The Wife of Willesden, Kiln Theatre, 17th November to 24th December
Zadie Smith’s debut novel, White Teeth, is largely set in the Kilburn High Road locality of the Kiln (formerly Tricycle) Theatre and duly found its way onto the stage there in an ambitious adaptation three years ago. Smith stays local with her debut play, a raunchy modern re-write of Chaucer’s greatest character in The Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, whose prologue and story are re-imagined in a setting of the Sir Colin Campbell pub right across the road. Clare Perkins plays the life-force motormouth that is Alvita of Willesden, Chaucer’s Alison re-born, but still with the lowdown on five husbands and more.
Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Piccadilly Theatre, 12th November to 28th May
The musical version of Baz Luhrman’s movie opened on Broadway to general acclaim several months before the pandemic hit Manhattan and returned this autumn, sweeping the board at the Tony awards, triumphant in ten categories. The London production, directed, as in New York, by Alex Timbers, is led by seasoned chanteuse Liisi LaFontaine as Satine, sparkling diamond of the Moulin Rouge, and Jamie Bogyo (an American RADA graduate) making a stage debut as the aspiring writer, Christian.
The Play What I Wrote, Birmingham Rep, 27th November to 1st January
A pair of comics try and reanimate their act by staging a Morecambe and Wise tribute show, only for one of Ernie’s execrable plays—"A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimpernel"—to intrude. A mystery star guest stands on his/her tattered dignity when turning up for a plum role. Kenneth Branagh’s West End production twenty years ago was a total joy. One of the show’s co-writers, Sean Foley, now runs the rep, so he should be able to recreate the right sort of delirium.
