This does mean there’s space for the excellent Abigail’s Party to transfer from the Menier Chocolate Factory, where it had a sold out run, to the larger Wyndham’s Theatre. Starring Jill Halfpenny, Joe Absolom and Natalie Casey (who’s hilarious), this is a brilliant new version of Mike Leigh’s classic comedy and should continue to make audiences cringe and chortle in equal measure now it’s in the West End.

Other new shows heading to London in the coming weeks are Six Actors In Search Of A Director, a new comedy written and directed by Steven Berkoff at the Charing Cross Theatre from 16 May; and Democracy, Sheffield Theatre’s critically acclaimed production of Michael Frayn’s 2003 hit, at the Old Vic from 15 June.

Finally, have you ever fancied yourself as one of The Beatles? New West End theatrical concert, Let It Be, is running open auditions to find actor-musicians to play the fab four. Head to the Gielgud Theatre on 8 May to show off your talents; successful applicants will join the cast of Let It Be when it opens at the Prince of Wales Theatre in September this year.

London Cast News:

Star of American hit series Smash, Raza Jaffrey is to play the sleazy lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago from 16 May to 14 July this summer. He’ll then be replaced by Olympic gold medallist and Dancing On Ice judge Robin Cousins.

Lisa Dillon will star alongside Stephen Mangan in the Royal Court’s forthcoming production of Birthday, from 22 June. Joe Penhall’s tense new comedy is about a couple waiting for the arrival of their new baby.

You can find out all you need to know about London theatre, book tickets and read about all the shows on offer on our main website: visitlondon.com/events/theatre

Simon Callow is bringing his one-man show, Being Shakespeare, back to London in March, for a strictly limited run. He’ll be at the Trafalgar Studios from 7 to 31 March, bringing a multitude of the bard’s most famous creations to life. It’ll be the perfect warm-up for the World Shakespeare Festival which kicks off the following month.

Another March date for your diaries is Thursday 15, when Complicite and Simon McBurney return to the Barbican (following the success of Shun-Kin and A Disappearing Number) with a new English adaptation of Master and Margarita. It’s a stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s rich magical realist novel about the struggle between evil and compassion. I’m a big fan of Complicite’s work, so I’m really looking forward to seeing this one.

Finally, the Reduced Shakespeare Company are back for in London in 2012, bringing The Complete World of Sports (abridged) to the Arts Theatre for a six-week run from 18 July to 25 August, to coincide with the London 2012 Olympic Games. The show’s described as “every sport even played on every continent in the entire history of the world in under two hours!”. It’s a clever idea from clever boys, and I wish them luck!

London Casting News

• One of my favourite actors, Jill Halfpenny, is returning to London, to play Beverly in Abigail’s Party at the Menier Chocolate Factory from 2 March
• Another great British star, Tara Fitzgerald, will appear opposite Ben Chaplin and Jemma Redgrave in Farewell To The Theatre at the Hampstead Theatre from 1 March
• Stand-up comic and actor Ardal O’Hanlon is playing the lead in a new production of Port Authority at the Southwark Playhouse from 24 January
• Finally, I’ve got details of the lucky ladies playing alongside Zach Braff in All New People at the Duke of York’s Theatre from February. Both Eve Myles and Susannah Fielding have previously worked with the RSC, and both have strong sci-fi links: Myles plays Gwen in Torchwood; Fielding has appeared in Doctor Who. I wish them both well with their return to theatre

More next week…

Second, a note for any Shakespeare fans out there. Theatre company Antic Disposition is planning to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first performance of The Tempest in London this August. And they’re staging it at London’s Middle Temple Hall, an Elizabethan venue where Shakespeare’s own company once performed. What a treat.

The Royal Court has announced two extensions this week. Both current hit Chicken Soup With Barley, and forthcoming black comedy The Village Bike, have added dates to their runs.

