Islands, Caroline Horton

Off-West End theatre

Think beyond theatreland with our guide to London's best off-West End theatre

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London's off-West End theatre scene is a bustling, vibrant hub of new shows and revivals all performed at subsidised theatres. Here’s Time Out’s guide, including reviews, tickets and theatre information for the off-West End shows that even the most traditional theatre-goer would be sorry to miss.

Central London off-West End theatre

  • Musicals
  • Covent Garden
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
This review is from 2023. SplitLip’s delightful spoof WW2 musical has been heading inexorably for the West End for something like five years now. It’s a fringe theatre comet that’s gathered mass and momentum via seasons at the New Diorama, Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios, and has now made impact in Theatreland – wiping out a West End dinosaur to boot, as it displaces ‘The Woman in Black’ after over 30 years at the Fortune Theatre. And it’s really hard to be anything but delighted for the company, which consists of David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Robert. All bar Hagan perform in the show, with Claire Marie Hall and Jak Malone rounding out the cast. This is very much their triumph. And though it’s been redirected for the West End by Robert Hastie, ‘Operation Mincemeat’ is at heart the same show it always was. There are no added backing dancers or bombastic reorchestrations. It’s slicker and bigger in its way, but still feels endearingly shambolic where it counts. It’s a very larky account of the World War 2 Operation Mincemeat, a ploy from British intelligence to feed the German army disinformation via a briefcase of false war plans strapped to a corpse that they hoped to pass off as a downed British pilot (yes, there was a recent film with exactly the same name, about exactly the same thing, and yes they do make a joke about this). The story centres on Charles Cholmondeley (Cumming), the socially inept MI5 operative who dreams up the plan, and...
  • Children's
  • Tower Bridge
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
This review is from 2019. Anansi the Spider returns in 2025.  Anansi the trickster spider went global a long time ago. But Justin Audibert’s inaugural production in charge of the Unicorn takes folklore’s most famous arachnid right back to his roots. Under Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey’s sprawling tree set, performers Afia Abusham, Sapphire Joy and Juliet Okotie file on clutching djembe drums, wearing West African clothes and accents as they launch into a funny, energetic trio of tales. In the first act, Anansi steals the world’s wisdom, only to reflect that this might have been a rather unwise decision; in the second he blags some vegetables from a green, er, fingered snake and cons a series of unfortunate other animals into paying the steep price demanded for the veg; the third hops to modern London – this time Anansi is a chancer who concocts an elaborate scheme to bag himself two dinners and ends up falling flat on his face. The three women divvy up three Anansi roles for a funny and lively show for ages three to seven that’s essentially old-fashioned storytelling, done with pace and care. There are no splashy spider costumes, but they’re not necessary – the young audience get that each woman is a different facet of Anansi. And if it’s mostly about the power of their words, then engaging music and lighting switches up the mood when small attention spans threaten to wander. There’s also some sublime physicality, be that Anansi teetering precariously up the enormous tree...
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  • Off-West End
  • Bloomsbury
After being at the Leicester Square Theatre since what feels like the dawn of time, Freckle Productions’s moves to a new venue as it returns with its splendid puppet-driven family adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's popular book. The hapless Stick Man's domestic idyll – living up a tree with his Stick Lady Love and their trio of stick sprogs – is shattered when an enterprising dog mistakes him for a common or garden piece of wood. Ages three-plus.

North London off-West End theatre

  • Children's
  • Islington
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Me…
Me…
Me... is back at Little Angel Theatre for Christmas 2025. This review is from its 2016 premiere. Islington puppet theatre the Little Angel is nothing less than an icon of north London childhood. Tucked away down a picturesque little alley where everything seems magically smaller than life, this place has been beguiling children with crowd-pleasing yet surprisingly avant-garde puppet shows since 1961. Its craft is precise, its tone is well-judged, and its shows are reliably charming, especially at Christmas. This year’s show for two-to-six-year olds, ‘Me…’, is a charmfest that’s unlikely to upset even the most lily-livered pre-schooler. Featuring a cute bundle of day-old penguin fluff and an icy antarctic environment shaped like a half pipe, it is simple, short and sweet. In a series of gymnastic scenes, baby penguin discovers that the sea is deep, the world is large, and she is small. And that’s about the size of it. A bunch of bloodthirsty six-year-olds complained about the lack of a baddie killer whale to amp up the drama. And they had a point: there’s not a lot of dramatic tension or much of a storyline. But it’s a lovely safe, empathetic first show for a little one. And the world that’s created by simple tactile scenery and deft puppetry is, as usual, beautifully crafted. The Little Angel is small, but its impact is big. 
  • Drama
  • Alexandra Palace
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
This review is from 2021. A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story returns in 2025 with Neil Morrissey starring as Jacob Marley and Matthew Cottle returning as Scrooge. There are currently (at least) four stage versions of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ being performed in London (not including screenings of the superlative Muppet one). The two biggest are the now-landmark production at the Old Vic, this year featuring Stephen Mangan. And then there’s this adaptation by Mark Gatiss (you know, ‘Sherlock’ etc), which premiered at Nottingham Playhouse, before heading south. And it’s good. Alexandra Palace’s ruin-lust theatre is the perfect raddled backdrop – its faded Victorian glories and pockmarked plaster chime atmospherically with the set of perilously towering wooden filing cabinets, a kind of Monument Valley to Ebenezer Scrooge’s dry record-keeping.  Paraphrasing the book’s original name (‘A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas’), Gatiss sets out his stall explicitly: this is a production that harps on the ghostly nature of the story as much as the ‘God bless us, every one’ crimbo cheer. There are genuine chills as Marley’s ghost (Gatiss himself) materialises in the corner of Scrooge’s bedchamber, before the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come do their thang. ‘His Dark Materials’-style ghouls flit among the audience, and the Spirit of CYTC is a really horrifying shrouded figure, grimly pointing Scrooge to his own corpse, burial and...

East London off-West End theatre

  • Immersive
  • Olympic Park
Step into a pitch-black shipping container and get your mind thoroughly blown by immersive theatre masters Darkfield, who are bringing four of their eerie binaural shows to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Each lasts around half an hour, and uses headphones and binaural sound trickery to create a world that feels way bigger than the shipping container's walls. Flight is set on an aeroplane that soars across two parallel realities. Coma is a dream-like experience that invites the audience to lie down confront the darker corners of their consciousness. Eulogy sees you entered into a very strange contest that spirals abruptly out of control. The outstanding Arcade is a more interactive experience that sees you negotiate your way through a dystopian future.  Showtimes are throughout the day and vary; visit Darkfield's website for full details. 
  • Panto
  • Wapping
They’ve given us ‘Potted Potter’ and ‘Potted Pirates’; now Daniel Clarkson, Jefferson Turner and their director and co-writer Richard Hurst are back, with a madcap dash through all the big panto favourites. Role-swapping, silly costumes and cut-price props underpin their knockabout two-man storytelling, and they have the direct appeal of a couple of overgrown kids engaged in a game whose rules they make up as they go along. Jeff, shorter, more serious, is the theatrical glue; lanky Dan is the prankster, ever ready with a daft quip, a slapstick stunt and occasionally a naughty innuendo. The cleverly judged balance of childish simplicity and adult sauce means the show engages parents as well as their offspring. There’s even a dash of satire: in ‘Dick Whittington’ a Boris Johnson wig turns the hero into a modern-day Lord Mayor of London. Occasionally you suspect that they might be having more fun up on stage than we are watching them. But it’s jovially done; and if it’s a simple offering, there’s a lot to like about a Christmas show that relies on wit rather than glitz.
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