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October is arguably the peak month of the London theatre calendar, with all the big shows that’ll be running until Christmas getting underway. It’s certainly the busiest if you like a celebrity: Morfydd Clarke, Mark Strong, Lesley Manville, Mark Rylance, Adrien frickin’ Brody, Steve Coogan, Meera Syal, Emma D’Arcy, Jodie Whittaker, Ruth Negga, Lily Collins, David Tennant… that is a lot of famous people, and while they’ll sadly all be too busy acting to be able to check out each other’s shows, you can theoretically see them all. Check out our guide to this frantic month (with a few non-celebrity vehicles tossed in too).
1. Angry and Young
The Almeida spoils us this autumn with a double bill of kitchen sink classics from the 1950s, the decade that was to theatre what the 1960s were to pop music. Put in the hands of young directors Atri Banerjee and Diyan Zora, it’s an attempt to see what John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Arnold Wesker’s Roots can mean 70 years after they dynamited the UK theatre establishment. And maybe they’ll fall flat on their faces, but it should be a thrill seeing them do it. An ensemble cast will perform both shows, with Morfydd Clarke – aka Galadriel from The Rings of Power – the biggest name present.
Almeida Theatre, until Nov 23.
2. Oedipus
Theatrical genius Robert Icke’s take on the ancient tragedy about a statesman whose life unravels when he discovers his wife Jocasta is in fact his mother was first staged in Amsterdam in 2018, and was supposed to come over here in 2020 with the legendary Helen Mirren as Jocasta. The pandemic scuppered that, but this month it arrives at last, with Mark Strong as Oedipus and the wonderful Lesley Manville replacing Mirren. It’s a touch less starry, but that’s still a dynamite cast, and Icke’s visionary direction is inevitably usually the real talking point.
Wyndham’s Theatre, Oct 4-Jan 4. Buy tickets here.
3. Juno and the Paycock
If the role of self-aggrandising layabout ‘Captain’ Jack Boyle doesn’t exactly feel like it’s a stretch for Mark Rylance then that’s not really a bad thing as Seán O’Casey’s Irish Civil War-set Juno and the Paycock is a stone cold classic, and Mark Rylance is probably the greatest actor alive today. He’s joined by Succession’s J Smith-Cameron (aka Gerri) who’ll play Jack’s no-nonsense wife Juno, trying to keep the family alive through the chaos of war.
Gielgud Theatre, until Nov 23. Buy tickets here.
4. The Fear of 13
Now this is how you start your tenure as artistic director: for his first show in charge at the Donmar, Tim Sheader has bagged the UK stage debut – and first theatre performance since he became famous – of Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody. The show is an intriguing one, being an adaptation of David Sington’s documentary film of the same name about Nick Yarris, a man who spent 22 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Brody plays Yarris, naturally.
Donmar Warehouse, Oct 4-Nov 30.
5. Dr Strangelove
Britain’s greatest living satirist Armandi Iannucci adapting the greatest British satirical film of all time – that would be Stanley Kubrick’s unhinged Cold War comedy Dr Strangelove – sounds almost too good to be true. Can big-name star Steve Coogan step into Peter Sellars’ trio of roles? Is it a problem that it's not in black and white? Is director Sean Foley edgy enough to follow in Kubrick’s footsteps? There are a lot of questions, but if this goes well it should be spectacular.
Noël Coward Theatre, Oct 8-Jan 25 2025. Buy tickets here.
6. The Buddha of Suburbia
Whimsical auteur Emma Rice premiered her stage adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s seminal debut novel earlier this year in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the reviews were ecstatic. So lucky us that The Buddha of Suburbia is transferring to the Barbican as the first half of a two-part RSC takeover of the main theatre. Semi-autobiographical, wickedly funny and often plain rude, the story follows Karim, a young mixed-race man as he negotiates his coming of age in ’70s south London suburbia.
Barbican Centre, Oct 22-Nov 16. Buy tickets here.
7. The Other Place/A Tupperware of Ashes
It’s a fine-looking month over at the National Theatre this October, with two big openings. In the Lyttelton, The Other Place is another radical adaptation of a Greek Tragedy, with acclaimed director Alexander Zeldin transforming Sophocles’s Antigone into a domestic drama about a family torn apart by a housing dispute. Emma D’Arcy from House of the Dragon stars. In the smaller Dorfman, Meera Syal stars as a top chef starting to lose her thread in Tanika Gupta’s spiritually infused drama A Tupperware of Ashes.
National Theatre. The Other Place until Nov 9. A Tupperware of Ashes until Nov 16.
8. The Duchess (of Malfi)
Over a decade since she last performed on stage, Jodie Whittaker cashes in her Doctor Who chips to lead this West End revival of Zinnie Harris’s adaptation of John Webster’s gory Jacobean classic The Duchess of Malfi about a noblewoman laid low by the worst of men. Harris’s take is by all accounts a touch more feminist than the original, but nonetheless, brace yourself to see the erstwhile Doctor on the losing side for once.
Trafalgar Theatre, Oct 5-Dec 20. Buy tickets here.
9. Macbeth
There’s another Time Lord in town this month beside Whittaker: David Tennant’s binaural Macbeth – which wowed the Donmar Warehouse last Christmas – is back for an extended 2024 West End run, with Cush Jumbo returning as his troubled conscience of a Lady Macbeth. There will be no publicity and no new reviews and it’s sold out except for a few dementedly expensive tickets, but £20 standing tickets are release online on the morning of each performance at 10am or go along to the Harold Pinter box office in person from that time and bag front row seats for £25 a go.
Harold Pinter Theatre, Oct 1-Dec 14.
10. Quiet Songs
Esoteric musical theatremaker Finn Beames has won this year’s Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award, which long story short means his new show gets a run at the Barbican’s smaller venue The Pit. Quiet Songs is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale about a gay adolescent boy, who’ll be played by Irish star Ruth Negga, her first London performance in over a decade. Intriguingly the string quartet accompaniment will be played with swords used as bows, which is, uh, something?
Barbican Centre, Oct 22-Nov 2.
11. Barcelona
Is there more to Lily Collins than her Netflix smash Emily in Paris, a show whose most ardent defenders might struggle to define as ‘good’? Here’s where we find out! She’ll star opposite Spanish actor Álvaro Morte in a thriller about an American tourist who finds herself in over her head following an entanglement with a handsome stranger in the Catalan capital. Reassuringly it’s directed by Lynette Linton, a woman who has arguably never put a foot wrong, and the text is by US playwright Bess Wohl, who gave us the intriguing Camp Siegfried a couple of years back.
Duke of York’s Theatre, Oct 21-Jan 11 2025. Buy tickets here.
The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2024 and 2025.
Plus: Rufus Norris has announced his final season at the National Theatre.
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