Andrzej Lukowski

The great thing about having kids at Christmas is that you can vicariously relive the joy that comes with believing in Santa Claus. You may be a boring grown-up now, but it’s just as magical to watch your own little ones’ eyes light up as they see big man IRL. From a traditional Victorian hut to a gingerbread-themed alcove and the city’s only immersive black Santa experience at Noir Kringle, London has an assortment of grottos suited to every family. With help from Santa’s elves, each leaves kids with a special gift and a photo with the main man. Many also boast bonus Christmas activities from crafts and wintry trails, to film screenings and story time sessions. Be organised, though. Santa is a popular guy and often there isn’t enough of him to go round aren’t enough to meet the demand, particularly at peak times on weekends. So you’ll need to act fast to secure your slot and avoid tears and tantrums. Here are some great grottos in London to try for a holly jolly good time this year.  RECOMMENDED: Find more festive fun with our guide to Christmas in London.

Earlier this year a certain black-haired pop star declared that ‘the dancefloor is dead’. We can confirm that this is not true. In London, the dance floor is well and truly alive. Yes, there has been all sorts of talk about the demise of the capital’s nightlife, with the loss of legendary clubs like Corsica Studios and G-A-Y. However, when one door closes, a window opens (and in the case of G-A-Y, that window is to the new witch-themed queer hangout Coven). London’s late-night scene is resilient. It will never die, only evolve. And lets not forget that the Big Smoke is still home to some absolute world-leading clubs where you can go for a proper dance. We’re talking smoke, strobe lights and an absolute stomper of a sound system. We promise you, it’s good for the soul. London’s best clubs at a glance: 🎸Best club for live music: Moth Club 🪩Best intimate club: Club Cheek 🏳️‍🌈Best LGBTQ+ club: Coven   ⛓️Best techno club: FOLD  💅Best bougie club: The Box Time Out’s editors and contributors have stacked up years of experience across all kinds of London dancefloors, and we know what separates an average club from a venue which will have you itching to come back week after week. From Sunday day raves at FOLD to secret line-ups at MOT and no-nonsense pop nights at Moth Club, we are home to some absolutely banging nights out in this city. You just need to know where to look. That said, the best thing about going out in London is the sheer variety on offer. You can go to a huge d

Hello, and welcome to the Time Out theatre reviews round up. From huge star vehicles and massive West End musical to hip fringe shows and more, this is a compliation of all the latest London reviews from the Time Out theatre team, which is me plus our team of freelance critics. December is the busiest time of year for London theatre – expect plenty of pantomime reviews and other seasonal fun but also a slew of major openings from across London’s many venues as the industry works itself to a frenzy before shutting down for Christmas. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026. A-Z of West End shows.

October 2026: The frankly exceptional Impala in Soho has taken the top spot as our favourite new restaurant in London, but coming up close behind is Kid, which is just around the corner. Other new additions include The Horses in Clerkenwell, Kismet in Borough Market, Cloudstreet in Stoke Newington, Bar Blondie in Queen's Park, Hon's BBQ in Hackney Wick and Kinz in Notting Hill. Hungry yet? Every week, a frankly silly amount of brilliant new restaurants, cafés and street food joints arrive in London. Which makes whittling down a shortlist of the best newbies a serious challenge. But here it is. The 20 very best new restaurants in the capital, ranked in order of greatness and deliciousness. All of them have opened over the past 12 months and been visited by our hungry critics. So go forth and take inspo from this list, which is updated regularly. Check in often to find out what we really rate on the London restaurant scene. And look here for all the info about the best new openings in October 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🥩 Central: Impala, Soho 🍷 North: Cloudstreet, Stoke Newington 🦐 South: The Victory, East Dulwich 🍝 East: Hon's BBQ, Hackney Wick 🥗 West: Maai by Nikita, Fulham Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in London. The hottest new openings, the tastiest tips, the spiciest reviews: we’re serving it all on our London restauran

October 2026: Sunday roast season has finally returned to London. A boozey, end-of-the-weekend lunch is what we're all about in this city. Enjoy masterful takes at The Montpelier in Peckham, The Golden Tooth on Green Lanes, The Duke Organic in Islington, and The Camberwell Arms in south London. And we're happy to announce the re-launch of two of our all-time favourite roasts; the vegan slap-up dinner at LD's Kitchen, now at the Imperial Palace of Big Red in Camden, and Ling Ling's Chinese-inspired roast at Godet in Islington.  London’s best Sunday roasts at a glance: 🥩 Central: Quality Chop House, Clerkenwell 😇 North: Ling Ling's at Godet, Islington ⛪ South: Elm at The Montpelier, Peckham 🌈 East: The Nelson’s, Hackney 🍻 West: Blue Stoops, Notting Hill Sunday lunch. There’s nothing quite like it. An elemental meal, one that Londoners take incredibly seriously. Debates about what constitutes the ‘perfect’ Sunday roast have been known to last for hours. There is no shortage of top roasts and Sunday lunch options in London. We’ve rounded up the city’s best Sunday meals from a host of pubs, restaurants and breweries all around town. What makes a good roast? For us, it’s simple; a welcoming room is a good start, maybe in a pub with an open fire during the winter months. Then it comes to the plate – we need perfect roast potatoes, well-cooked lamb, beef or pork and a decent plant-based option too. A Sunday roast is more than just lunch - it’s self-care. From snug neighbourhoo

