The Time Out London blog team

Go down to the Barbican Centre today, and you’ll find its huge theatre shut for a refurb.  But what you’ll find instead is… a mysterious booth, showing high quality, new and exclusive five-minute Irish theatre shows for free.  While the main theatre is closed – ahead of an even bigger shutdown in 2028 – Europe’s biggest arts centre has risen to the challenge with its Scene Change season of theatre in alternative venues. And for next week-and-a-half, you can be the sole audience member in Theatre for One, a series of five minute new Irish plays staged for free in a booth in the foyer. Theatre for One is the brainchild of Christine Jones, artistic director of Ireland’s Landmark Productions and some very big name writing talent is involved, including Enda Walsh and Marina Carr, two of the Emerald Isle’s biggest playwrights. For members of the public, Theatre for One will work like this: you’ll go along to the big booth in the foyer, join the queue (if there is one) and when it’s your turn you’ll sit down, the door will close, and a screen in the middle of the booth will slide back revealing an actor, who will perform one of six plays to you at random. I went along to a special press preview at which I saw all six plays, which won’t be your experience but I can confirm that they‘re all good (some better than others of course), and with gratifyingly wild variation in quality and tone, with shows running the gamut from bittersweet naturalism to goofy comedy to full tilt magical...

London isn’t short on delicious, varied food markets, from Borough Market to Arcade Food Hall – but we’ll never say no to a new one. And that’s what’s happening in Ilford later this month with the revamp of the area’s old Mercato Metropolitano. Mercado Metropolitano’s Ilford site opened in 2024, but it is now being rebranded with a community focus. It’ll be called Maison Noor and promises to be a ‘community-first’ food court. As before, the venue will be in the borough’s ‘Cultural Quarter’ and just a few minutes’ walk from Ilford’s Lizzie line station.  Maison Noor will serve up street food inspired by global cuisine. The 16 fully halal venues include Knightsbridge’s South Asian inspired café Chai & Chapati; cheesy slices from Caprinos Pizza; 100 percent wagyu beef burgers from Flip & Sear; LA and Mexican-inspired street food from Birria Taco; and loaded brioche buns from Bunify. If you’re in the mood for something sweet, there will also be ice cream from Badiani Italian Gelato, as well as freshly baked treats from Dum Dum Doughnuts and Mrs Potts’ Chocolate House. Street food aside, Maison Noor will have a 850 square foot soft-play area for kids, a deli supermarket, a daily farmer’s market and eventually a mezzanine level for fashion, beauty and art boutiques.    Photograph: Maison Noor   Backed by Sadiq Khan and Greater London Authority’s City Hall, the project is led by managing director Atif Amin, who opened 50 new locations with Creams Dessert Café and has worked as...

It would be an exaggeration to say that the last few years have seen Andrew Lloyd Webber become cool again, because that would imply that he was cool in the first place. Or is cool now. Still, it is my solemn duty to point out to you that something is definitely up. Forty years ago, Webber was absurdly popular, Britain’s number one cultural export of the ’80s. It was an Ed Sheeran-ish popularity: an insanely prolific hitmaker, yes, but he never commanded a fraction of the critical adulation of, say, Stephen Sondheim or Kander & Ebb. Heck, his most acclaimed musicals were actually the ones about how awesome Jesus was. Nonetheless, there was a period of time where he could literally have made a musical about anything – rollerskating trains FFS – and it would immediately make more money than the GDP of a mid-sized European country.  His imperial phase ended somewhere around the mid-’90s, and while a new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is always a big deal, there’s something depressing about the fact his biggest hit of the last 30 years is his boomertastic adaptation of School of Rock, which was pleasant but workmanlike, a musical any number of composers might have tackled. His last musical was Cinderella, which didn’t stick around for long and tanked on Broadway. And we mustn’t forget the screen adaptation of Cats – not so much a low point for cinema as it was for human civilisation. Photo: Marc BrennerJamie Lloyd’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ The Webbernaissance: origins However....