Lyn Gardner's Weekly Picks
Published on 21 September 2026
The life and times of an economist, John Maynard Keynes, may seem an improbable subject for a new play, but given that The Standard of Living (Theatre Royal Haymarket) is written by James Graham who has turned the England dressing room (Dear England), the chief whips offices (This House) and the 2008 financial crisis (Make It Happen) into riveting theatre, this is unlikely to be a problem. Besides Keynes - played here by Rory Kinnear - was no dry academic but a colourful man who ran with the Bloomsbury set, was openly bisexual and sexually voracious and supported eugenics. So, a complicated chap and one whose ideas about the economy remain influential today. Still not persuaded? Nicholas Hytner directs.
The Baker and his wife want a child but have been cursed with infertility. But the curse could be broken if they go Into the Woods (Noel Coward) and collect a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as cow, a slipper as pure as gold and a cow as white as milk. So begins Stephen Sondheim’s glorious mash-up of fairytales which arrives at the Noel Coward in a transfer from the Bridge. It is a very classy evening in Jordan Fein’s superb revival which comes with a real forest created by designer Tom Scutt, and a terrific cast including John Dalgleish, Kate Fleetwood and Laura Pitt-Pulford. A brilliant musical reminder that happy ever after is never quite what it’s cracked up to be.
Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo stars in the latest revival of Rent (Tom Stoppard Theatre), a show which takes its inspiration from Puccini’s La Boheme and transposes it to New York in the late eighties when the rents and the death toll from Aids is rising. Jonathan Larson’s cult rock musical comes cloaked in legend. In part because it was in the vanguard of breaking the mould of the Broadway musical when it premiered in the early 1990s, and also because its creator died tragically the night after the final dress rehearsal. It may now be a period piece itself, but it is one which in this revival by Luke Sheppard should win the piece new fans.
Rent is not the only Puccini-inspired musical on the horizon. Next year will see the return of Miss Saigon (Prince Edward) to the West End almost 40 years since Schonberg and Boubil’s re-working of Madame Butterfly first premiered, and a decade since it was last seen in London. But, of course, times and attitudes have changed since it was first seen in London and perhaps with Miss Saigon, a musical which has been accused of contributing to stereotypes, and indeed even spawned Kimber Lee’s Bruntwood International Prize-winning play, untitled fck mss s**gon play, which explores misrepresentation, invisibility and Asian stereotypes, the question is why now, and how do you stage it. It helps, of course, that like Puccini’s Butterfly, it has a heart-breaking love story at its centre, and that the show which savagely critiques the corrupting role of the US in Vietnam arrives at a time when US adventures abroad is having a fall-out across the world.
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.