What is immersive theatre? A glib buzzword? A specific description of a specific type of theatre? A phrase that has become so diluted that it’s lost all meaning? Whether you call it immersive, interactive or site-specific, London is bursting with plays and experiences which welcome you into a real-life adventure that you can wander around and play the hero in. London's best immersive shows at a glance: Best for dinner theatre: Chat Noir!, The Lost Estate Best for Trekkies: Bridge Command Best for music lovers: Mamma Mia! The Party, The O2 Best for a fancy dress adventure: Pirates of the Caribbean, Secret Cinema I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and I have run the immersive gamut, from a show where I had to take my clothes off in a darkened shipping container, to successfully bagging tickets to the six-hour Punchdrunk odyssey almost nobody saw, to a lot of theatre productions where the set goes into the audience a bit and apparently that’s immersive. This page has been around for a while now and gone through various schools of thought, but the one we’ve settled on for now is that the main list compiles every major show in London that could reasonably be described as ‘immersive theatre’, while the bottom list compiles a few of our favouite immersive shows thet you probably wouldn’t describe as theatre though it is, naturally a blurry line. Whatever the case you can mostly only really decide what most of these shows are if you go and do them… prepare to immerse

Christmas isn’t just for kids: come the festive season, London’s fringes fill up with adult pantomimes that are strictly 18-plus.  We’ve gathered them together here – plus also a selection of other shows running over the Christmas period that are aimed at adults but chime with the seasonal vibes, either in terms of being overtly Christmassy or simply offering a good times night out that chimes with the general vibes of the ‘party’ season. Obviously there’s lots of theatre running over Christmas that isn’t very Christmassy, but this list ignores regular plays and musicals and focusses on cabaret-style entertainments and – for want of a better term – shows you might go on a big Christmas night out to. If you’re dicing with Santa’s naughty list this Christmas – this one’s for you! RECOMMENDED: Find more Christmas shows in London 

Oh yes it is! London panto season is back for 2026, and here’s Time Out’s complete rundown of every major pantomime in the city. London's best pantomimes at a glance: Best ‘classic’ panto: Jack and the Beanstalk, Hackney Empire Hippest panto: Cinderella, Lyric Hammersmith Best celebrity panto: Cinderella, London Palladium Christmas panto you can see on Christmas Day: Dick Whittingberg Gets Into a Pickle, JW3  Best adults only panto: see our adult panto list For some Londoners the only time of year they'll visit a theatre, panto season is a bizarre, joyful, quintessentially British time to come together and watch some light-hearted spoof fairytales that revolve around men dressing up as women and/or farm animals. Within that, though, there’s huge variation, from the megascale London Palladium show with its filthy figurehead Julian Clary, to Clive Rowe’s brilliant panto purism at the Hackney Empire and JW3’s amusing Jewish spin that runs on Christmas Day itself. I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and while this page is simply intended as a round-up of London pantomimes, then it’s an *informed* round up – I have seen approximately four billion pantos over the last 15 years or so, and know what they’re all like, plus we’ll update this page with star ratings when our reviews of this year’s crop start rolling in in late November. London is a city that takes pantomime seriously, and even if the idea of seasonal frivolity fills you with dread, there’s a panto out the

This rolling list is constantly updated to share the best of what’s coming up and currently booking: these choices aren’t the be-all and end-all of great London theatre in 2026, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.   London's best shows to book for at a glance: Best musical: The Greatest Showman, Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Best Shakespeare play: Lear, Yard Theatre. Best celebrity show: The Lives of Others, Adelphi Theatre. Best revival of a modern classic: August: Osage County, Noël Coward Theatre. Best for something different: Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Barbican Centre. London’s theatre scene is the most exciting in the world: perfectly balanced between the glossy musical theatre of Broadway and the experimentalism of Europe, it’s flavoured by the British preference for new writing and love of William Shakespeare, but there really is something for everyone. It’s also beweilderingly big: between the showtune-centric West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector – plus the Wild West of the fringe – there’s well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work. This is my attempt to make sense of all that for you. These are shows worth booking for, pronto, both to avoid sellouts but to get the cheaper tickets that initially go on sale for most shows but tend to be snapped up months before they actually op

London is more than 2,000 years old. It’s a world-class hub for history, art, culture and politics. Frankly, it’s a bit overwhelming. What is the best way to explore a city that has so damn much on offer? Where do you begin in an area that’s 1,572 square kilometres? The answer: on foot.  This is where a guided walking to tour comes in. Street tours. Museum tours. Food tours. There are literally hundreds to choose from in the capital, and they’re not just for tourists. There’s plenty to be discovered, even if you’ve lived here for decades and claim to know everything about the city already.  A great tour guide will inspire and fascinate you – before you know it, you’ll enthusiastically be sharing the stories you heard with Linda on the checkouts at your local supermarket, or Iqbal at work. The ones included here are the well-worth doing and unsung tours that deserve your attention. Yes there are your usual Changing of the Guard and Westminster Abbey tours, but there are also some more offbeat ones which are frankly exceptional.  Why take my word for it? I’m a tour guide myself. I have since led all sorts of walks around London, from cemetery tours, queer history walks to pub outings. I regularly guide in places like The British Museum and National Gallery and after a decade in the industry, here are some of my choices for an unforgettable experience. Need more sightseeing inspiration?🛥️ Here are London’s best boat tours💂‍♂️ Check out our list of 101 things to do in London🛏

