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To be simplistic, 2025 was a year where starry revivals made more impact than any new plays or musicals. But a champagne year for Jamie Lloyd and Ivo van Hove is not a bad year for the wider theatrical landscape, with the rise of young star Ava Pickett a sign British playwriting has a lot of juice left in it. Here are my favourite theatre shows that I saw in London this year.
The best London theatre shows of 2025
1= Much Ado About Nothing (Theatre Royal Drury Lane)
1= Evita (London Palladium)
Of course it’s feeding the hype machine to put Jamie Lloyd at the top of this list, and doubly to do it twice. The most in-demand commercial theatre director in the English-speaking world, he’s so ubiquitous that I saw two completely unrelated shows this year that parodied the look of his encores. Lloyd’s colossal success, fondness for celebrity casting and aggressively impressionistic stage tropes have generated a cottage industry of naysayers, who endlessly write him off as ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’, some 20 years into his career. You could positively smell their glee at his dud production of The Tempest that closed 2024, weighed down by a horribly out of her depth Sigourney Weaver.
And so it was that for 2025 Lloyd proved ‘the haters’ wrong in an incredibly Jamie Lloyd-like fashion. First up was his utterly wonderful take on Shakespeare’s Much Ado, which cast Tom Hiddleston’s Benedick and Hayley Atwell’s Beatrice as the eccentric outsiders at an endless, pink confetti-saturated dance party. Hilarious, surreal, melancholy and visually astonishing (shout out to Lloyd’s designer Soutra Gilmour) it was one of the best things he’s ever done and doubtless vindication for the Tempest company, who made up most of the cast.
And then came Evita. A turbocharged version of Lloyd’s 2019 Open Air Theatre production, it boasted a phenomenal lead performance from Hollywood star Rachel Zegler. But beyond that, it was literally the most talked about theatre show of 2025 – not in London, in the world – thanks to the audacious ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ scene, wherein the show’s most famous song was performed nightly by Zegler not inside the theatre but on a balcony, to increasingly large audiences loitering on Argyll St.
Much Ado was the fractionally better production, probably my ‘true’ show of the year in nuts and bolts terms, but as well as still being a pretty damn extraordinary production of a musical, Evita’s balcony scene was a masterstroke of showmanism that (literally) reverberated far outside the theatre. Put together, and they’re not only great works in their own right, but an object lesson in why Lloyd is the biggest theatre director in the world. It’s a title he’ll have to fight to justify every time he makes a show. But the man is clearly up for the challenge.
Both shows have now closed.
3. All My Sons (Wyndham’s Theatre)
Ivo van Hove’s return to Arthur Miller yielded the best London production of All My Sons this century, with a phenomenal cast headed by Bryan Cranston luxuriating in every nook and cranny of the great tragedy.
Until Mar 7 2026. Buy tickets here.
4. 4.48 Psychosis (Royal Court Theatre)
The entire original cast and creative team of Sarah Kane’s final play reunited 25 years onwards in what felt like an extraordinary act of conjuring that summoned the great, tragic playwright into the room.
Now closed.
5. 1536 (Almeida Theatre)
No question of who my most hotly tipped young playwright of 2026 is: Ava Pickett’s debut about a sweary trio of women meeting in an Essex swamp during the downfall of Anne Boleyn was superb, and has netted a richly deserved 2026 West End transfer. Her modern Essex-set adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma was also tremendous.
Ambassadors Theatre, May 2-Aug 1 2026. Buy tickets here.
6. Romans: A Novel (Almeida Theatre)
Alice Birch’s first play in an age was worth the wait, a time-bending odyssey through 150 years of British toxic masculinity that followed Kyle Soller’s Jack on a journey from boyish innocence to creepy guru and far beyond.
Now closed.
7. The Glass Menagerie (Yard Theatre)
Beloved fringe theatre the Yard ended the first phase of its existence this year: it’s being torn down and built back better. But this was a terrific show to go out on, a dreamy take on Tennessee Williams’s breakthrough with a startlingly compassionate version of matriarch Amanda Wingfield.
Now closed.
8. Into the Woods (Bridge Theatre)
Stephen Sondheim’s 1986 delve into the world of fairytale is an absurdly tricky musical that needs an Avengers-style cast of top notch actor-singers to pull off. And director Jordan Fein gathered one for this sumptuous revival that stands as the first Sondheim classic to be mounted in London since his death.
Until Apr 18 2026. Buy tickets here.
9. Stereophonic (Gielgud Theatre)
David Adjmi’s very thinly veiled Fleetwood Mac bio-drama didn’t make quite the splash here that it did Stateside. But it was pretty damn great nonetheless, an indecently gripping three-hour-plus interrogation of musical creativity in the face of personal catastrophe.
Now closed.
10. Paddington the Musical (Savoy Theatre)
For me, a lack of musical bangers held Paddington’s West End debut back from greatness, but in all other respects this is a wonderful show, a no-expenses-spared romp with the most adorable lead actor of the year.
Booking to Feb 14 2027. Buy tickets here.