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.

Yes, trick-or-treating is a no brainer in terms of Halloween fun for kids. But there’s more to the second-most fun holiday of the year (after Christmas, of course) than trying to extract bucketfuls of sweets from your long-suffering neighbours.  Halloween typically coincides with the school half-term holidays (it does this year) and typically most major London attractions have a half term theme that will run for at least the length of the holidays, if not longer. meaning you and the family can really make the most of the city’s spooky, child-friendly events on either side of October 31. While our half-term list does include some of the bigger Halloween events, much of what’s on it has no bearing on the spooky season – this one, however, is strictly haunted events only. From pumpkin picking to scary movies, there are loads of wicked things to do on and around October 31 2026. Happy Halloween! RECOMMENDED: Our complete guide to Halloween in London for everyone.

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.

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

The epic slog of the summer holidays is over but look! Here comes a new challenger as the October half term comes barrelling into view. And even though we’re just a few weeks away from the hottest summer on record, plummetting termperatures and shorter days will mean you have to find more to do than ‘go to the park’. Fortunately: this is London, there’s always loads to do, with Halloween giving the darkening evenings a spooky shot in the arm. My name is Andrzej and I’m Time Out’s lead kids’ writer and also parent to two London-based children. As ever, the idea with this list is to highlight the best new, returning or last chance to see shows; London also has plenty of evergreen fun for children of all ages, quite a lot of which you can find in out list of the 50 best things to do with kids in London. When is October half-term this year?  This year, London’s May half-term officially falls between Monday October 26 and Friday October 30 (ie children will be off continuously between Saturday October 24 and Sunday November 1). For whatever reason, certain boroughs (including mine) inflict a double half-term upon their students, in which case your holiday will run Monday October 19 to Friday October 30 (or in total Saturday October 17 to Sunday November 1). Here’s our roundup of all the best things to do with your children this October half-term.

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

For many people, musical theatre basically is theatre, and certainly there are a hell of a lot of musicals running in London at any given time, from decades-long classics like Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera to short-run fringe obscurities, plus all manner of new shows launched every year hoping for long-running glory. London's best musicals at a glance: The summer’s big hit: Jesus Christ Superstar, London Palladium/Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Best of the oldies: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre Best for families: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre The next big thing: One Day, Garrick Theatre. Funniest musical: Operation Mincemeat, Fortune Theatre Here Time Out rounds up every West End musical currently running or coming soon, plus fringe and off-West End shows that we’ve reviewed – all presented in fabulous alphabetical order. SEE ALSO: How to get cheap and last-minute theatre tickets in London.

September 2026: There's a brand new Number 1, with the frankly exceptional Impala in Soho taking the top spot as our favourite new restaurant in London. Other fresh additions include Kismet in Borough Market, Cafe Clement by the Thames in Temple, Hon's BBQ in Hackney Wick, Cue Point in Notting Hill, Jackson Boxer's Vesper in Clerkenwell 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 September 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🥩 Central: Impala, Soho 🍷 North: The Golden Tooth, Newington Green 🦐 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 restaurants WhatsA

Borough is known for having one of the best food markets in the world, but it’s also home to some seriously good restaurants as well as the brilliant market. The Borough Yards development – just next to this historic, edible wonderland – is where you’ll find some of the latest and greatest spots to have a sit-down feast, including west African restaurant Akara and southern Thai sensation, Plaza Khao Gaeng. If you’re off to SE1 and your stomach is rumbling, then consult this list so you can hunt down our favourite spots for a fabulous feed, from contemporary Greek classics at Oma and Pyro, to pasta at Padella, classy French cuisine at Camille (our favourite London restaurant for 2026), and seafood at Applebee’s.  RECOMMENDED: The best restaurants in London Bridge. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