Greetings of the season. Well, I'm actually writing this in early September. But then, how long is Christmas theatre season in London exactly? Certainly it’s in full swing by late November, with virtually every pantomime and kids’ show in the city up and running way before Advent, with most of them running until the new year. London's best family Christmas shows at a glance: The National Theatre’s big show: The Jungle Book, National Theatre Olivier Best for laughs: Sherlock Holmes and the Twelve Days of Christmas, Alexandra Palace Theatre Best new spin on an old fave: The Snowman, Peacock Theatre. Best returning Christmas classic: A Chistmas Carol, Old Vic. Best for babies: Univers, Barbican I’m Time Out’s theatre editor, and I have seen more pantos and Julia Donaldson adaptations than any human being should. But also it’s always an exciting time of year: Christmas is the best time to take children to the theatre because there are such a dizzying array of options, for all ages. This list is an attempt to try and put some order on the gargantuan breadth of children’s and family friendly theatre across the city during the season. It doesn’t include long running West End shows – you know about The Lion King, right – but is an attempt to compile as many festive shows for young audiences as possible, at theatres big and small. We’ve divided our list into family-friendly Christmas shows – that is to say, shows suitable for children, but that you could easily visit without – and

Hello – I'm Time Out’s theatre editor and also a parent, something that has a lot of overlap in London, a city with three dedicated kids theatres and where pretty much every other theatre might stage a child-friendly show. London's kids theatre shows at a glance: Best long-running musical: Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre Best for teens: The Hunger Games: On Stage, Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre Biggest new musical: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre  Best for babies: Home Song, Unicorn Theatre. This round up focusses on the flagship shows at London’s kids theatres – that’s the Little Angel, the Unicorn and Polka – plus other major shows aimed at or suitable for youngsters. On the whole, pre-school and primary children are the age groups best served specifically, because secondary school aged teenagers can generally see adult theatre perfectly well (and will indeed often be made to do so!). So while the odd teen focussed show will make it in here, if you’re looking for something to do with teens why not consult our reviews page or what to book list. Our London kids’ theatre page normally contains information for all the main children’s shows running in London theatres this month and next month, and is broken down into three categories. Theatre for all the family is suitable for any age, including adults without children. Theatre for older children is specifically aimed at school-age children and teenagers. Theatre for babies, pre-schoolers and younger children d

This short immersive horror show from Immersive Octopus and BAC provides briskly efficient scares four times a weeknight and up to eight a day at weekends. And to be clear it is scary. Or it is by the time you get to the main event, a sort of seance-like sequence where the audience - divided into small tables - are plunged into darkness, and bad things happen for 10 minutes or so. Tom Maller’s production is boosted by effective sound design from Matt Farthing and Max Sharp’s fine lighting – indeed, frequently non-lighting – does a tremendous job of turning what is basically a room with some tables in it into a nexus of otherworldly horror. It’s all a bit thin though. Bells Pendergast’s script features some fun lore about entities who enter our world through destructive fires, and how Room 13 mysteriously appeared at Battersea Arts Centre following the blaze that ripped through it in 2015. To be clear it is scary But with just half an hour of performance there’s not a lot of time to get much world building in. The conceit of the doorway being examined by the oddly Victorian-garbed paranormal investigators the Circle of the Veil is fair enough. But the fact one of them is an incredibly creepy lady who makes funny clicking noises is never really delved into – we can infer she’s possessed and not subtly so, but there’s no real corroboration of this or explanation of exactly what’s going on. Even 15 minutes extra would have given time to build it all out a bit. Still, being short

Having missed the press night I decided the logistically sensible thing to do was to see this cult Irish immersive horror show on my own, late at night (I slotted it in after seeing another immersive horror, Room 13). This was either a terrible idea or a brilliant one: even some of the relatively sympathetic costumed beings that inhabit this pair of scary mazes – plus shorter one-room vignettes – looked at me in slight concern when they realised I was flying solo.  I can well imagine that with a group of friends, and after a few drinks, The Nightmare Realm verges on camp and is quite a good laugh. Arguably I did in fact do it the only authentic way: even blessedly aware that none of the actors were allowed to touch me I still flinched and yelled repeatedly as I passed through its two dimly lit, twisty turny labyrinths in which a seemingly endless stream of abominations leap out at you from any given corner.  I flinched and yelled repeatedly The mazes don’t so much have plots as themes. In Sundown Manor you’re invited to dinner with… well, lots of scary people, but let’s call them a coven of witches. I was too on edge to entirely follow what was going on, but it’s all very well done, as you push through decrepit halls and rotting sides of meat (NB fake) while being constantly menaced from the shadows, eventually arriving at your final encounter with eyeless manor proprietor Lady Sundown. In Avery Hill Asylum you’re edging through a chaotic madhouse where the patients have been

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In another good year for Edinburgh Fringe shows billed as comedy that could easily have been put down as theatre, here’s a theatre show that could easily have been comedy. The start of her second solo hour – following last year’s Main Character Energy – is in fact indistinguishable from stand-up, as the sunny, charismatic Wilkey talks us through a classic solo-show conundrum. She’s single! And she doesn’t know why! Which is particularly galling because she’s bisexual and – by her own account – pretty unfussy.  And she’s very amusing about it all, batting out a selection of a cappella R&B classics as she talks through a romantic history that can kind of be summed up as ‘Jesus then men then women’. She’s particularly funny on why feckless lesbians are just as annoying to date as feckless straight guys.  The theatre, then, comes from the conceit that Wilkey herself is incapable of being honest with herself and about her wants, needs and history and so to get the real goss we need to visit her ‘infinite pussy’, a sort of more liberated version of herself dressed in gauzy red robe who we transition to via loud sucking sound. This all builds to a climax that brings in her morose, wounded heart as a charactrer too (also played by the artist). This stuff does all get a bit woo-woo: on the one hand there’s a slightly terrifying outpouring of self-love etc, on the other the whole thing with Wilkey playing herself, her vag and her

