Lyn Gardner's Weekly Picks
Published on 29 June 2026
David Morrissey, Mary Louise Parker, Rosie Sheehy, and Tom Glynn-Carney star in The Oresteia at the Bridge, a new contemporary version of the Greek tragedy written and directed by Simon Stone. This should be quite something because Stone has already delivered some of the most memorable shows of the last 15 years, including Medea at the Barbican and the astonishing Yerma at the Young Vic with Billie Piper. Aeschylus’ mighty play may have been written two millennia ago, but Stone is likely to make it seem fresh off the page.
Simon Stone’s theatre is always pretty distinctive, but it looks quite tame compared with the work of Japanese theatre-maker Hideki Noda, whose work has included The Bee with Kathryn Hunter and A Night at the Kabuki, which fused Romeo and Juliet with Queen’s A Night at the Opera. At Sadler's Wells this week, Noda and his 25-strong company can be seen in −320°F, a piece inspired by the Faust myth about a man in search of the secret of eternal life.
It is but a stone’s throw from Sadler's Wells to the Arcola, where you can catch Bella Merlin’s play Tilly No-Body about Tilly Newes, the actress who played Lulu in Frank Wedekind’s scandalous play on stage and subsequently married him in 1904. But it was not a happy marriage, and Wedekind was both possessive and demeaning, reducing her to a nobody. But despite several suicide attempts, she survived the marriage and wrote her own story, an autobiography, on which Merlin’s show—a hit in Edinburgh last year—is based.
It’s 20 years since Richard E. Grant was last on stage, but he returns in what should be high style in a revival of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever at Wyndhams in September. Opposite him making her stage debut will be American TV actress Christine Baranski (The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife and The Gilded Age). The story of the outrageously unconventional Bliss family, who have each invited a weekend guest without telling the others, can be a delight but is notoriously tricky to nail. Fortunately, Emily Burns, who made such neat work of Dodie Smith’s Dear Octopus at the National in 2024, is directing this comedy of exceedingly bad manners, and odds are she will do it exceedingly well.
By Lyn Gardner
Lyn Gardner is an acclaimed theatre journalist and former critic with decades of experience covering British theatre, from off-West End and fringe theatre to major West End productions.