April on the London Stage: The Oliviers Approach, Gatsby Crosses the Atlantic and a Manhunt Ensues

John Lithgow in “Giant”; “The Great Gatsby” star Jamie Muscato; Samuel Edward-Cook in rehearsal for “Manhunt”
(Photos: Manuel Harlan; Danny Kaan; Manuel Harlan)

There’s a spring in the step of the London theater in April, as seems appropriate, with new musicals based on classic titles jostling alongside the return of a major film star to the London stage and a new production from the hottest director going. All this plus the Olivier Awards, London’s equivalent of the Tonys, to kick things off. For more on all these enticements, read on.

TROPHY BEARERS
Such Olivier winners from last year as Operation Mincemeat and Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray have taken up residency this season on Broadway, so all eyes will be on this year’s Olivier hopefuls to see who emerges victorious and which shows may well cross the pond. A likely candidate is surely John Lithgow in Mark Rosenblatt’s blistering Giant, nominated in five categories and casting a look back at the children’s-book author Roald Dahl seen at his most cantankerous. The Best Musical front-runner would seem to be the ravishingly scored Curious Case of Benjamin Button, whose original leading lady, Molly Osborne, is currently on Broadway in Othello.

Leading the nominees in terms of numbers (a whopping 13) is Jordan Fein’s open-air revival last summer of Fiddler on the Roof, which is surely the first production ever of that show to get a nod for its fiddler, Raphael Papo; that production moves indoors in May. Best Actress in a Play includes a face-off from two Jocastas (Lesley Manville and Indira Varma) from entirely different productions of Oedipus, and the astonishing Romola Garai is nominated against herself for Supporting Actress in a Play for both Giant and The Years. Adrien Brody may well follow up his second Oscar with a first Olivier for his London stage debut at the Donmar Warehouse in The Fear of 13, and co-hosting the evening at the Royal Albert Hall will be Beverley Knight and Billy Porter, whose very presence promises at once buoyancy and brio.

ON THE RUN
The director-writer Robert Icke’s Broadway-bound Oedipus, mentioned above, is an Olivier front-runner, and the maverick talent is serving the same dual tasks on his new play Manhunt, opening April 8 at the Royal Court. This one tells of the real-life murderer Raoul Moat and the manhunt he prompted in 2010 mere days after being released from prison. (He later committed suicide, age 37.) Leading the cast is Samuel Edward-Cook, here playing Moat after appearing as Hotspur under Icke’s direction last year in Player Kings and collaborating with Icke over a decade before that in the Soho Theatre play Boys—an early project in both men’s careers. “Rob and I have grown up a hell of a lot,” said the immediately engaging Cook, well aware of the challenges of the task at hand, for which he has been in physical training for six months. “[The play] is asking really uncomfortable questions about male rage and masculinity: It’s pretty dark in places, but I think it’s going to be a really, really important piece of theater.”

THE FIRST (MUSICAL) ‘MIDNIGHT’
Joe Buck and “Ratso” Rizzo remain iconic characters thanks to the 1969 film in which the two hustlers were played by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Now, Midnight Cowboy is being reborn as a musical—opening April 10 at Southwark Playhouse Elephant and based not on the John Schlesinger film but on its 1965 source novel by James Leo Herlihy. Nick Winston’s production has a book by Bryony Lavery and score by the musician and songwriter Eg White, the second of whom spoke to Broadway.com about his surprise, and delight, about heading in a new career direction at age 58. Musicals “are really, truly not my world, so I feel privileged to have a momentary ringside seat,” said the exuberant White, whose songs have been covered by the likes of Adele and Sam Smith. Originally asked to write two songs, White was then asked to do the entire score: “This has been a late-career diversion entirely by accident, and it’s been a joy.”

STAR QUALITY
The Great Gatsby seems always to be in London in some form or another, including, yes, a dance version. But this month sees the West End launch of the ongoing Broadway iteration of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, directed in London, as in New York, by Marc Bruni (Beautiful). Of particular note for London is the star wattage of a company headed by 2025 Olivier nominee Jamie Muscato (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) in the title role, and a mighty supporting cast including Rachel Tucker, John Owen Jones, Corbin Bleu, Jon Robyns, and, as Daisy, Francis Mayli McCann. “Somebody compared it to assembling the Avengers of musical theater,” an aptly awestruck Bruni told Broadway.com. “It’s such a gift to have a company all of whom have headlined shows of their own; I find it very humbling.” Opening night is April 24 at the Coliseum.

STANDING TALL
Henrik Ibsen’s 1892 play The Master Builder long ago solidified classic status, and it underpins the alluringly titled My Master Builder from American writer Lila Raicek, which opens April 29 at Wyndham’s Theatre under the direction of Tony winner Michael Grandage (Red, Frozen). What’s more, the play marks the first London stage appearance in 17 years from Ewan McGregor, who played Iago for Grandage in Othello. Raicek speaks of the “wild” turn of events that has led to the play’s London premiere, not least that McGregor was the “one-and-only person” she had in mind when writing this tale of a “starchitect” whom we encounter at a Hamptons dinner party, set on July 4 of this year. “It’s a dream come true,” she told Broadway.com of a text requiring no actual foreknowledge of Ibsen: “You’ll see flecks of the Ibsen in there, but this is fully a new play and it’s being treated as a new play.”