London Theatre News Today: Wednesday 23 October

Hannah Tointon will join the West End cast of Waitress at the Adelphi Theatre later this year. The actress that you’ll recognise from The Inbetweeners, Hollyoaks and Mr Selfridge will take up the role of Dawn from 2 December. Hannah takes over from Laura Baldwin, who will make her last performance on 30 November.

Good news for Lucie Jones fans, too, as Waitress announced today that she will extend her run as Jenna until 25 January 2020. Don’t forget to head over to our YouTube channel this Friday’s to catch Waitress’s surprise performance at the TKTS booth this week on the West End Round Up.

The full casting for Christmas At The (Snow) Globe has been announced today. Joining comedians Sandi Toksvig and Sindhu Vee at their heartwarming Christmas extrvaganza will be: Becky Barry, Stella Duffy, Chris Jarman, Tony Jayawardena, David Perkins, Mary Price O’Connor, Jenifer Toksvig, Sophie Trott, Louise Voce and London’s LGBT+ classical choir, The Fourth Choir.

The audience is encouraged not only to sing along to all their favourite Christmas carols, but also to bring along a children’s book to leave under the 13-foot Christmas tree donated by the Danish Embassy, which will be distributed to children’s charities across Southwark. The production will feature integrated British Sign Language, and in a Globe first, will include a touch and scent tour for visually impaired theatregoers ahead of the Audio Described performance on Saturday 21 December.

The Royal Court Theatre announced today a commitment to transitioning to carbon net zero throughout 2020. Following the opening of Open Court: Climate Emergency in March 2020, the theatre will begin operational changes to their food, energy, cleaning, air quality, working hours, transport, waste, material use and more to create practices that reduce, offset and neutralise their impact on the climate.

Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone said;

‘While thinking about how to approach Open Court: Climate Emergency, which is scheduled for March, we realised that so many of our writers and artists are already writing through the lens of the climate emergency and it is represented in many ways in our programme. Lucy and I had given ourselves the challenge of turning the Site [the Royal Court Theatre’s experimental performance space] into a net zero space for March and then asked the obvious question – why aren’t we doing it across the whole building and what are we waiting for? Let’s just get on with it.

‘We will make mistakes, we will move fast and change as the technology and information changes. We will use the time in March to take stock, to hear from people we do not normally hear from in the cultural discussion and to work out new structures and ways of functioning to enable this to happen. We will share all of our learnings – successes and failures. Basically everyone coming into our building from March onwards, in any context, will be contributing to this vital commitment to our climate emergency.’

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s sold-out production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, Evita, will transfer to the Barbican Theatre for 8 weeks next summer. Jamie Lloyd’s reinvention of the Olivier and Tony Award-winning musical about the life of Eva Perón will run between 27 June and 22 August.

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre recently announced their 2020 Season, which you can check out here!

The Barbican announced Inside Out: their 2020 programme today. Read our full article on their new season below:

Peter Andre will guest star in Thriller Live on the West End for two weeks this December. The Aussie pop-star will appear on stage at the Lyric Theatre from 10 – 22 December this year, and is the first of a series of guest stars and special performances that will fill the last 6 months of Thriller’s run at the Lyric.

Thriller has run for 11 years at the Lyric Theatre, but this run will end in April 2020 to allow the Lyric to undergo refurbishment. Plans are underway to transfer Thriller to another West End theatre, but the venue has yet to be announced.