This wickedly fun monologue from Georgina Collins – aka burlesque performer Strawberry Duvall – slips down almost indecently easy. The body count is… not low, as Collins details how her meek, mousy protagonist becomes overtaken by terrible cravings that can only be slaked by literally devouring the various men who intrude upon her quiet existence.  But the wide-eyed Collins has such a delightful, almost screwball comedy charisma to her that even in the blood-soaked show’s gristliest moments Grainne Robson’s production feels enormously fun, as our heroine skedaddles from the demise of one toxic man to the next. She has the air of not a cold-blooded murderer but a woman holding on for dear life to a rollercoaster that’s largely outside of her control. Somewhat more in control is her eventual mentor, a cynical, inevitably Eastern European accented older succubus (or whatever they are), whose brutally pragmatic – not to mention sociopathic – view of the world attracts and repulses Collins’ unnamed protagonist in varying measures. Originally intended as a response to medical misogyny the author had experienced, Succubus is a little bit Dracula, a little bit Buffy, but the work that most came to mind was Naomi Alderman’s The Power. In that book, women the world over gain the ability to administer fatal electrical shocks, which completely tips the balance of the world. Here Collins’ character at first scurries meekly though a universe of condescending doctors and tedious, horny men.

This review is from the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe. Feeling Afraid… plays The Other Palace in 2026, with Steven Webb replacing Samuel Barnett. Somewhat disorientating at a festival full of actual stand-up comics, Marcelo Dos Santos’s monologue ‘Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen’ is a play structured like a stand-up set, with Samuel Barnett’s neurotic gay comedian protagonist working up a routine apparently based upon his character’s real love life. It’s framed around his relationship with a nice American man, whose personal details are chopped and changed as the show wears on, but who is always extremely hench (I learned the phrase ‘cum gutters’!) and extremely affable, to the point that he somewhat freaks Barnett’s character out - all the more so when he discovers that his new boyfriend has a medical condition that stops him laughing. The meat of the show is the comedian’s suspicion – and, indeed, fear – of the stability the American offers, and his constant indulgence in largely depressing casual sex on the side. The title comes from his innate, self-loathing fatalism: he doesn’t allow himself to enjoy life because he’s already convinced the worst will happen. Maybe the self-loathing gay fuckup who is also a comedian trades in a few tropes, but the eventual problem he faces – that it infuriates him his boyfriend doesn’t laugh at any of his jokes, even though doing so might literally kill him – is a pleasingly absurdist one.  It’s funny, and it takes real

An immersive theatre show in a Westfield is not, on the face of it, an obvious match. The fact that Absurd City creators Wake the Tiger – who have a sister venue in Bristol – insist on calling this new Shepherd’s Bush attraction an ‘amazement park’ does not make my heart sing. The adverts, featuring a wacky-looking pigeon, do little to inspire confidence that this is going to be significantly different to the sort of insta-fodder immersive experiences that have popped up all over the capital in recent years. As it turns out, Absurd City is really good. Maybe not Punchdrunk good. But as good as large-scale immersive work gets away from the masters. It boasts ravishing, highly detailed, creepy/funny design and a modest but engrossing plot that you can choose to engage with or not, (plus a cheeky anti-capitalist message that gains an added piquancy from the giant mall outside.) I’m not quite clear if I missed a little bit of intro or not, but there’s certainly very little ado as you ascend four sets of escalators and enter the Absurd City itself. What is the Absurd City  you ask? Well at first it does seem to be a succession of cool insta-friendly rooms. Crucially, they’re very cool insta-friendly rooms: we enter through a weird dilapidated plane; there’s a room shaped like a giant elongated phone box, where the ceiling is all phones; there’s a room full of rubber ducks; a sweetshop manned by a creepy mannequin made of sweets; a gigantic banana; that sort of thing. Part of the r

This review is from November 2018. Huddle returns to the Unicorn for 2026. Penguins, never exactly out of fashion, are particularly on-trend this season thanks to the emperor penguins who made global headlines after a BBC camera crew controversially rescued them from a gully.Huddle, from Filskit Theatre, doesn’t offer anything quite so nerve-wracking, but it’s certainly more good news for everyone’s favourite flightless birds. Against a deadpan animated backdrop of a larger colony, Joseph Barnes-Phillips’s Papa Penguin squawks and waddles and gets up to general penguin business. Of course, he looks like a dude in a penguin suit, and part of the charm of Huddle is how far the creative team have gone with this: Papa Penguin is a sort of semi-anthropomorphised creature, with a small clutch of physical possessions that he hoards on his rusty old sled, above which hangs a line he uses to hang fish on. It’s a slightly surreal but charming flourish.He also appears not to have a mate, but is nonetheless blessed with an egg that duly hatches into Victoria Dyson’s Penguin Chick. The rest of Katy Costigan and Sarah Shephard’s production is basically two adults making penguin noises at each other – and it’s just delightful, packed with nice little details like Dyson’s costume (by Maxwell Nicholson-Lailey), which sheds layers of grey fluff as she slowly advances towards adulthood. Some mild peril kicks in at the end, as Papa Penguin is forced to head out to sea to get more fish and the r

