With theatres anxious to rake in cash to repair Covid-era holes in their budgets, "celebs in everything" seems to be their strategy for 2024, said Jan Dalley in the FT. In the West End, "Succession" star Brian Cox will be playing the patriarch of another troubled family in Eugene O'Neill's semi-autobiographical epic Long Day's Journey Into Night (Wyndham's Theatre, London, 19 March-8 June).
Meanwhile, his on-screen daughter Sarah Snook is flaunting "her new pulling power" by playing all 26 roles in Kip Williams's new version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray: "quite a bold move" (Theatre Royal Haymarket, 6 February-11 May).
"Celebrity of a different sort hovers around the more reclusive" playwright Jez Butterworth. The "Jerusalem" writer's new play The Hills of California (which is directed by Sam Mendes) has "nothing to do with either hills or California, apparently: it's set in Blackpool in the hot summer of 1976, and involves (in distant shades of Chekhov) two sisters and a boarding house" (Harold Pinter Theatre, 27 January-15 June).
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Other blockbuster London shows, said The Times, will include Opening Night, based on the cult John Cassavetes movie about a Broadway actress on the verge of a meltdown. Ivo van Hove directs and Sheridan Smith stars, with songs by Rufus Wainwright (Gielgud Theatre, 6 March-27 July).
London Tide is a 21st-century makeover of Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend", by Ben Power, with songs by P.J. Harvey (National Theatre, 10 April-22 June).
The "glorious, life-affirming" musical Come From Away, about airline passengers stranded in Newfoundland after the 9/11 terror attacks, kicks off a marathon UK tour in Leicester in early March (dates across the UK until 5 January 2025).
And in Birmingham, Withnail and I reaches the stage for the first time, adapted by the film's writer-director Bruce Robinson (Birmingham Rep, 3-25 May).
Other shows based on films include Mean Girls, which won acclaim on Broadway in 2018. It will open at the Savoy Theatre, London, in June.
The Devil Wears Prada, with songs by Elton John, got a cool reception when it premiered in the US two years ago. A (presumably reworked) version is due to play at the Theatre Royal Plymouth (6 July-17 August), before moving to the West End.
Finally, look out for Dr. Strangelove, the first approved staging of a Stanley Kubrick film. Adapted by Armando Iannucci and starring Steve Coogan, it is sure to be one of this year's "hottest tickets" (Noël Coward Theatre, 8 October-21 December).
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