Monday
While Edinburgh gets into the festival spirit this week, many theatres in London and around the country are quiet at this time of the year. But there are shows if you hunt them down. Why not dip a toe into the Camden fringe, which starts today and offers a really wide range of work from comedy to drama, musicals to devised physical theatre. The housing crisis is investigated in Steven Hevey’s We Know Where You Live which plays Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays at the Finborough, London until 18 August. In Edinburgh, the Gate production of The Christians, a play about faith and doubt, starts previewing at the Traverse.
Tuesday
Julia Pascal’s Crossing Jerusalem brings together a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian in the city during the last intifada and it’s at the Park theatre, Finsbury Park, north London, from tonight. It’s your last chance this week for the revival of the song cycle Songs for a New World at the St James, London, featuring a crack cast, including the knockout Cynthia Erivo. Vivien Leigh’s response to being asked for a divorce by Laurence Olivier is the subject of Letter to Larry at Jermyn Street theatre, London. Athol Fugard’s My Children, My Africa is revived at Trafalgar Studios, London, from tonight. The Railway Children continues at the National Railway Museum in York. Tim Crouch’s mighty An Oak Tree is in preview at the Traverse in Edinburgh tonight, but most of the Traverse shows open on Thursday, including Bryony Kimmings’s Fake It ’Til You Make It.
Wednesday
There will be high excitement at London’s Barbican today as Benedict Cumberbatch starts previewing in Lyndsey Turner’s Hamlet. It’s sold out, of course, but there are 30 day seats on sale each day. Danny Braverman’s heartfelt and hugely entertaining Wot? No Fish! begins a run at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. London’s free open-air theatre season begins at the Scoop down by City Hall with The Women of Troy, and Captain Show-Off!, for family audiences adapted from Plautus’s Roman comedies.
Thursday
Alice Birch’s The Lone Pine Club, a theatrical adventure for families, heads into Buckland Abbey near Yelverton in Devon. Marie Jones’s Fly Me to the Moon, a comedy about care and morality, begins at the Lyric Belfast. If the weather is good, check out the Duke’s outdoor version of Oliver Twist in Lancaster’s Williamson Park, which is on all week.
Friday and the weekend
The Edinburgh fringe officially begins today, although a lot of shows will have been in preview since Wednesday. There are around 3,000 to choose from, and this weekend there will be masses of two-for-one offers. So take advantage. On Saturday, the Edinburgh international festival begins, with Juliette Binoche and Patrick O’Kane in Ivo van Hove’s Antigone and Simon McBurney in his latest piece, a binaural show set in the Brazilian wilderness called The Encounter. Tickets are available for both. Have fun and enjoy the summer. I’m off to Edinburgh. See you all on the other side.