Last summer I was at an arts festival in Poland and so was Tilda Swinton, performing a show of her own devising called Embodying Pasolini. Performance art rather than theatre, it was definitely interesting, and very much in keeping with a post-fame live career that has seen her eschew conventional stage acting: in the ‘90s she famously slept in a glass box for a week at the Serpentine gallery, a signature piece she revived a couple of decades later in New York. Which is very cool and very Tilda Swinton but also kind of a shame because Swinton by all accounts tore up the stage in her twenties before settling on film as her medium. You don’t begrudge Derek Jarman for luring her away to the world of arthouse celluloid. But it would be nice if she still did normal plays! What’s shocking about Man to Man, the wholesale rival of the Swinton-starring 1987 version of German playwright Manfred Karge’s monologue, is that it is a normal play. Maybe not a conventional one. But as the curtain lifts to reveal Swinton leering away at us in whiteface, house coat, Y-fronts and a shock of punky blonde hair – a sort of incongruously elegant hybrid of Johnny Rotten and Rab C Nesbitt – there’s something reassuringly actorly about the sarf London growl she adopts, so far from her own fluting tones. Obviously we’re all here to see Tilda Swinton the icon. But this isn’t one of her arch performance projects, it’s a proper play, in which she loses herself in a proper character. It’s a show that predat

Describing the plays of James Graham as ‘history podcast theatre’ would be mean and inaccurate but also a bit true. To be clear, Graham has produced many wonderful works of drama. But even when he’s not at his absolute best dramatically you’ll still come out of one of his historical dramas having learned a lot. The Standard of Living isn’t quite Graham at his best dramatically, because where his finest works have tended to be hyper-fixated on small, manageable periods of history. Here he almost has too much to say about his subject: the great economist John Maynard Keynes. Photo: Manuel HarlanNatalia Osipova and the ensemble Did he want to write a drama about Keynes’ membership of the Bloomsbury Group and the tensions that crept in between the gay economist and his bohemian artist pals when he went to work for the government, and when he later dumbfounded them by bringing home a woman, the blunt Russian ballet star Lydia Lopokova (Natalia Osipova)?  Did he want to write a play about Keynes’ rivalry with the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek (Laurie Kynaston)? Here the two are depicted as genuinely fond of each other, but so aghast at the other’s economic visions that they can’t help but becomes enemies. Or is The Standard of Living about… the standard of living, and Keynes’ belief in not only spending out of a recession, but that an infusion of art – be that the Degas paintings he snaps up for a song at the beginning, or Arts Council England which he founds at the end – is

Although End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland isn’t even the first Haruki Murakami adaptation to play at the Barbican, I nonetheless maintain that his works are unadaptable. By that I mean that it’s almost impossible to replicate Murakami’s tone, wherein his protagonists – typically deadpan thirtysomething male loners from Tokyo –  live boring lives that are encroached upon by baffling metaphysical forces. It’s magical realism, but it’s magical realism where beautifully precise descriptions of the protagonist making lunch are as important as the strange alternate worlds they find themselves entering. Put it on stage, and it’s inevitable that the magic overrides the mundane. French director-choreographer Philippe Decouflé heads an otherwise Japanese adaption of 1985 classic Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (I have literally no idea why the name has been swapped around) that does an impressive job of conjuring the twin, cryptically interlinked strands of the novel. The End of the World is a mysterious walled town – revisited by Murakami in his recent The City and Its Uncertain Walls – populated by herds of unicorns and people without shadows. We witness it through the eyes of regular guy Boku (Kiita Komagine), who has his shadow (Shuntaro Miyao) severed by the town’s Gatekeeper (Shinya Matsuda). Decouflé deploys dreamy projected backdrops and stilt-augmented dancers to play the unicorns. They look great, and both director and adapting writer Ako Takahashi

We all love a plot twist but New York theatremaker Andy Sandberg’s play Affluenza feels like a cautionary story about what happens when you twist too hard. Well actually maybe ‘plot twist’ isn’t right: it’s more that writer-director Sandberg is obsessed with the idea of bamboozling us, with each new scene in his play determinedly defying expectations and eliciting a bigger WTF than the last. This isn’t inherently a good thing. Especially if your expectation was that you were going to see Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp in the lead role of Dylan, an American teenager who kills two people in a drink driving incident and whose parents agree to the outlandish defence that he was simply too cocooned by privileged to understand the gravity of his actions. And to be fair Schnapp does play Dylan, who is based on real-life Texan teen Ethan Couch. But it’s a supporting role – in the first scene he wanders briefly through his parents’ posh living room while they talk to the very expensive New York lawyer they’ve flown out. Then there’s one set in his bedroom. And that’s kind of it for this version of Dylan. It’s odd: you have to think that having a not-too–big role may have been what tempted Schnapp into making his stage debut. But he’s perfectly good here and could clearly have handled more. Affluenza then abruptly leaps ahead to after the trial, where Dylan successfully escaped with a slap on the wrist. It certainly subverts our expectation of a courtroom drama with a juicy role for