Now to this week’s casting news:

• Robert Sheehan from E4′s Misfits will make his stage debut at the Old Vic in September, playing the lead in JM Synge’s The Playboy Of The Western World. He’ll be performing opposite Ruth Negga and Old Vic regular Niamh Cusack.
• Hustle star Marc Warren returns to the London stage at the Aldwych Theatre in October, playing iconic prisoner Cool Hand Luke in a stage adaptation of Donn Pearce’s classic novel.
• West End stars Oliver Tompsett (previously Fiyero in Wicked), Amy Pemberton (formerly in Footloose and Jersey Boys) and Simon Lipkin (best known as Nicky and Trekkie Monster in Avenue Q) are all signed up to play in new London rock musical, Rock of Ages at the Shaftesbury Theatre.
• Ellen Greene from Pushing Daisies is to play identical triplets (the Enchantress, the Princess and the Nymph Queen) in fantasy musical Betwixt! at the Trafalgar Studios in July.

See you at West End Live!

The former Avenue Q actress will sing tracks from her latest album No Space For Air as well as tunes from the shows that shaped her musical theatre career, like Mamma Mia!, Fame, The Last 5 Years and Ordinary Days. Helping her out will be Daniel Boys – who Atherton starred alongside in Avenue Q and Ordinary Days – and Richard Fleeshman, who’ll soon be starring as Sam in Ghost The Musical.

I have two exciting bits of cast news for you this week: comedian Justin Lee Collins is to play ageing hippy and bar owner Dennis Dupree in the forthcoming 80s jukebox musical Rock of Ages. Did you see his 2009 performance as Mr Cellophane in Chicago when it was on his Sky show JLC Is…? I thought it was great, and think he’ll love the chance to get on stage in the West End a second time.

Secondly, Steven Webb has joined the cast of comedy musical Betwixt! at the Trafalgar Studios next month. You might’ve seen Steven in: Departure Lounge at Waterloo East Theatre, The History Boys in the West End, The Long Road at Soho Theatre and Public Property at Trafalgar Studios. He also played Dick Whittington at the Lyric Hammersmith last Christmas. 

Sad news now, about Tim Curry having to leave the upcoming production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, which open at the Theatre Royal Haymarket later this month.

I was so excited about seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show star (and he’s in Annie! and It! and my favourite, Mr Boddy in Clue!), but it’s not going to happen. According to an official statement, an “on-going chest infection and repeated asthma attacks” led to Curry leaving the production, which is currently playing in Chichester ahead of its West End opening. For now, Chris Andrew Mellon is playing the Player, alongside Samuel Barnett and Jamie Parker in the title roles, while the directors “consider longer-term options.” I’ll obviously keep you posted.

Firstly: we knew it was coming… we just didn’t know when! But now, it’s finally been announced: the London transfer of the hit musical Matilda is coming to the Cambridge Theatre on 22 November (previews from 18 October).

That means the record-breaking Chicago (14 years and counting!) will be booted out of the venue, but I’ve got every confidence they’ll find another home for their fishnets and jazz-hands soon.

Matilda, meanwhile, will retain much of its cast from the award-winning Stratford run, including London stage regular Bertie Carvel as child-hating headmistress Miss Trunchbull, and Paul Kaye and Josie Walker as Matilda’s parents Mr and Mrs Wormwood. Tickets go on sale this weekend for performances up until 12 February – get booking now!

I’ve got great casting news for you this week: so many great names are stepping up to put on a show in London, it’s a really exciting time.

• Miranda Raison is returning to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in July. She’ll play the lead in Anne Boleyn a new play by Howard Brenton  which sold out last year. (I saw the show, and thoroughly recommend it.)
• EastEnder Phil Daniels is joining the cast of The Beggar’s Opera at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. If you’re not a soap fan, you might know Daniels from the film Quadrophenia, TV series Holding On and Rock & Chips, and as the famous voice in Blur’s 1994 hit Parklife.
• Romola Garai, who’s been all over our TV screens in period adaptations recently (Emma, The Crimson Petal and The White) is to appear at the Royal Court this summer. She’ll star alongside Alexandra Gilbreath and Nicholas Burns (Nathan Barley to you and me) in The Village Bike, a darkly comic, provocative new play by Penelope Skinner.
• It’s a case of “Here I Go Again” for West End regular, Sally Ann Triplett. She’s heading back to Mamma Mia! after a two-year absence to play leading lady Donna Sheridan.
• Finally, star of stage and screen Michael Feast is joining the cast of Pygmalion on Monday, replacing Simon Ward, who’s contracted a viral infection. Feast joins Rupert Everett, Kara Tointon and Diana Rigg in the hotly-anticipated new production of George Bernard Shaw’s classic.

