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After seeing 150 or so shows in 2024, I’m done for the year, and resigned to approximately two-and-a-half barren weeks of not seeing any theatre. But then – 2025!
If you want a really comprehensive list of all the major shows coming up, then do check out our rolling bookings guide, but here are the six theatre shows from 2025 that I am personally the most excited about.
Elektra
Yes, it’s exciting having an Avenger in the West End in the form of Captain Marvel herself Brie Larson (and let’s not forget she’s an Oscar winner too). Celebrities are awesome and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But I am going to have to give the hipster reason for wanting to see this new production of Ancient Greek tragedy Elektra: it’s helmed by US director Daniel Fish, whose deconstruction of the musical Oklahoma! was one of the best Broadway imports of the last few years. I have no idea what he’s going to do with Sophocles’s millennia-old yarn, but I doubt it’ll be the standard cosy star vehicle.
Duke of York’s Theatre, Jan 24-Apr 12 2025.
The Seagull
By the same token I could now go off on one about how the big appeal of this major production of the Chekhov classic is the opportunity to see legendary German director Thomas Ostermeier’s first original British show. Oh, the cast? Yeah it’s a great cast – Emma Corrin, Tanya Reynolds, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tom Burke… love all those guys. Oh, you mean the person playing vain aging actress Arkadina, you mean Cate Blanchett? It is, of course, unutterably exciting to see Blanchett return to the stage, not least because she’s never really done any of the great classic plays over here, having basically saved those for Australia and Broadway. Don’t expect Ostermeier to give anyone an easy ride, but do expect this to be pretty special.
Barbican Centre, Feb 26-Apr 5.
Manhunt
Robert Icke has stood on the threshold between ‘adapting director’ and ‘playwright’ for a while now, with his intensely moving root-and-branch rewrites of Oresteia, Mary Stewart, Oedipus and Professor Bernhardi. But for 2025 he’ll be making his official debut as a playwright with Manhunt, an unexpected, intriguing drama about the last days of notorious British fugitive Raoul Moat. We know little about the production, apart from the fact Icke is writing and directing it, but the man has a stupendous track record and I’d be surprised if this wasn’t another stunner.
Royal Court Theatre, Mar 28-May 3 2025. Buy tickets here.
Tambo & Bones
For my money, Dave Harris’s bonkers time-hopping satire about – well, kind of about – race relations in America is one of the most underrated plays to come out of the US this decade. My take is that the original Stateside production must have been absolutely dreadful, as the tepid American reviews feel like they’re of a different show to Matthew Xia’s brilliant UK premiere, which ran at Stratford East in 2023 and is blessedly coming back for 2025. I truly do not want to spoiler a show that left me gasping at its insane final act, but let’s just say it follows two African Americans – social conscious Tambo, and incorrigible hustler Bones – on an odyssey from America’s past to its future. You’ll have never seen anything quite like it. But you should see it.
Stratford East, Apr 29-May 10 2025.
Here We Are
The unassuming name belies the fact Here We Are has about as heavy a burden of expectations as it’s possible for a show to have: it is the final musical by Stephen Sondheim, the greatest composer of musicals to have ever lived. It also sounds cool as heck, the story being a mash up of the plots of two of Luis Buñuel’s surrealist film classics. Reviews from its 2023 New York debut suggested it was good but you can tell Sondheim hadn’t quite finished it. But with all due expectation management, it sounds cool, has an insane cast - Rory Kinnear! Jane Krakakowski! Martha Plimpton! - and who doesn’t want to see the new Sondheim?
National Theatre, Apr 23-Jun 28 2025.
Hercules
Ten years ago I’d have rolled my eyes at another megabucks musical IP exploitation from Disney. Now it’s pretty thrilling to have a crazily big budget new West End show that I can actually take my kids to. Disney stage adaptations can be mercurial, but it’s certainly fun that the Mouse’s latest overlooks bigger and more obvious hits in favour of this eccentric Greek mythological romp from 1997. I do not expect it to be life altering, profound or dramatically progressive. But it should be good, clean, high production value fun.
Theatre Royal Drury Lane, booking Jun 6 2025 to Jan 10 2026. Buy tickets here.