This review is from 2024. In 2026 A Christmas Carol returns to the Old Vic for its tenth and presumably final year, as its director Matthew Warchus’ very final piece of prgramming at the theatre. Giles Terera will play Scrooge. Although it’s the second most influential Christmas story of all time, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a tale that’s disseminated by adaptations rather than because everyone still religiously reads the 1843 novella. And for eight Christmases in a row – including 2020! – the main form of dissemination for Londoners has been the Old Vic’s stage version, which packs ‘em into the huge theatre for two months every year. I haven’t been since it debuted in 2017, when Rhys Ifans played supernaturally reformed miser Ebeneezer Scrooge. Back then, Matthew Warchus’s production of Jack Thorne’s adaptation was simply a stage version, of a story endlessly retold each year. Now it is essentially the version, not because nobody else does it (in 2022 I counted 11 adaptations), but because of the unparalleled scale of its success: it’s certainly the most successful stage adaptation of this century, and quite possibly ever. Eight Christmases on and it’s charming, but groans under the weight of its own success. What really struck me on second viewing was the conflict between Thorne’s smartly empathetic text and Warchus’s ecstatically OTT Christmasgasm of a production. Making a few judicious departures from Dickens, Thorne seeks to humanise Scrooge, get to the heart

Yet another 2027 London theatre season has been announced, and it’s a good ’un: the Royal Court’s latest. Theatre boss David Byrne is no longer the new kid on the block at the UK’s home of new writing, and his fourth year in charge continues his ‘something for everyone’, balancing act style of programming that mixes new writers and experimental work with big celebrity names and a major US transfer. It kicks off with the transfer of the 2025 winner of the Tony Award for best Broadway play: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose (Jan 16-Feb 27). Directed by the great Phylicia Rashad for Chicago’s legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company, it’s an epic family drama – complete with Jacobs-Jenkins’ trademark provocative twists – about three generations of a privileged Black family who find themselves snowed in together, with explosive consequences. Like this year’s John Proctor is the Villain, it’s the original production; unlike John Proctor, we’re getting virtually the entire original US cast – four of them Tony nominated for their roles – which is obviously very exciting.  Photo: Royal Court TheatrePurpose Continuing with the bigger Downstairs theatre first, next up is The Apology (Mar 19-Apr 24), a remarkable sounding world premiere of a play written by V (aka Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues). It’s a fictionalised apology from Ensler’s dead father (played by Tobias Menzies) to her for the abuse she suffered at his hands. But the very exciting thing is that it’s a production

Continuing the current London theatre trend of announcing an entire year of programming in one go, west London’s ever-hip Lyric Hammersmith theatre has today announced its entire 2027 roster. Following this year’s Christmas panto Cinderella, the new year will get underway with a return for the smash 2025 UK premiere production of Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (Jan 20-Feb 27), her hugely enjoyable comedy about the ebb and flow of life in an African hair salon in New York.  Next up, the London transfer of Barber Shop Chronicles writer Inua Ellams’ highly praised drama Once Upon a Time in Sokoto (Apr 13-May 8), which concerns the founding of Nigeria and the intra-African slave trade, centring on the relationship between an enslaved woman and her former master. Then, it’s a swift transfer for the RSC’s production of Stewart Pringle’s Brock’s Mill (May 13-Jun 5), a homage to the glory days of stop-motion kids’ animation that follows an elderly former animator as he finds himself confronted by his daughter May, who is grown-up and in need of having aspects of her childhood explained. The show is directed by former National Theatre boss Rufus Norris – it’s his first show to be seen in London since he left the NT in 2025. The first world premiere of the year is a good ’un: big-name Irish playwright Conor McPherson adapts Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s 2015 novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Jun 17-Jul 17), a series of interweaving magical realist stories about an unusual Toyko c

The National Theatre turned 50 this weekend, which may surprise those who remember the National Theatre turning 50 back in 2013. That’s because for the first 13 years of its life the NT didn’t actually have a proper home – it instead did seasons at the Old Vic and in Chichester. It was only in 1975 that its iconic South Bank building was completed and the nation’s flagship theatre finally had a fixed abode. To celebrate, a new installation just outside the theatre called 50 Stories for 50 Years will offer a selection of memories of the NT from the likes of Hugh Jackman, Lesley Manville, Lucian Msamati, David Oyelowo, Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter, plus archive musings from past icons like Laurence Olivier, Peter Hall and the NT’s architect Denys Lasdun.  To warm you up, a selection of the NT great and good have exclusively picked the great shows from the past that they wish they could have seen – or, indeed, see again. Photo: Dion BarrettNational Theatre (2026) The Romans in Britain (1980) Indhu Rubasingham, artistic director and co-chief executive of the National Theatre ‘I’d loved to have seen Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain, first staged in the Olivier theatre in 1980. Directed by Michael Bogdanov, the production drew bold parallels between the Roman invasion of Celtic Britain and British military presence in Northern Ireland. It was seen as a controversial piece at the time, sparking a lawsuit from conservative activist and morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse ov

