The best UK theatre to see in May 2023
From The Vortex to A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, Simon Button rounds up this month’s must-sees.
By Simon Button
May is the build-up to summer and as always, Attitude has got the best round-up of what theatre to see this month.
Enjoy!
The Vortex
Noël Coward’s 1924 Jazz Age play about an aging beauty, her troublesome son, and an unexpected engagement is revived 50 years after his death. With the son’s cocaine habit viewed back in the 20s as a metaphor for homosexuality, it caused a stir but was Coward’s first big success. Real-life mother and son Lia Williams and Joshua James head the cast.
The Vortex plays at the Chichester Festival Theatre until 20 May. Get tickets here.
Bleak Expectations
What the Dickens! Mark Evans has penned what is promised to be a “high-octane and hilarious Dickens mash-up” as it follows the adventures of Pip, his sisters, and his best friend Harry Biscuit. Based on the Radio 4 comedy of the same name, it features a different guest narrator each week. Signed up so far are Tom Allen, Stephen Fry, Jo Brand, and Sue Perkins, among other big names.
Bleak Expectations plays at the Criterion Theatre, London, from 3 May. Get tickets here.
Greatest Days
Kym Marsh and her daughter Emilie Cunliffe headline this show packed with Take That tunes, which originally went under the name The Band. The new title is a better, more evocative one for the story of a bunch of friends obsessed with a boy band in the 90s who are reunited 20 years later. Tim Firth (of Calendar Girls and Kinky Boots fame) wrote a book that manages to cram in more than 15 of Take That’s songs.
Greatest Days is touring the UK from 6 May. Get tickets here
Once on This Island
Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is transformed into the Caribbean for the opening musical of its Summer 2023 season. A coming-of-age tale inspired by The Little Mermaid, it stars Gabrielle Brooks and Stephenson Ardern-Sodje as peasant girl Ti Moune and rich boy Daniel whose romance is forbidden by prejudice. Be sure to take warm clothing since the one thing they can’t recreate is the Caribbean climate.
Once on This Island is playing at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre from 10 May to 10 June. Get tickets here.
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction
Following a short run at the Barbican, Miranda Rose Hall’s “darkly funny, life-affirming” play is touring the country. It calls at Coventry, Prescot, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Plymouth, and York. Powered by bicycles, it’s a one-woman show about reimagining theatre in a climate crisis, with a different production team and cast at each venue.
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction is touring the UK from 10 May to 27 September. Get tickets here.