Lyn Gardner's Weekly Picks
Published on 18 May 2026
Tim Burton's iconic movie Beetlejuice, about ghosts who get stuck in their house after an untimely accident, gets a musical makeover and arrives at the Prince Edward after enjoying huge success on Broadway. The design for the house is apparently mind-blowing, the visual effects a treat and the show is apparently canny enough to know what to mess with from the original and what to leave because it is just so. Sure, this is part of a Broadway and West End trend for nostalgia, but by all accounts, this is a show that knows how to press all the right buttons and does it with finesse. And a great sense of humour.
Nine Sixteenths (Brixton House) of a second was the length of time that Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed on live TV during the half-time Super Bowl concert in 2004. But the negative impact on her career lasted for years. Ace theatre-maker Paula Varjack and an all-black female ensemble consider the story from many angles and take the audience on a wild ride through early '00s pop culture, the early days of YouTube and how black women and their bodies are represented and policed.
It should be a swell party at the Barbican, where High Society stars Helen George as Tracy Lord, the icy Philadelphia heiress whose nuptials are about to be celebrated at the family pile. But the wedding has been infiltrated by newshound Mike (Freddie Fox), and soon Tracy, who is already divorced once from Dexter (Julian Overden), is having second thoughts about her impending marriage. The cast includes Felicity Kendal and comes with some Cole Porter classics, including Who Wants to be a Millionaire and True Love.
If you are looking for a class act, then you will be assured of it in The Cherry Orchard (Harold Pinter), which opens in October and reunites Kristin Scott Thomas with director Ian Rickson. The pair worked together on another Chekhov play, The Seagull, in 2008. Better still, Chekhov’s original comes in a new adaptation by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, who has another adaptation currently running in London: The Hunger Games. Now that’s a playwright with real range.
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.