Let us know in the comments what you’ve seen and enjoyed in London’s theatres this week…

From one William to another. William Hogarth’s engravings are the basis for another of this week’s highlighted shows. Theatre company simple8′s builds a play around Tom Nero, Hogarth’s orphaned protagonist. In The Four Stages of Cruelty, nine actors create the swirl of life, death, crime, love and cruelty that Nero encounters on his rise from poor orphan to notorious criminal. Look out for live music, period cant, physical ingenuity and an array of characters in a story that plunges a corkscrew into the city’s social bedrock, taking in the Hackney carriages, gin halls, boxing bouts and masquerades of 18th-century London.

This week’s casting news comes for two very different shows. Firstly, actor, singer and presenter Jonathan Wilkes is joining the cast of musical Chicago as Billy Flynn for a seven-week run from next week. Secondly, casting has been announced for the world premier of Tactical Questioning at the Tricycle Theatre from 2 June.

Tactical Questioning: Scenes from the Baha Mousa Inquiry brings together stories from the Public Inquiry which examined those two days of detention and the British Army’s treatment of detainees. The Tricycle’s production is staged following the oral hearings completed in October last year and before Sir William Gage publishes his final report and recommendations this summer. 

The Tactical Questioning cast includes:

• Dean Ashton
• Christopher Fox
• Luke Harris
• David Michaels
• Alan Parnaby
• Simon Rouse
• Mark Stobbart
• Rick Warden
• Thomas Wheatley

Finally, Ghost Stories will scare theatregoers for the last time next month: I’ve had an announcement that it’s closing on 19 June. The show had been booking until 1 October, but will close early: book now if you want to witness what caused the show’s producers to warn of “moments of extreme shock and tension”.

First up this week, congratulations to Clybourne Park, which has won another award! As well as winning Best New Play at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, the Critics Circle Theatre Awards, the South Bank Sky Arts Theatre Award and the Olivier Awards, playwright Bruce Norris has now won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which includes a cool $10,000 reward. It’s a great show, and is booking until 7 May if you fancy seeing a winner!

There’s lots of casting news around this week:

• Samantha Womack (best known for playing Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders) will play lead role Nellie Forbush when the Tony Award-winning Lincoln Center Theater production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific comes to the Barbican this summer
• Andrew Buchan (who you’ll recognise from TV’s Garrow’s Law) is going to play Bolingbroke opposite Eddie Redmayne’s Richard II at the Donmar in December
• Star Wars actor Denis Lawson is heading back to the Royal Court for the first time in 20 years ain Anya Reiss’s drama The Acid Test, which starts next month
• And Haydn Gwynne, Chuk Iwuji and Gemma Jones (from Spooks!) are to appear alongside Kevin Spacey in Richard III, the final instalment of Sam Mendes’s Bridge Project, which plays at the Old Vic from 29 June

Finally, news of a new musical coming to London: Lend Me A Tenor opens at the Gielgud theatre in June. It’s the story of the failing Grand Opera Company of Ohio in 1934, which is about to be saved by the arrival of the world’s greatest tenor, Tito Merelli. When he’s unexpectedly incapacitated, the meek director’s assistant has to find a replacement. Add a scheming soprano, a tenor-struck ingénue, a jealous wife and the Cleveland Police department, and you’ve got the makings of a fab new musical comedy on the West End.

Firstly, congratulations to Clybourne Park, which transfers to Wyndham’s Theatre tomorrow.

The play has won another award for its earlier run at the Royal Court. As well as being named Best New Play at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards and the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, it’s also bagged the South Bank Sky Arts Theatre Award. Get booking now if you want to see this fantastic show!

This week’s casting news includes

• Simon Russell Beale will play Stalin at the National Theatre in Collaborators, a new play by Trainspotting writer John Hodge in October
• Another tip from the National: Ashes to Ashes and Upstairs Downstairs stay Keeley Hawes will appear in Rocket to the Moon from March
• Sheridan Smith, fresh from Legally Blonde, is joining Sienna Miller in Terence Rattigan’s Flare Path at the Theatre Royal Haymarket from March
• TV presenter and actress Donna Air is to appear in psychological drama The Watcher at Waterloo East theatre also from March

Finally, the Society of London Theatre has just released the theatregoing figures for last year. And very impressive they are too!

