King's Head Theatre

Started in the 1970s as London's first pub theatre on a spectacularly lean budget, the King's Head Theatre is a tiny space tucked away at the back of a Victorian boozer on Islington's Upper Street. In the past, it's helped launched a raft of stars, among them Hugh Grant, Steven Berkoff and Alan Rickman, and today boasts Joanna Lumley and Tom Stoppard as patrons. It flirted with a major change of direction in 2011 when Adam Spreadbury-Maher became artistic director and turned it into a fringe opera venue, though it has since reverted to a more traditional fringe-style programme.