Lyn Gardner's Weekly Picks
Published on 22 June 2026
Returning to the West End, where it was seen in 2022, comes To Kill a Mockingbird (Wyndhams), Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s famed story of racial injustice and white supremacy in small-town Alabama in 1934. The smartness of this evening is the way it pays homage to Lee’s original child’s-eye view of the story but also foregrounds the complexities of white lawyer Atticus Finch (played here by Richard Coyle), who defends the black man accused of rape. Here he is no heroic figure but far more multifaceted and in thrall to his own white saviour attitudes.
Years ago, the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre produced A Midsummer Night’s Dream every season. Generations of school kids saw their first Shakespeare productions at the venue. But giving titles a rest makes way for new things, and so it proved under artistic director Timothy Sheader, who made such a good job of his tenure that he got the plum Donmar job. Now new artistic director Drew McOnie revives the Dream tradition but with a twist. Atri Banerjee’s revival, which comes with a folk-inspired score by Maimuna Memon. Whatever happens, as dusk falls, this venue offers a setting which is as magical as theatre gets.
There is a pleasure in being the first to see new shows, but that often means that longer-running shows get overlooked. So, let’s hear it for Operation Mincemeat (Fortune), the sharply intelligent, insanely witty, and fizzingly silly musical inspired by a top-secret Allied WW2 operation to trick Hitler into believing that British troops were going to invade Sardinia. It is a fascinating story and one delivered with joy, heart and an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek humour. Its success in both the West End and Broadway is an indication of its wide appeal, and it is an absolute delight to see an independent company guiding their own show from cult hit to deserved commercial success.
A show about the economist John Maynard Keynes? You could be forgiven for thinking that doesn’t sound riveting. But think again because The Standard of Living at the Theatre Royal Haymarket for just 12 weeks from September is written by Punch and Dear England writer James Graham, stars Rory Kinnear and Natalia Osipova and is directed by Nick Hytner. Graham has transformed unpromising scenarios such as This House, about the hung parliament of 1974, and Labour of Love, about a changing Labour Party, into edge-of-your-seat drama. He has already written about the banking crisis and the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Making It Happen, so he knows a thing or two about economics. But Maynard Keynes had an interesting personal life too and was unable to resist treating his relationships with lovers of both sexes to statistical analysis.
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.