To say that William Shakespeare bestrides our culture like a colossus is to undersell him. Over 400 years since his death, the playwright is uncontested as the greatest writer of English who has ever lived. Even if you’re not a fan of sixteenth century blank verse – and if not, why not? – his influence over our culture goes far beyond that of any other writer. He invented words, phrases, plots, characters, stories that are still vividly alive today; his history plays utterly shaped our understanding of our own past as a nation. London Shakespeare plays at a glance: Best celebrity cast: Hamlet, venue TBC. Best autumnal outdoor fun: As You Like It, Shakespeare’s Globe Best rarity: King John, Shakespeare’s Globe. Best for Radiohead fans: Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Barbican Centre. Best grab a ticket as soon as they go onsale: Lear, Yard Theatre And unsurpisingly he is inescapable in London. The iconic Elizabethan recreation Shakespeare’s Globe theatre is his temple, with a year-round programme that’s about three-quarters his works. Although based in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company regularly visit the capital, most frequently the Barbican Centre. And Shakespeare plays can be found… almost anywhere else, from the National Theatre – where they invariably run in the huge Olivier venue – to tiny fringe productions and outdoor version that pop up everywhere come the warmer months.  This page is simple: we tell you what Shakespeare plays are on in town this month (

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

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

TOWIE meets Blasted by way of the Iliad in this breezily provocative fourth play from rising star playwright Ava Pickett. Bloodsport is both fresh but also pleasingly of a piece with Pickett’s other work, insofar as like her previous plays – even breakthrough Tudor smash 1536 – it’s set in Essex. In fact it’s not even her first play set in a slightly vulgar Essex living room (although the decor here is a lot whiter than in her very funny adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma). Bloodsport takes place in the aftermath of a Trojan War of sorts, although there’s no Greece or Troy but rather some kind of civil unrest that’s gripped the UK. Smartly, Pickett never defines precisely what this is or exactly what has happened: it may have been a gang war, it may have been closer to the recent nationalist protests (it’s clear the Trojan equivalents were deemed to be ‘foreign’ on some level), it may have been a full-scale civil war. When Gerard Monaco’s terrifyingly toxic Agamemnon-proxy Mario comes back into the home he shares with his wife Cee (Laura Aikman), he talks about ‘New England’, as if the country has been remade wholesale. He’s joined by his malleable younger brother Marcus (Jay Taylor, in the Menelaus role) and a traumatised, blood-spattered Helen (Michelle Dockery), shivering in her nightwear, who everyone seems to be trying to ignore.  After an awkward homecoming defined by Mario’s triumphal belligerence, all signs - including the intro from Ethan Moorhouse’s poetic Essex-bloke

Heavyweight director John Caird - most famous for the original production of Les Mis - has been trying and in many ways succeeding in getting his musical version of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre off the ground for something like 30 years now. Jane Eye: A Musical has had numerous productions over the years, including a six-month stint on Broadway from 2000-2001. But Caird has been pretty clear that it’s never been the hit he’d hoped, and the West End remains elusive. So here it is, making its London debut in a relatively intimate fringe production that ditches fancy sets – instead we get lots of dry ice and misty projections – in order to free up some budget for a chunky 13-strong ensemble and more black lace than a 1984 episode of Top of the Pops.  Co-directed by Caird and Megan McGinnis, it’s a slick, melodious production that rapidly reveals the essential ‘problem’ with the whole endeavour. Jane Eyre is one of the greatest books ever written. Jane Eyre: A Musical is an elegant, tuneful but essentially bang-average affair that boils the source material’s unsettling gothic vision into a boilerplate period love story between Charlie Burn’s straitlaced Jane and Ashley Gilmour’s overly kooky Rochester. The story slips down too easily, with Paul Gordon’s warm, stately music far too pretty and uplifting. And while the ensemble is nominally colourblind, the decision to have a white actor playing the first Mrs Rochester feels utterly bizarre – surely not a naïve blunder but rather an

Kimberly Akimbo has the sort of outlandish premise that makes you wonder if it’s going to be another entry in the annals of ‘mad things that only Americans are interested in’. But any  musical that wins five Tony awards and tempts the legendary Maria Friedman out of unofficial retirement is probably going to be alright, isn’t it? Well yes. In David Lindsay-Abaire’s adaptation of his own, more obscure 2001 play, Friedman stars as Kimberly LeVaco, a 15-year-old New Jersey schoolgirl who suffers from an unnamed condition which makes her age at four times the usual speed. This is obviously not a real thing that could really happen (or not in such a neat way). But this inverted suburban Benjamin Button allows itself the one wild metaphysical flourish and plays it with a beautifully straight bat. And of course, it’s a metaphor. Kimberly laconically notes early on that not many kids with the condition live beyond the age of 16. It could have been a musical about a teen with cancer or other more tangible terminal condition. But making it weird stops it feeling like a mawkish weepie about a dying girl and opens it up – Kimberly’s condition feels as much a metaphor for the transience of childhood and the fleetingness of life in general than a story to view literally. It’s also a rare gift of a role to a sixtysomething actor and – like Victoria Clark, who won a Tony for the Broadway production - Friedman absolutely seizes it in Michael Longhurst’s UK premiere. She is sensational as Kimb