Nicholas Sparks’ romantic 1996 novel about a young couple separated by class and war in ’40s America was a big hit; the 2004 screen adaptation starring a young Ryan Gosling and Rachael McAdams was an even bigger one. Will it be third time luck with this new musical?  The Notebook – A New Musical (as it’s literally called) did reasonably well on Broadway a couple of years back (it ran for about nine months) and is now headed our way to serve as the inaugural production at the renamed Shaftesbury Theatre – now called the Judi Dench Theatre. Written by playwright Bekah Brunstetter and singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, it’s co-directed by Michael Greif (most famous for Dear Evan Hansen) and Schele Williams (who has a big hit with her revival of The Wiz).  Although nominally adapted from the book rather than the film, it’s definitely playing to fans of the movie – in his review, Time Out New York’s Adam Feldman takes pains to point out that the production perfectly recreates the iconic ‘snog in the rain’ sequence when protagonists Noah and Allie are reunited following the Second World War and various other romantic misadventures.  Basically if you loved the film or the book or are just in the market for a musical romance, then it’s worth a look. Casting is to be announced but should be with us soon, given that it starts previews as soon as March. The Notebook is at the Judi Dench Theatre, booking Mar 10-Dec 11 2027. These are the best new London theatre shows to book for in 202

If you were to knock a top five of the most successful British plays of the 21st century, there’s absolutely no doubt that 2004’s The History Boys would be in there. The great Alan Bennett’s late career smash about the disaffected students and staff of a Sheffield boys’ grammar school in the ‘80s was a mega hit, played four seasons at the National Theatre, two in the West End, one in Broadway, spawned a film and launched the careers of a whole generation of young male stars, from Sacha Dhawan to James Cordon. It’s almost certainly the crowning achievement in the career of its director Nicholas Hytner, and the emblematic achievement of his artistic directorship of the National Theatre, widely seen as a both an renaissance and a commercial golden age for our flagship theatre. And now The History Boys is coming back! It’s not quite as simple as a straight-up revival of the original production, as while Hytner is directing again and Bob Crowley is designing, the rest of the creative team is liable to be new and the whole thing is being explicitly billed as a ‘reworking’. Don’t expect it to be radically different as to some extent this is just the nature of theatre: you can’t just pop an old show on after 20 years with no changes (the recent revival of War Horse is probably a good comparison). Nonetheless, you do have to wonder whether some of the play’s more controversial aspects will feel magnified in 2027, especially the very morally ambiguous behaviour of ‘inspiring’ history t

Half-term is almost upon us and as ever the delight of spending more time with our little ones is tempered by the fact that this is going to cost us money. We’ve got plenty of advice for you on the best things to do at October half-term and the best kids Halloween activities in London, but what if you wanted to amuse the little ones without spending any actual currency? As ever there are some really fun new things to do in London that go beyond ‘going to the park again’. From a Pokémon trail to Bayeux Tapestry-themed fun, here’s our round-up of the five best. The best free things to do in London this October half-term  1. Explore the Natural History Museum’s newest gallery The Natural History Museum is always an incredibly safe bet during the school holidays as aside from all the pre-existing cool stuff there are also special ‘Ocean October’ bonus half-term activities (Oct 26-Nov 1). This half-term it’s even cooler than usual thanks to the fact this is the first holiday since its brand new, totally free Nature and Us gallery. It’s not huge, but it’s very atmospheric and certainly worth a look as part of your visit. Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD. Oct 26-Nov 1.  Photo: David ParryNature and Us gallery at the Natural History Museum   2. Fly off into space with Pikachu at the Science Museum Again, the Science Museum is a stone cold holiday classic thanks to being massive and free and having some bonus half-term activities including a self-guided Halloween tra

Under its outgoing artistic director Rupert Goold, Islington’s Almeida Theatre went from chintzy backwater to arguably the most influential theatre in the country, launching numerous West End transfers as it helped to break the careers of some of the most influential writers, directors and actors in the country. Goold was always going to be a tough act to follow, but fortunately his successor is about as qualified as artistic directors get: Dominic Cooke ran the Royal Court Theatre at the zenith of its twenty-first century period of influence (with mega-smashes Jerusalem, ENRON and Clybourne Park are taking place on his watch), while his subsequent career has seen him largely direct massive scale West End fair, with his most recent hit being the RSC’s Game of Thrones play The Mad King (coming to London in 2027). Now Cooke has loosely announced his first year of programming – and while there’s a distinct break from the Gooldian pizzazz, there’s some superb looking stuff here. Photo: Philip SindenDominic Cooke First things first: Cooke is pals and a long-term collaborator with Caryl Churchill, the visionary writer who easily constitutes Britain’s greatest living playwright. Cooke’s next project is next month’s revival of her breakthrough Cloud 9 at the NT and a few weeks ago it was announced that – in a sneak peek of his first season – a new short play by Churchill called Triumph would play at the Almeida from this week. Now Cooke’s debut season goes one better and provides u

Founded in 1760, Hamleys isn’t just the oldest toyshop in London: it’s the oldest and most influential toyshop in the world. (It’s older than the United States of America). And that means the world pays attention when it announces its annual Festive 15 – a roundup of the toys that its in-house experts believe will be massive this present-buying season, based on a mix of toy fair trends, in store trends, educated guesswork and (let’s not pretend otherwise) a little pushing of its own in-house lines. There is no formal number one, but some themes have definitely emerged, the two biggest being Squishies and Doom. Photo: HamleysBig Squij range Although technically only a single toy line, Big Squij (RRP £10) comprises a multitude of ultra-soft, low-cost stress relief squishy toys and has proved to a runaway success – although Hamleys don’t choose a number one, they appear to pretty much be being pitched as the unofficial toy of the year. Taking in everything from a duck to a dumpling and with new additions added to the range every month until Christmas, Squishies are both on trend and extremely affordable, and are at least nominally good for stress levels.  The other big trend: Doom. That is to say, Doctor Doom. The iconic metal masked villain is joining the MCU this Christmas as the antagonist of Avengers: Doomsday and there are two items in the Festive 15 devoted to him: an impressive Lego bust (£45), and a cool light up action figure (£30) that’s being marketed as both a toy

