Postcard from London: Five shows in three days

From Catherine Tate’s outrageous ‘Oh, Mary!’ to a sleek new RSC ‘Cyrano’ — dispatches from five West End evenings, all recommended.

For the last several years, we’ve traveled to London and made theatre attendance a priority. On a recent trip, we saw five shows in three days: Oh, Mary!, Operation Mincemeat, The Producers, Equus and Cyrano de Bergerac. Here are a few capsule reviews of these shows:

Oh, Mary! — Trafalgar Theatre

We arrived on a Thursday morning, checked into our hotel and walked to the smallish Trafalgar Theatre for Oh, Mary! The London production of Cole Escola’s 2025 Tony-winning play stars Catherine Tate — a top television comedian in the UK who also played the best Doctor Who companion, Donna Noble. The show translates well for UK audiences.

Tate had injured her knee the week before and missed several shows, but I’d read she was back. So when the stage manager came out at curtain and announced that “unfortunately, Ms. Tate injured her knee,” I had that sick feeling — she was one reason we’d booked the show. You could hear the air exit other attendees. The stage manager then added, “But she will be performing in a slightly adjusted show,” and you could feel the happiness spread through the theatre.

The play is nominally about Mary Todd Lincoln, who is not having a great time as first lady in the closing days of the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln has his issues and is inattentive. I hadn’t seen or read much of the Broadway production going in, but this production is terrific. Tate clowns, prances, mugs and chews all the scenery and then some. Whatever physical limitations she has were not evident. At one point, Mary says, “I couldn’t take another step,” and Tate added “literally” to much laughter.

The show itself is rather slight — an elongated series of skits leading to its explosive finale. But it very much is a fun time. In August, Cole Escola will take over the role.

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Note: The first U.S. national tour starts in September, but Denver is not a current stop.

‘Operation Mincemeat’ | Photo: Matt Crockett

Operation Mincemeat — Fortune Theatre

When Oh, Mary! concluded, we dashed to the Fortune Theatre to revisit Operation Mincemeat, which we’d seen with the original London cast back in 2023. The box office was friendly and sold us reduced-price tickets with a clear view.

Operation Mincemeat is a musical about an actual World War II event in which the UK executed an elaborate deception to convince Nazi Germany the Allies were going to invade Sardinia, not Sicily. The musical plays fast and loose with the facts, but so did the recent dramatic film starring Colin Firth.

The musical is alternately hilarious, touching and oh-so-entertaining. I practically grinned the whole time. Five actors assume multiple roles, and the show races through the story. While the current cast doesn’t quite measure up to the original (which included three of the writers on stage), the show doesn’t suffer or miss a beat. The lyrics are inventive and infectious. The staging is admirable for how the actors switch roles so quickly. And then, there’s the glitzy finale.

Note: A U.S. tour starts in September, but Denver is not currently a stop.

The Producers — Garrick Theatre

Friday night. What a blast! This new production of Mel Brooks’ multi-award-winning musical version of his Oscar-winning film grabs the audience from the opening notes to the concluding bows. The story of a failed Broadway producer setting out to deliberately stage the worst show ever so he can abscond with $2 million (the musical is set in the 1950s, so $2 million was a lot!) hits all the beats and pays homage to the big musicals of the era with a more modern approach.

The cast — led by Andy Nyman as producer Max Bialystock and a standout Trevor Ashley as Roger De Bris, the worst director — seems to be having so much fun performing this show, even after a year on the West End. That joy is infectious, even as I cringed occasionally. The choreography is tight. The vocals capture the characters. The costuming delights. All the elements work. It’s big, bold and brash.

‘Equus’ | Photo: Manuel Harlan

Equus — Menier Chocolate Factory

Saturday, we made our way to the Menier Chocolate Factory, a small Off-West End theatre known for terrific productions that frequently transfer to the bigger West End houses — a definite change of pace from light comedy. Getting there was a bit of comedy in itself, as a morning parade known as Trooping the Colour, a celebration of the king’s birthday (even though his actual birthday is in November), was underway.

I hadn’t seen Equus on stage in decades. The 1975 winner of the Tony Award for Best Play, Equus is nominally a play about a psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, tasked with finding out why a teen boy, Alan Strang, has blinded six horses. But it’s about much, much more.

The play is staged in a thrust, three-sided auditorium. We, unfortunately, had the side where Dysart, played by Toby Stephens, had his back to us much of the time. However, that didn’t detract from his very strong performance, which was unlike the one I remembered on stage or that of Richard Burton in the 1977 film version.

This is a fresh take on a modern classic — of its time but still relevant. In this production, the focus is much more on Dysart than on the teen. The teen is a reflection of Dysart’s insecurities and midlife personal and professional crisis. Treatment challenges Dysart to confront himself. To explain more is to spoil the events and story. I found Stephens’ last speech absolutely devastating.

The horses are played by six professional dancers with faux tattoos, and they’re magical. The rest of the cast is excellent in their limited roles. The staging is as dark as the material in the play. There’s a constant sense of dread, and there are no happy endings. You leave the theatre into the light with a lot to digest and talk about.

‘Cyrano De Bergerac’ | Photo: Marc Brenner

Cyrano de Bergerac — Noel Coward Theatre

Saturday evening, we attended the first preview of a new adaptation of the Edmond Rostand classic by the Royal Shakespeare Company, a transfer from the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. I’m quite familiar with prior translations and productions — including the Steve Martin “modern” film (highly recommended) — and this version holds up to them, even as I missed some moments I love. For example, in this version Cyrano doesn’t describe a trip to the moon.

The opening scene collapses two of Cyrano’s speeches into one new “acrostic” composed during the duel. That sequence, including the swordplay, is brilliant. There’s some audience participation in the first act, and the actors use the entire theatre. A band follows Cyrano and is deployed by him at key moments. The adaptors — Simon Evans and Debris Stevenson, with an assist by star Adrian Lester — have given each character their own individual speech pattern, which works to exemplify their characters.

Adrian Lester is magnetic, dynamic and in complete control as Cyrano — a great actor performing one of the stage’s great roles. Susannah Fielding is a more mature Roxane, and her reaction when she learns of Cyrano’s deception feels more authentic than in prior productions. Scott Handy is a particularly sinister Comte de Guiche, and Levi Brown is a properly handsome, vapid Christian. There’s a new character, Abigail, played by Greer Dale-Foulkes, who is an absolute delight and steals every scene she’s in.

This production is unlikely to come to the States, although never say never. But if it were, it would likely land at a place such as St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York City.