If it looks like a Chekhov play and it pines wistfully in the pre-revolution Russian countryside like a Chekhov play… that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a Chekhov play. Sure, Lyndsey Turner’s deft revival of Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country uses a not un-Chekhovian 1992 translation from Brian Friel; okay the bulrushes on Leslie Travers’ set could have been recycled from last year’s Barbican Seagull; yes it’s a story about a sprawling cast of dysfunctional aristocrats and their hangers-on falling apart on a country estate. But even in spite of all that, a little time with the play reveals it to in fact be very much its own thing. At the heart of this particular country estate is Sophie Okonedo’s jaded aristo Natalya Petrova. Legally, even wealthy women lacked real power in 19th century Russia. And yet even if Natalya doesn’t have any particularly grand ambitions, her flinty force of will, elegant looks and scorched-earth approach to anyone who annoys her means the teeming denizens of the house bend to her whim and hang on her mood. She is a much more forceful presence than her technology-obsessed husband Arkady (Thomas Arnold), who spends his days cheerily prattling around with his unreliable new winnowing machine, oblivious to the fact his pal Michel (Alistair Petrie) is in love with his wife, and that she has designs on their daughter’s tutor Aleksey (Patrick Gibson) Although there is a moment where Daniel Rigby’s sublimely annoying doctor Ignaty drops his loser facade

Tracey Scott Wilson’s US newspaper drama The Story is definitely more red top than broadsheet in tone. But there’s always a place for some thrills in the theatre. Making its UK debut almost a quarter century after its 2003 US one, its roots stretch even further back in time: it’s inspired by the story of Janet Cooke, a promising young Black reporter for the Washington Post who was forced to return her Pulitzer Prize after her 1980 story about child heroin addicts on the streets of DC turned out to be largely fabricated.  Wilson has her mind on more ambitious stuff than that, however, as she takes us into the ‘Vanguard’ section of a Post-alike newspaper in an unspecified American city. Manned by a somewhat eccentric team of three reporters, all Black, Vanguard is nominally an ‘around town’ style gossip section that has been repurposed as a African American community news by Pat (Lorraine Toussaint), the steely Civil Rights veteran who rules over the section with an iron fist.  She is supported by Neil (Ashley Thomas), her chief underling and longterm mentee, who knows his place. And she enjoys a somewhat frosty relationship with newbie Yvonne (Letitia Wright), an impressive young reporter who has a less easy relationship with the Black community than her co-workers. Bullied by her Black peers as a child, stints in boarding school and Harvard have left her feeling like an outsider, and she is engaged in a clandestine relationship with the paper’s white head of news, nepo baby J

Sam Ryder is not the Messiah. But he did come second for the UK in Eurovision, which places him close in some people’s eyes. And you can see the logic of casting him as the lead in a splashy summer revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. Though he wasn’t born until almost 20 years after Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical theatre romp debuted, Ryder’s eclectic, guitar heavy pop should theoretically position him well to front this loveably mercurial rock opera.  And with all due caveats re: the fact he’s clearly not Middle Eastern, he also looks a bit like Jesus, or at least popular Western depictions of Jesus, which is at least mildly qualifying, surely.  Can’t act though, can he? Well, maybe that’s unfair. He can act a bit. It’s not horrible for a stage debut. But it’s not really lead-actor-at-the-Palladium stuff either. This production actually started 10 years ago at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, where star Declan Bennett didn’t look a thing like classic Jesus, but had brooding charisma to spare, a troubled man struggling to accept his fate and the difficult questions being asked of him by his relentless frenemy Judas.  Ryder by contrast looks like a mildly perturbed middle manager distracted by some tricky mental arithmetic. A lot of Timothy Sheader’s production involves Jesus listening to Tyrone Huntley’s wiry, street rat Judas and looking conflicted while not saying anything. Bennett aura farmed the hell out of this. Ryder does not have the chops.  The logic