★★★★ After a recent spate of pretty weird London Chekhovs - see Jamie Lloyd and Thomas Ostermeier’s Seagulls and the Donmar’s very eccentric Cherry Orchard - here’s reliable old master of naturalism Ian Rickson with a typically elegant take on the latter play. Although that’s not to say this Cherry Orchard is a bog standard linen-suits-and-samovars job. Far from it.  Adapting playwright Conor McPherson cranks up both the bitter and the sweet as he massages the plot and dialogue for some big laughs - see Karl Johnson’s delightfully OTT old codger servant Firs, who is mad as a hatter and swears like a trooper. More importantly, there an absolutely storming performance – dare I say career best – from the perennially underestimated Stephen Mangan as Yermolai Lopakhin. A self-made man of humble origins, his relationship with the lofty but impoverished household of Lyubov Ranevska (Kristin Scott Thomas) is the complicated heart of play.  Mangan’s Lopakin starts off as the usual fish out of water, condescended to by Ranevska and her pompous brother Goev (Peter Wight) when he presents them with a pragmatic plan to monetise their indebted estate. But where the character tends to properly lose patience with them in most interpretations, that’s not really the case here. Yes, he gets frustrated at their refusal to admit they must change or lose their home. But he remains genuinely awed by them, almost a sort of stan. When he throws in his hat to try and buy the estate it’s a curiously vu

Bent coppers, beware! Line of Duty series seven is due in the new year and around the same time you’ll be able to try your own hand at foiling police corruption and trying to remember who H was supposed to be. Line of Duty: Operation Echo is a new immersive experience landing on the streets of London.  Although the likelihood of a shockingly abrupt death is presumably lower than in the Jed Mercurio-helmed TV show (to be clear we’re expecting the odds of this to be zero) it does sound all very thrilling. You and your team of two-to-eight players are sent to roam the streets of central London in a four-to-five kilometre, two-to-three hour adventure that will see you ping between locations where you’ll ‘uncover clues, solve escape room-style puzzles, decipher riddles and wrestle with moral dilemmas’ as you look into another explosive case of perfidious police corruption. It’s the latest from CityDays, who offered similar puzzle-solving based city experiences for the likes of The Traitors and Race Across the World. The immersive show is not written by Mercurio and it’s unclear if it will have any bearing on series seven, which should be screening around the time Operation Echo launches. We’d guess it won’t, but it’s officially enforced and the odds are at least one of the core cast members might have pre-recorded a bit of dialogue. Though if Adrian Hilton isn’t on hand to do a load of fruity swearing: you’re very welcome to do it yourself. Line of Duty: Operation Echo launches ea

Although the idea of Quentin Tarantino – the film nerd’s film nerd – writing and directing a stage play initially seemed like a sort of mad joke, The Popinjay Cavalier (for so ’tis named) really is happening. Indeed, it’s happening soon: previews begin in February for the West End comedy, which will move into the Phoenix Theatre soon after Stranger Things: First Shadow clears out.  And in even bigger news the star has officially been announced as Sacha Baron Cohen, in his professional stage debut: the news had leaked a month or so ago but it’s still pretty huge. Although details of the plot haven’t gotten significantly clearer since the last update we would assume that Cohen will be playing the title role. There is also some clearer suggestion as to why Tarantino wanted to tell this story. We’re told the 1830s-set The Popinjay Cavalier ‘is inspired by the classic swashbuckler genre of old Hollywood, including the writings of George Bruce, Ernst Vajda and Jesse Lasky Jr’. While you have to think that his apparent mental block around directing a new movie (because he said his 10th film would be his last) may have stopped him doing this on screen, in 2026 it does feel like an idea that might work on stage than as a silent movie. Like Tarantino, Cohen is nominally an outsider to the theatre industry, although he acted at university and studied clowning in Paris under the legendary Philippe Gaulier, plus of course much of his screen work is based upon live interactions with unsusp

In 2004, Trey Parker and Matt Stone inflicted a brutal drive-by on the original production of Rent via their song ‘Everyone Has Aids’, a merciless parody of Jonathan Larsson’s socially conscious rock opera. Clearly it didn’t bury the musical – it would run for another four years on Broadway – but you do have to think it signalled that the original, tragic but wholesome Rent had become so successful that you couldn’t stage it the same way a second time.  Step forward Luke Sheppard, director of its first West End revival. He’s probably the most successful commercial British musical theatre director of the moment thanks to his big, bright, lightly ironic smashes & Juliet, Starlight Express and the all-conquering Paddington. But he does have another mode that he demonstrated in the Live Aid musical Just for One Day – an overtly stylised sexy waifs-and-strays aesthetic, where a nominally naff period of history is given a post-gender makeover that makes it look a bit like an FKA Twigs video.  And now it has a spiritual successor in his revival of Rent. The concert-like production is based around an ensemble of hot androgynes and self-consciously beautiful misfits, dressed like a more-stylish-than-it-sounds collision of Dickensian urchinwear and early Pearl Jam chic. Sheppard has put a large amount of additional audience seating on the stage, which hems the action into a small performance space with minimal sets. The score has been tweaked: guitars sound gnarlier than on the very ‘9