Francesca Annis, Jenny Seagrove, Steven Berkoff and Jonathan Hyde. Not sure who’s playing Yorick’s skull...