This review is of the original 2021 cast.  Jamie Muscato and Joy Woods will play the Emcee and Sally Bowles from May 25 to Sep 19 (Muscato) and Sep 5 (Woods); Skylar Astin and Sarah Hyland will take over the roles from Sep 21, to Dec 12 (Astin) and Jan 23 2027 (Hyland). Come to the cabaret, old chums, and see the stage performance of the year from Jessie Buckley! Gasp at the terrific supporting cast in Rebecca Frecknall’s luxury revival of Kander & Ebb’s musical masterpiece, foremost Omari Douglas’s passionate, tender, little boy lost Clifford! Be wowed by Tom Scutt’s literally transformative design! Wonder at the free schnapps you’re offered on the way in, and nod in polite appreciation at the pre-show entertainment! Also… there’s Eddie Redmayne. Now, I have absolutely nothing against the guy. But the presence of any hugely famous, Oscar-winning star is bound to distort the role of the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club, the Weimar-era Berlin bar in which Cabaret’s tragic heroine Sally Bowles plies her trade. The Emcee is a vital supporting role: his sardonic songs set the mood of the show, and map Germany’s descent into darkness. But it’s in no way the lead part – in fact, the character barely interacts with the actual story. Putting by far the most famous actor in the show in the role would be enormously distracting even if Redmayne didn’t do… all this. Wearing a series of beautiful, subtly sinister outfits that kind of feel like they’re trying to process every single one of David

This review is of the original West End cast of Oh, Mary!. As well as ‘normal’ cast changes, a series of high profile Marys have been lined up: Jinkx Monsoon will do the honours until September 26; Lolly Adefope will then take over until December 5. Scott Karim plays ‘Mary’s Husband’. It would be a mistake to say the humour in Cole Escola’s massive hit Broadway comedy has been lost in translation to the West End: there was a lot of laughter when I caught Oh, Mary! on a Wednesday matinee. However, I’m afraid it was lost in translation to me.  I didn’t hate this lurid cabaret about Abraham Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd Lincoln. But after the slew of American critics describing the life-changing injuries they’d suffered from laughing so hard at Sam Pinkleton’s production, the whole thing just felt a bit… ’70s? A little bit Airplane!, a little bit Benny Hill, maybe even a touch of Mr Bean… Really it’s broad, dated humour salvaged by a tremendous cast headed by Jamie Lloyd veteran Mason Alexander Park as Mary and the redoubtable Giles Terera as ‘Mary’s husband’ (ie Abe). Of course, a lot of British people like ’70s humour: this is a country that still remains dangerously hooked on the 1976 Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. But Oh, Mary! is an old-fashioned farce built on two gags: one, Mary is a boozy narcissist – borderline feral – who dreams of the stage; and two, Abraham Lincoln is gay. To be fair, there are few cows more sacred in America than Lincoln, and this is of course que

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Conceptual comic Joseph Morpurgo hasn’t been totally absent this last 10 years: he recently brought back his classic 2015 show Soothing Sounds for Baby. However, Highlander 70 is his first new work in nearly a decade although you’d hardly guess it if you didn’t know: he throws himself into a show with truly esoteric subject matter with the breezy energy of a man who pumps out a weirdy Fringe show a year. And although he’s not an observational stand-up type who was going to talk us through what he’s been up to, there’s just something admirably ballsy about announcing his return with this. Wearing clay-coloured face paint for whatever reason, he dives straight into the premise. He allegedly randomly happened across a 1970 high school yearbook for a US high school called Highlander Academy, in New Jersey. And from the pictures contained therein he spins an eccentric and amusing yarn about David Moon, a student who appears multiple times in the book. Of course Murpurgo has no real idea who Moon was. But he has crafted a narrative that Moon sits at the heart of, when a private diary detailing the straitlaced student’s love for the most popular girl in school goes missing on graduation day, prompting an epic quest to retrieve it.  I would assume that somehow Morpurgo did happen upon the real yearbook – it seems like too mad a thing to have entirely fabricated – but clearly the wild stories he tells of David and his adventures

