Last modified on Tue 11 May 2021 06.15 EDT
When Shakespeareâs Globe announced its reopening plans for spring, the headline news was that it had killed off the interval. Shows in its new season will run without a break as part of Covid safety protocols that include, for the first time, seats spread out in the theatreâs yard where groundlings have traditionally jostled shoulder to shoulder.
The Globeâs artistic director, Michelle Terry, pointed out that the plays were not written with intervals in the first place. When we catch up for a chat a week or so before the theatre reopens, she adds that audiences will be given a âbeautiful autonomyâ, liberated from the strictures âmust sit in seat, must face forward, lights must go downâ. To pee or not to pee is a question no longer reserved for the halfway point. âYou can come in and out, thatâs your right,â she says. âGo to the loo, go to the gift shop, go to the bar which will stay op
The best theatre shows to book tickets for in 2021, in London and the UK
Excited about post-lockdown life? Good news: numerous tickets are available, from Andrew Lloyd Webber s Cinderella to a Bob Marley musical
Theatre highlights to come include Ian McKellen s Hamlet
The show will go on! Theatres finally reopened on May 17 with socially distanced audiences, as England moved into Step 3 of the lockdown roadmap. It is hoped that venues can return to full audiences from June 21 (Step 4).
Many shows, including new and returning West End productions, are already selling tickets. Check out our picks below and get booking.
Best theatre shows for 2021
Shakespeare’s Globe Summer Season 2021
April 6, 2021 Last updated:
April 6, 2021
After one of the most divided, isolating and lonely times in global history, Summer 2021 at Shakespeare’s Globe celebrates all that unites us: story, laughter, tears, nature and of course theatre.
This summer we’ll celebrate the lovers and the poets, revel in the power of our strong imaginations and rediscover the wonder of theatre.
We cannot wait to open our great oak doors once again and welcome you, our audience, safely back into our unique spaces for what promises to be a season of love, life and catharsis.
We’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh.
Joining forces with Francesca across our Marie Claire platforms are creative powerhouses including playwright Sabrina Mahfouz, actress and poet Jade Anouka, violinist Jess Murphy, theatre director Ola Ince, playwright Beth Steel, singer/songwriter Call Me Loop, Joanna Payne, founder of arts network Marguerite, choreographer Emma Jayne Park and theatre director Rachel Bagshaw.
Reading their pandemic life stories will only confirm to you why culture keeps us happy, thriving and inspired. How many of us would have survived this year without books, music, art or watching TV, film and theatre online?
Theatre Artists Fund – how you can help
It’s been a year of incredible hardship, challenge and great loss for all creative freelancers. Please consider supporting the thousands and thousands of freelance workers, who as actress Tamzin Outhwaite posted today, have received no financial support. They were the first into lockdown and will be the last out.
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‘I want to be a role model,’ says ernardine Evaristo emphatically. ‘And an inspiration. Because my background, it’s not, you know, a white background. It’s not upper-class; it’s not privileged; it’s not Oxbridge. I come from a large, working-class, mixed-race family growing up in suburbia. The things that have happened to my career this last year have been absolutely wonderful, but people shouldn’t forget that it’s been a very, very long journey.’
The 61-year-old winner of the 2019 Booker Prize sits at a 10-seat distance from me (it’s before the latest lockdown), in the front row of the theatre-in-the-round of Rose Bruford College. Evaristo has just begun a five-year term as president of the Kent drama school. There is a satisfying circularity to this alumna appointment. These days Evaristo thinks of herself, with occasional amusement, as part of the establishment: a professor of literature at Brunel University; an honorary fellow of St Anne’s College, O