London theatre reviews

Read our latest Time Out theatre reviews and find out what our London theatre team made of the city's new plays, musicals and theatre shows

Andrzej Lukowski
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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.

August is a fairly quiet month for London theatre openings so we’ll be posting relatively little here until things get busy again in September. But if you’d like to see reviews of work that’s likely to be coming to London in the near future, then do check out our coverage of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025.

A-Z of West End shows.

  • Experimental
  • Walthamstow
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Bryony Kimmings has one heck of a fanbase: some big comedy names have played the 1,000-seater Soho Theatre Walthamstow since it opened in May, but none of them have mounted a two-and-a-half week run, as Kimmings has with new show Bog Witch.

  • Shakespeare
  • South Bank
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Like many of Shakespeare’s deeper cuts, Troilus and Cressida is a bizarre (bordering on broken) play that is clearly only performed (sporadically) in the twenty-first century because of who its author is. I don’t think that makes it bad, just weird.

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  • Shakespeare
  • South Bank
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

The National Theatre’s first production of the play since 2010 – Rufus Norris was the first artistic director to simply not stage it – falls reasonably squarely into the ‘indie Hamlet’ box. 

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  • Musicals
  • Victoria
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

This all-singing adaptation of the blockbuster 2004 Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore romcom is written by cult US musical comedy duo Steve Rosen and David Rossmer, who have been admirably pragmatic in looking at the source movie and concluding that no, you absolutely cannot do a lot of that stuff in a modestly sized London theatre in 2025.

  • Fringe
  • Islington
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
We're Going on a Bear Hunt

Famous franchises aren’t just big business in Hollywood: they’re also the driving force behind much of London kids’ theatre. And source material doesn’t come much better known than We’re Going on a Bear Hunt…

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  • Drama
  • South Bank
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Arguably the entire point of the first play to be programmed at the National Theatre by its new boss Indhu Rubasingham comes around five minutes from the end – after the actual plt has wrapped up – when Ukweli Roach’s Dionysus adds the mantle of ‘god of theatre’ to his celestial portfolio and dedicates the NT’s Olivier theatre to us. And if the hour and 40 minutes that precede this moment are messy, I’d say they are entertainingly messy. 

  • Comedy
  • Waterloo

Joe Orton’s breakthrough play Entertaining Mr Sloane hasn’t been revived in London in almost 20 years, and on this showing you can kind of see why. His dark comedy about a middle aged brother and sister who both fall for a sexy lodger with a shady past caused outrage in its day. But in 2025 it’s unforgivably tame and unfunny. 

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