House of Dreamers is a similar idea to a series of all-ages immersive experiences that flourished around 2024: think the Balloon Museum, think Dopamine Land, think Bubble Planet (which is still going). As a veteran of these sorts of things (my kids go nuts for them), there are very definitely some familiar elements to House of Dreamers: the gigantic ballpit is a classic, as is the pretend train journey where you sit in a carriage and video screens give the illusion of movement. Originating in Italy (it’s the creation of designer sisters Elena and Giulia Sella), what sets HoD apart from the pack is the relentless barrage of aspirational slogans and cookie-cutter ‘you got this!’ positivity. Somewhat ambiguously described as being ‘the first immersive exhibition dedicated to dreamers’, the show occupies a vague middle ground between actually being dreamlike and celebrating hopes and dreams via the medium of messages like ‘enjoy today’ or ‘never give up’. I think maybe when I was younger and didn’t have kids, and my cynicism outweighed my pragmatism, the whole thing would have made me want to scream, especially when my journey ended with an uplifting quote from JK Rowling, personalised just for me (we are given individual wristbands with our names electronically imprinted on them – my kids both lost theirs in the ballpit). But now, I just say live, laugh, love.  The show is relentlessly photo friendly House of Dreamers is perfectly good fun so long as you are aware of what you'r

As You Like It is mostly a play about a large assortment of oddballs living in a forest for some reason. It definitely has a plot, but it also kind of plays out like an eccentric Tudor sketch show. And I’ve seen a lot of productions get lost in the woods (badoom) of its teeming character and their largely low-stakes adventures – you can watch this show a dozen times and not be entirely clear who, say, Silvius is if the director doesn’t lead you through it. Fortunately dual directors Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine – plus their creative team headed by designer Paul Wills – are excellent guides though the trees.  This is not a production that (as far as I can tell) comes with a high concept. I don’t think the reason why the opening court-set scene sees the characters dressed in a sort of eye-poppingly absurd 17th century style – big wigs; insanely silhouetted dresses; vaguely kinky; general Marie Antoinette-on-acid vibes – comes with any great point other than that it looks awesome and it sets up a contrast with the longer more rustic sequence that follows when most of the key cast are banished or have run away to the Forest of Arden. It is very fun to spend time in designer Paul Wills’ whiteboard forest But by making every character as vivid as possible, visually and personality-wise, it’s just a great, boisterous production where you don’t find yourself questioning ‘and who is THAT guy?’ two hours in. From Lola Shalam’s highly strung romantic lead Rosalind and Grace Oddie-

Adam Riches’ virtually method approach to comedy – in which he loses himself entirely in a character and accent – has taken a logical turn in the last couple of years, with him now making one-man-shows that sit in the theatre section of the Edinburgh Fringe programme. They’re still funny, but that’s not the main point of these detailed characted studies of real life figures.  Last year it was Jimmy, in which Riches took on the persona of Jimmy Connors, a complicated, pathologically competitive tennis star of the ’70s who’d fallen into obscurity before making an extraordinary comeback in 1991. There are definitely similarities to its follow-up, The Captain. Both concern quixotic-bordering-on-eccentric real-life figures, who were written off only to triumph… in a fairly qualified way. The captain in question is James Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel (in 1875), a feat that was all the more remarkable because despite this being the great Victorian age of exploration, almost nobody gave a hoot about what Webb was trying to do: swimming was only just starting to tentatively take off as lesiure activity and wouldn’t really become popular until the early 20th century. The really big difference between Riches’ two theatre shows is that we do not see The Captain from Webb’s point of view. Instead it’s that of his swimming coach Fred Beckwith, a kind of Ishmael to Webb’s Ahab. It’s a smart move, I think: despite the century separating Webb and Connors’ lives, I can see wh

  ★★★★ 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 Nesbit – 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

Today the National Theatre held its annual press conference, at which artistic director Indhu Rubasingham laid out all (or most of) her 2027 programming, and as usual there’s some pretty exciting stuff.  It’s hard to know where to begin exactly, but let’s start with probably the splashiest news: next winter the NT will revive Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story (winter 2027), the first major London production of their all time classic New York gangland take on Romeo & Juliet. It will be directed by Marianne Elliott - hopefully fresh off eventual triumph for her troubled revival of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George - alongside Miranda Cromwell, who partnered with Elliott on the Young Vic’s superb Death of a Salesman a few years back.  Speaking of Death of a Salesman: as flagged up last year, the Arthur Miller classic will be revived next autumn, with Paul Mescal starring as the troubled Biff. We’ve got some more information now, notably that in a pretty remarkable coup, the legendary US actor and playwright Tracy Letts (most famous for his soon-to-be-revived August: Osage County) will make his UK stage debut in Rebecca Frecknall’s production, playing the title role of Willy Loman. The show will play in rep with a production of Tom Murphy’s epic crime drama A Whistle in the Dark, also starring Mescal. Rep, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the system whereby several plays are in a theatre’s repertoire at the same time, playing different days ac

