Diary Date: Theatre round up: 6 shows to see this March

To Kill A Mockingbird

@ Gielgud Theatre

Opened 10^th March

Harper Lee’s story of racial injustice has sold 45 million copies worldwide, with 2020 marking the 60th anniversary of its publication. To Kill A Mockingbird is adapted by Aaron Sorkin, but based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer-winning novel. The play tells the story of young Scout and her father Atticus Finch, a lawyer tasked with defending a local, Tom Robinson, who is accused of rape. The novel explores justice and racial tension in a small Southern town, and is one of the best-selling novels of all-time.

For more information on To Kill A Mockingbird, click here.

Straight Line Crazy

@ Bridge Theatre

Opens 14^th March

For forty uninterrupted years, Robert Moses was the most powerful man in New York. Though never elected to office, he manipulated those who were through a mix of guile, charm and intimidation.

Motivated at first by a determination to improve the lives of New York City’s workers, he created new parks, new bridges and 627 miles of expressway to connect the people to the great outdoors. But in the 1950s, groups of citizens at grass roots began to organize against his schemes and against the motor car, campaigning for a very different idea of what a city was and for what it should be.

For more information on Straight Line Crazy, click here.

The Route

@ Bush Theatre

Opens 18^th March

Step onto the route of Notting Hill Carnival past and present to celebrate Black Joy through live performance, music, dance, and big party energy.

For more information on The Route, click here.

Clybourne Park

@ Park Theatre

Opens 21 March, 2022

In 1959, Russ and Bev are moving to the suburbs after the tragic death of their son and have sold their house to the neighbourhood’s first black family.

Decades later, the roles are reversed when a young white couple buys the lot in what is now a predominantly black neighbourhood, signalling a new wave of gentrification. In both instances, a community showdown takes place – are the same issues festering beneath the floorboards fifty years on?

Directed by Oliver Kaderbhai, this outrageous comedy has never been more relevant more than a decade after it first played in London.

For more information on Clybourne Park, click here.

Traplord

@ Sadlers Wells 180 Studios

Opens 26^th March

Wandering between dreams and reality, TRAPLORD takes us on a new heroic journey to self-actualisation.

Using dance, theatre and spoken word to explore raw and confrontational themes of mental health and masculinity, TRAPLORD is an invitation to question the stereotyping of Black men in contemporary western society; an attempt to escape from the mental state of being condemned before having lived.

For more information on Traplord, click here.

Black Love

@ Kiln Theatre

Opens 28^th March

Meet Aurora and Orion. Sister and brother. Constellations in time. More than blood. More than just fam.

Inside their small London flat, memories of their parents’ Black love surrounds them. When that love is threatened, they must first find understanding and connection before they can begin to find a way back to one another.

An explosion of form-busting storytelling, Black Love celebrates and investigates the Black experience through music, real-life stories and imagined worlds. This ‘beautiful ode to black society and home’ (The Guardian) is not to be missed.