London’s theatre landscape this week spans four productions that could hardly be more different in tone, yet each interrogates what it costs to belong – to a class, a gender, a community, a dream. From Caryl Churchill’s Thatcher-era masterwork to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s deconstructed frontier musical, the range is startling and the standard high.
Top Girls – Everyman Theatre, Liverpool
Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls premiered at the Royal Court Theatre on 28 August 1982, directed by Max Stafford-Clark with a cast including Lesley Manville and Lindsay Duncan. The play follows Marlene, newly promoted to managing director of the Top Girls employment agency, and its famous opening scene places her at a London restaurant dinner party alongside five historical and mythical women – Pope Joan, Lady Nijo, Isabella Bird, Dull Gret, and Patient Griselda – all of whom sacrificed convention for achievement. Churchill has repeatedly stated the play concerns society more than feminism alone, yet its all-female cast remains the most significant feminist intervention in the patriarchal drama form. The 2019 National Theatre revival, directed by Lyndsey Turner in the Lyttelton Theatre with a cast of eighteen women including Katherine Kingsley as Marlene and Liv Hill making her professional debut as Angie, was praised by WhatsOnStage for excavating the various levels on which Churchill’s play operates. The current Liverpool Everyman production features Tala Gouveia as Marlene, a performance described as convincing yet undercut by the character’s own casualties. The production runs through March 2023, with tickets priced from £13.
The Great British Bake Off Musical – Noël Coward Theatre, London
Jake Brunger’s book and Pippa Cleary’s score adapt the Channel 4 baking competition into a two-hour-fifteen-minute stage musical that opened at the Noël Coward Theatre on 25 February 2023 for a twelve-week limited run ending 13 May. Director Rachel Kavanaugh’s production transferred from a summer 2022 world premiere at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham, where it received nightly standing ovations. The West End cast includes four-time Olivier Award-nominated Haydn Gwynne as judge Pam, John Owen-Jones as Phil, Charlotte Wakefield as Gemma – a carer from Blackpool whose soprano voice anchors the show – and Scott Paige as Jim. Prue Leith, judging the real programme since 2017, praised the Cheltenham run as “an uplifting, funny, heartfelt story.” The Guardian called it “affectionately satirical” with good songs, singling out the number “Obviously” as the show’s most satisfying moment. Tickets start at £25 with premium seats at £175.
Sleepova – Bush Theatre, London
Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini’s Sleepova opened at the Bush Theatre on 24 February 2023, running until 8 April. The play follows four Black teenagers – Rey, Elle, Shan, and Funmi – through sleepovers that serve as sacred spaces where they negotiate friendship, grief, sexuality, and the transition into adulthood. Director Jade Lewis stages the piece in a set by Cara Evans designed to resemble a teenager’s bedroom, complete with bunk beds and fairy lights. Amber Grappy plays the extroverted yet vulnerable Rey; Aliyah Odoffin, who lives with sickle cell disease, gives a sensitive performance as Shan; Bukky Bakray, breakout star of the 2019 film Rocks, is captivating as Funmi; and Shayde Sinclair plays the devout Elle, who is beginning to discover her gay sexuality. The Evening Standard noted that “attention has focused on the casting of Bakray, but Sleepova is an ensemble piece driven by a strong script that feels improvised but is the work of” a highly disciplined writer. The play won Ibini the 2023 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright, jointly with Marcelo Dos Santos, and was nominated for the 2024 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre. Tickets are priced from £18, with the theatre accessible from Shepherd’s Bush Market tube station.
Oklahoma! – Wyndham’s Theatre, London
Daniel Fish’s reimagined revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! transferred to Wyndham’s Theatre on 16 February 2023, opening officially on 28 February and running through 2 September. The production originated at Bard SummerScape before an Off-Broadway run at St. Ann’s Warehouse, then a Broadway transfer to Circle in the Square Theatre in 2019, where it won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. Daniel Kluger’s new orchestrations replace the original sixty-piece orchestra with a seven-piece bluegrass band featuring mandolin, pedal steel guitar, and banjo. Arthur Darvill plays Curly McLain with “silky smooth vocals” and a swagger that The Stage described as “infuriatingly insouciant,” while Anoushka Lucas brings “a soaring, sweet voice” to Laurey Williams. Patrick Vaill, who has played the obsessive drifter Jud Fry since the revival’s first staging, gives what The Stage called “a fascinating, horribly magnetic performance” with “eyes pink and shining with tears.” Liza Sadovy’s Aunt Eller deploys “a smokescreen of seen-it-all nonchalance.” The dream ballet sequence, performed by lead dancer Marie-Astrid Mence, replaces Agnes de Mille’s original choreography with solo contemporary dance. The Guardian praised the production as “captivating, offbeat and pulsing with sexual tension,” while John Heginbotham’s choreography keeps “barely-contained lust” throbbing under every line. Tickets range from £25 to £250, with the best availability for weekday matinées.
The Week Ahead
These four productions illustrate the breadth of London theatre in early 2023: Churchill’s structural innovation at the Everyman, a television adaptation finding its stage voice at the Noël Coward, a new playwright’s debut commission at the Bush, and a seventy-five-year-old musical dismantled and reassembled at Wyndham’s. Each demands attention for different reasons, and none can be dismissed as routine. The West End and its satellite venues remain, for now, a place where risk and craft coexist – which is, perhaps, the most encouraging fact of the week.