Sad news today as the Gate Theatre announces that it is closing all operations, the end to an almost 50-year-history. Founded in 1979 above the Prince Albert Pub in Notting Hill, the Gate was a dynamic, international work-focussed theatre that served as a peer of other major off-West End venues like the Bush and Hampstead theatres. Some heavyweight British stage directors have run it on their way to the top, notably Stephen Daldry, Thea Sharrock, Carrie Cracknell and Ellen McDougall. Unfortunately it’s now over. It’s sad but not a surprise. Unlike the Bush and Hampstead, the Gate never made it to a more modern new venue: it hung on it at Prince Albert for over 40 years, but closed during the pandemic. In 2023, citing the poor accessibility of its original venue, it took up residence in the larger Theatro Technis venue in Camden, but this was a complicated building share arrangement that greatly reduced the amount of shows it could stage. It also lost its Arts Council funding in 2022, and McDougall – its final permanent artistic director – departed in 2021. It did produce a series of acclaimed shows in the post-Notting Hill era, including 2024’s Wish You Were Here, staged at Theatro Technis, and last year’s Scenes from the Climate Era, staged at the Playground Theatre.  The official press release announcing its closure states that ‘after several years of short-term success it has become apparent that this is not sustainable in the long-term’. That’s a bit vague but it’s fairly

The four-week-long London Theatre Week is oddly named, but now it really is into its last week: it ends on Sunday 13, and is probably the last big London theatre tickets sale until Christmas. In case you’re confused: London Theatre Week is a great big theatre tickets sale and that’s really all you need to know about it. Indeed, it’s up there as one of the biggest sales of the year, perfectly timed to set you up for the West End’s busier autumn, or to let you snap up a bargain for the final furlong of the still endless-feeling summer holiday. In terms of big hitting, famous West End shows it’s got plenty to offer: you can get a decent discount on the likes of Cabaret, The Lion King, Les Mis, Matilda, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, My Neighbour Totoro, The Phantom of the Opera and Wicked, with tickets starting from £15 for some shows, £25 for most of the West End long-runners, and the odd £35 bottom price to fancier fare like Cabaret. Basically almost every London musical that’s not Hamilton or Paddington is in.  It’s also a particularly good time to snap up a cheaper ticket to shows coming to London in the autumn that may well sell out when they open and get reviewed, but are currently happy to get bums on seats at a slightly nicer price than usual. Some great-looking stuff coming up that’s in the sale includes the UK premiere of acclaimed US musical Kimberly Akimbo, the Old Vic’s ultra-rare limited run revival of Martin Guerre (from the writers of Les Mis and Miss Saigon)

Although Elton John’s musical adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada had a slightly fraught birth – its original incarnation was scrapped after a messy Chicago run – it’s really made its mark in London, and has been packing them in at the gigantic Dominion Theatre for almost two years now with no signs of slowing down.  The entire time, the iconic role of venomous fashion mag editor Miranda Priestley has been played by US singing and acting star Vanessa Williams, who has presumably loved her time here and in the show as that’s a really very long stint for a lead actor, especially a famous American star. Still, even the great editors move on eventually and Williams’ final performance is September 19, with Brit stage veteran Debbie Kurup holding down the role for the following month. And then another big name, and indeed another Desperate Housewife, as Williams’ former co-star Teri Hatcher takes over the stage role that was made legendary on screen by Meryl Streep. While Hatcher is best known for her small screen roles – Desperate Housewives and The New Adventures of Superman being the biggies – she’s done a couple of musicals in the US in the shape of Cabaret and The Addams Family, but this will certainly be her biggest stage gig to date. Quoth Hatcher: ‘I’ve been fortunate enough to play some pretty formidable women throughout my career, but very few can compare to THE Miranda Priestly. I'm absolutely delighted to be joining The Devil Wears Prada in the West End. Miranda is inte

