Dear Lupin, London
In 2012, Dear Lupin, Letters To A Wayward Son won the Sunday Times’ humour book of the year accolade for father and son Roger and Charlie Mortimer. Now the rib-tickling epistolary tome has been turned into a play by writer and actor Michael Simkins. And in a neat piece of life imitating art, the parts are to be played by James Fox and his son Jack. The Bafta-winning Fox Sr describes his character as a “geriatric old Etonian hack and long-suffering father” who sends touching letters (no emails, one imagines) to his feckless progeny (Fox Jr, seen on TV in Mr Selfridge and Fresh Meat). Philip Franks directs.
Apollo Theatre, W1, Thursday 30 July to Saturday 19 September
MC
Splendour, London
Four women are sitting in a room, all politeness and expectation. The talk is of Prada, the drink is vodka, and the setting is the presidential palace of an eastern European dictator. Splendour, though, being an Abi Morgan play, has much going on beneath the brittle surface and her 2000 work deftly probes the women’s lives as a civil war looms outside. One of the quartet is a western photojournalist who has come to take a portrait of the dictator, the others are his loyal wife and a lifelong friend she has betrayed, plus an interpreter. The cast of four comprises Zawe Ashton, Sinéad Cusack, Michelle Fairley and Genevieve O’Reilly (no, the dictator doesn’t actually arrive), and it’s directed by Robert Hastie. Morgan, of course, is best known for TV work such as The Hour and films including The Iron Lady.
Donmar Warehouse, WC2, Thursday 30 July to Saturday 26 September
MC
946, nr St Austell
Kneehigh’s Emma Rice will shortly be heading off to become artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe in London, but not before she stages the latest Michael Morpurgo children’s book to make the transition from page to stage. Rechristened 946, there is nothing childish about Morpurgo’s wartime novel The Amazing Story Of Adolphus Tips, which was inspired by the catastrophic 1944 rehearsal for the D-day landings that left 946 people dead. Rice was given the novel by her mother, who told her that it would make a great theatre show for Kneehigh, and Rice obviously agreed. The setting – Kneehigh’s magical portable venue, the Asylum – should be very lovely, too.
Lost Gardens Of Heligan, Saturday 25 July to Sunday 23 August
LG
The Deliverance, Dundee
The long-awaited final part of Jennifer Tremblay’s trilogy, about one woman’s memories of her past and an attempt to find reconciliation and redemption, gets a preview performance in Scotland this week before heading to the Edinburgh fringe (Assembly Roxy, 6 to 31 Aug), where it will premiere alongside the two previous parts of the trilogy: The List and The Carousel. The incomparable Maureen Beattie plays the woman we first saw in The List trying to assuage her all-consuming guilt at her failure to act and save another and then, in The Carousel, reflecting on three generations of family relationships as she tends to her dying mother. The connections between all three pieces are likely to be made clear in this final part of the triptych, in which the woman attempts to fulfil her mother’s final wish.
Dundee Rep, Sunday 26 July
LG
Oliver!, Newbury
Luke Sheppard’s staging of Tony award-winning musical In The Heights was a massive hit at Southwark Playhouse in 2014 and will be revived in London later in the year. Meanwhile, Sheppard moves to the Watermill, which has a strong tradition of producing pocket-sized stagings of big musicals. John Doyle made such a success here with stripped-back versions of Fiddler On The Roof and Sweeney Todd that he headed to Broadway. Lionel Bart’s musical version of Oliver Twist is usually a big stage show, so it will be interesting to see what Sheppard does with a piece that includes some hugely memorable moments as well as songs. This could well be a case of less turning out to be more.
The Watermill, Friday 31 July to Saturday 19 September
LG
For Services Rendered Chichester
When W Somerset Maugham’s play about the legacy of the first world war appeared in the West End in 1932 with Flora Robson and Ralph Richardson in the cast, audiences probably thought that they were in for a cosy drama about middle-class English life. How wrong they were. The play lasted a mere 78 performances, surely a result of an underlying savagery that remains shocking even today. Exploring the aftermath of war on one family, including a son returned blinded and daughters crippled by loss and a lack of prospects, the whole thing is like a very English Three Sisters. Director Howard Davies is likely to play to its Chekhovian delicacies.
Festival Theatre: Minerva Theatre, Friday 31 July to Saturday 5 September
LG