More than 14 million people saw a show at one of London’s major venues last year. 2010 was a record year at the box office, with theatres taking more than £500,000,000; there was also a rise in the number of performances to over £18.5 thousand. Proving what I’ve always known: London theatre is on the up!

Grandage will step down as Artistic Director following Richard II. He said, “I am delighted this final year celebrates so much of the repertoire we have presented over the last decade. It is wonderful to be joined by so many friends and colleagues in this last season of work – it is these collaborations and creative partnerships both on stage and with the staff at the Donmar, that have made the achievements of the past 10 years possible.”

Other cast news this week includes:

• Actress Joanna Riding and cabaret star Meow Meow are appearing in Kneehigh Theatre’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Gielgud Theatre from 5 March
• Niamh Cusack will star alongside Anne-Marie Duff  in Terence Rattigan’s Cause Célèbre at the Old Vic from 17 March
• And Les Dennis will appear in the London premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s comedy about fame, Drowning On Dry Land, at the Jermyn Street Theatre from 22 February

This week’s transfer news is about Fela! The Broadway musical about the life of Afrobeat star Fela Anikulapo-Kuti will transfer from the National Theatre to Sadler’s Wells this summer, for a six week run starting 20 July.

Finally, exciting news about my favourite theatre in London: Shakespeare’s Globe. The Bankside venue will be performing all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays for the Cultural Olympiad in 2012; wait for it, in different languages – how amazing does that sound?

There’ll be a King Lear in Australian Aboriginal languages, a Spanish Henry VIII, an Italian Caesar and a Tempest in Arabic. Look out for Love’s Labour’s Lost in British Sign Language, too! Rawiri Paratene – who appeared at the Globe last year and is known for the film Whale Rider – will star in a Maori production of Troilus And Cressida, with Zimbabwean actors Denton Chikura and Tonderai Munyevu starring in a Shona version of The Two Gentlemen Of Verona.

Better still, the Globe is expanding. From 2013, there’ll be a new indoor Jacobean Theatre next to the existing “wooden o”. The new venue will seat 320 people, and is based on designs held in Worcester College, Oxford for a 17th-century indoor theatre. Construction work will start next year, in a shell that already exists in the Globe site. It’ll mean that the Globe can produce shows year-round, and that is a very good thing!

What an exciting week for theatre fans!

First there’s the news that former Doctor Who co-stars, David Tennant and Catherine Tate will be reunited in London this summer, when they lead the cast of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at Wyndham’s Theatre.

Plus the announcement that Cranford and Harry Potter star Imelda Staunton will join Penelope Wilton in Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance at the Almeida Theatre in May.

Then I learn that another TV star makes his debut at the Royal Court Theatre next month. Colin Morgan, who you’ll know from the BBC series Merlin, is appearing in Our Private Life, a “black comedy of twisted morality”, set in a Columbian village.

Anyone around my age will be interested to learn that former Blue Peter presenter Mark Curry will be starring in Company at the Southwark Playhouse from 2 February. This’ll be the Southwark Playhouse’s first musical since it opened in 1993: break a leg everyone!

And finally, Oliver Ford Davies (that’s Sio from the Star Wars prequels to me and you) will be playing Tom in a new adaptation of Goodnight Mister Tom. Just thinking about what was one of my favourite books as a kid makes me want to cry! Happily, this classic is in good hands: it’s being adapted by David Wood, the playwright renowned for his popular adaptations of Roald Dahl stories, including George’s Marvellous Medicine (currently getting great reviews at the Bloomsbury Theatre).

In other news, extensions have been announced for the following shows:

• End of the Rainbow – now playing until 16 April
• The Children’s Hour – now playing until 30 April

And I’d like to say congratulations to the Finborough Theatre in West London: they’ve won The Stage 100′s Fringe Theatre of the Year Award.

This tiny, 50-seat venue above a wine bar in Earl’s Court presents new writing and musical theatre, and has been gaining momentum in the last few years under the expert guidance of Artistic Director, Neil McPherson. If you’re in the area, be sure to check it out.