★★★★★ Reviewing the actual Bayeux Tapestry feels like an undertaking of hysterical hubris: why not just review the Norman Conquest while you’re at it? The tapestry isn’t just a work of art: it is literal history, a near-1,000-year-old artefact that is also the primary source for our understanding of the most momentous year in the story of our own country. I feel like I don’t really need to offer a lot of background for why the tapestry – woven in England, displayed in Bayeux, Normandy – has made it to the British Museum. Blah blah blah landmark Anglo-French deal, blah blah blah insanely popular: probably the most popular museum exhibition of our lifetimes. Now here it is.  Are we not so familiar with the tapestry already that seeing it in situ is a bit underwhelming? Honestly, not a bit of it. Photos of a few key moments in your school textbooks – Edward the Confessor on his throne, the appearance of Hailey’s Comet, Harold getting shot in the eye – maybe encompass its highlights in terms of the major historical talking points. But they scarcely touch on it as art. Laid out flat in one continuous 70 metre strip, the Bayeux Tapestry is astonishing, a heady mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar that teeters somewhere between outsider art, medieval illumination, action cartoon, historical document and blithe propaganda (it’s widely thought to have been commissioned by William the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo, who certainly pops up in it in a flattering light a suspicious number

Sometimes London theatre news is truly momentous and surprising and sometimes it’s simply relaying something you could have guessed anyway, and this news falls fairly squarely into the latter category. The RSC’s Game of Thrones prequel The Mad King – written by Duncan MacMillan – debuted in Stratford-upon-Avon last month and scored generally strong reviews. And if you were expecting a London transfer to follow you’d be absolutely correct: it has today been announced that it’s coming to London in 2027. Helpfully we know absolutely nothing more than that: no date (beyond 2027), no venue, and no casting details. Given we already knew the show existed and was liable to be heading to London, you sort of wonder why they couldn’t just hold off until they had something more for us, but hey ho. To speculate some more: the fully George RR Martin-endorsed show is likely to need a big theatre, which are generally in short supply in London. The Gillian Lynne Theatre – aka the current home of the RSC’s My Neighbour Totoro – is a decent shout, but it is staging that weird-looking Traitors play all summer. The Mad King could replace it in the autumn but one would assume the idea is to extend its run. The hulking Prince Edward Theatre has just become free from January as Beetlejuice has curtailed its run by four months. But Miss Saigon is moving there in June: considering the popularity of Game of Thrones it would be surprising if The Mad King was restricted to a limited run. Also it’s worth

The Barbican’s revival of Sunday in the Park with George was set to be the biggest London theatre show of 2027. Then the problems started. Time Out’s theatre editor looks at what’s next for the troubled production. RECOMMENDED: The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026 and 2027.  Sorry what the hell are you talking about I've missed all this? Sunday in the Park with George is a classic Stephen Sondheim musical, set across two timelines that focus on the painter George Seurat and his cynical great-grandson, also named George. We were supposed to get a production in 2020 starring Jake Gyllenhaal, but the pandemic put paid to that. Then earlier this year it was announced that Wicked leads Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey would star in a summer 2027 revival at the Barbican, an absurdly hot ticket. But in early August pop star Grande pulled out of all public events following the conclusion of her current world tour, amid speculation about her health. Then a month later Bailey quit via a vague Instagram statement implying he was leaving in solidarity with his friend Grande or something (but whatever the case he was definitely leaving). Oh no! Have ticket holders been refunded? Fortunately tickets never actually went on sale, which has saved some headaches as clearly Grande/Bailey stans would have snapped up the vast majority of the tickets. Is the production still going ahead?  Fundamentally, it’s going to be fine. The Barbican stages a big musical every summer – in f

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of the biggest Brit musicals of the last decade, running for over three years at the massive Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a feat that no musical – not even Disney’s Frozen – has equalled since. Adapted from Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s classic 1971 film – and with all yer favourite songs including ‘Pure Imagination’ present and correct – the 2013 musical was adapted for the stage by top Scottish playwright David Greig, with additional songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. With the Wonka film a recent hit and a whole new generation of children who’ve had no chance to see the Charlie musical, now seems like a fine time to bring it back, in a brand new production from Nikolai Foster. The artistic director of Leicester’s musicals powerhouse the Curve Theatre, he directed this summer’s revival of Kinky Boots, which ran at the huge London Coliseum, and it’s the same deal for next summer as the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory debuts at the Coliseum in June, running until mid-September. It’s obviously positioned as a summer holidays hit, running the breadth of them, but while there’s something for the kids there, there’s also something for older musicals fans in the form of twinkly-eyed charmer Michael Ball, who will be stepping into the role of capricious chocolate overlord Wonka. Although Ball is so titanically cuddly it can be hard to imagine him as the borderline sadistic Wonka, he didn’t get to be the best in the biz withou

★★★★ Curiously unmentioned in the publicity around the National Theatre’s most anticipated show of 2026 is that it’s one of those productions where the two leads – that’s Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss – toss a coin at the start to see who plays which role.  It’s an idea that has some resonance with the themes of duality and identity that permeate Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 cinematic masterpiece Persona, the source text here. It must send its stars deeper into the show’s psychological rabbit hole.  But from the POV of an audience member who will (probably) only ever see it one way around, let’s call it what it is: a flex over how good Blanchett and Hoss are. And they’re really, really good: even if Benedict Andrews’ production doesn’t entirely ‘work’, the sense that it is just bloody amazing having two incredible actors doing an enormous amount of acting – and that we’re actually only seeing half of it – carries the night. Photo: Monika RittershausCate Blanchett (Electra), Nina Hoss (Clytemnestra) and Ella Lily Hyland (Chrysothemis) Persona follows Elisabeth, a star of stage and screen who is sent to an isolated country retreat with her nurse Alma in the hope she’ll recover after being mysteriously struck dumb following her performance in a production of Sophocles’s Greek tragedy Electra.  It would be overstating the literalness of Andrews’ adaptation to say that the claustrophobic, clowning-inflected version of Electra that starts the night is intended to be the same one that Eli

UPDATE: Ariana Grande has withdrawn from the production and all other public appearances following the conclusion of her current world tour, which probably partly explains why the May onsale date for Sunday in the Park with George never materialised. Jonathan Bailey will remain in what is, after all, the lead role, with further casting TBA: expect it to stay a hot ticket but probably not as crazily as it would have been, which is probably no bad thing from from POV of a Londoner trying to get tickets. It’s now due to go on sale in the autumn. FURTHER UPDATE: Jonathan Bailey has now also quit Sunday in the Park with George, following a vague Instagram post in which he affirmed his love for both Arianna Grande and the show’s director Marianne Elliott. This is certainly a plot twist and no mistake, and leaves a production that was once hinged on its superstar Wicked leads now having no superstar Wicked leads. Fortunately no tickets had been sold and dates had only been vaguely set so there’s plenty of time to pull it back with new casting. Is Jake Gyllenhaal busy, we wonder? Hardcore musical theatre nerds may remember that in 2020 we were due to get a transfer of the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1984 classic Sunday in the Park with George. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a typically virtuosic work by the late genius that was inspired by the pointillist painter Georges Seurat's work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and follows a f

While some West End shows blissfully drift on for decades, most of them have limited runs based around the availability of the cast. Shows therefore come and go, but typically there are two periods of the year when loads close at once, making way for the next slew of big openings. There’s early January, and then there’s right about now, as most of the big summer and spring shows bid us farewell this Saturday (September 5) and next (September 12). The one show that’s been running longer than all that is Disney’s Hercules, which wraps up a slightly more than a year run at Theatre Royal Drury Lane on Saturday September 5 – if you’ve been hankering to see it this really is your last moment. Hercules will be replaced by Sting’s musical The Last Ship and then this summer’s Sam Ryder-starring production of Jesus Christ Superstar will transfer over. However, September 5 will be your last chance to see JCS at the London Palladium, and it’ll be over a month until it resurfaces at Drury Lane for a final London stint before heading out on tour in the new year. The last musical to close is the troubled stage adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, which also winds up its run September 5 – this is, let’s be honest, probably your last chance to see it anywhere, ever. Photo: Marc BrennerSusanah Fielding (Roxane) and Adrian Lester (Cyrano) Finally, four major dramas are coming to the scheduled ends of their limited runs. First, the wildly-praised Adrian Lester-starring RSC production of