1. Exterior of National Theatre (Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out)
    Photograph: Laura Gallant for Time Out
  2. Interior architecture (Rob Greig for Time Out)
    Rob Greig for Time Out
  3. National Theatre (Rob Greig for Time Out)
    Rob Greig for Time Out
  4. National Theatre architecture (Rob Greig for Time Out)
    Rob Greig for Time Out
  5. National Theatre interior (Rob Greig for Time Out)
    Rob Greig for Time Out
  6. National Theatre Stairs (Rob Greig for Time Out)
    Rob Greig for Time Out

National Theatre

The world's greatest theatre?
  • Theatre | Public and national theatres
  • South Bank
  • Recommended
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Time Out says

What is it? 

Arguably the greatest theatre in the world, the Royal National Theatre is also one of London's most recognisable landmarks and perhaps this country's foremost example of brutalist architecture. It boasts three auditoriums – the epic, ampitheatre-style Olivier, the substantial end-on space Lyttelton and the Dorfman, a smaller venue for edgier work. It's got a firm foothold on the West End, thanks to transferring shows like War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. In summer, it spills out onto Southbank with its River Stage line-up of outdoor events. And its NT Live programme beams its greatest hits to cinemas across the globe.

NT Live is just one of the initiatives to issue forth from the golden reign of former artistic director Nicholas Hytner, which saw a canny mix of modernised classics, popular new writing, and a splash of hip experimental work fill out the houses night after night. Hytner's successor Rufus Norris has offered a programme that's stuck with many Hytner fundamentals but offered an edgier, more international spin, with a run of ambitious, experimental and – in the beginning especially – sometimes divisive works.

From 2025, former Kiln boss Indhu Rubsingham will take over as artistic director: the first woman and the first person of colour to hold the post.

Why go? 

Of course, the main reason to go to the National Theatre is to see a play. Who knows? You could be lucky enough to nab a ticket to the next big hit, following in the footsteps of The History Boys or People Places and Things. But, the building has other features too. If you're free on a weekday afternoon (except Friday) take a roam around the National Theatre's archive to soak up some theatre history. Or, the bookshop on the theatre's ground floor is the perfect place to pick up a gift for a friend. 

Don't miss:

The NT is a popular hangout for theatre fans, thanks to its warren-like array of spots to work and play. But the real insider's hangout is The Understudy, a rough-and-ready riverside bar which brews its own lager and is thronged with theatre hipsters on pretty much any night of the week.

When to visit:

The National Theatre building is open from 10am-11pm every day apart from Sunday. Show times vary depending on the theatre, but usually start between 7-7.30pm

Ticket info:

Tickets are availble from the National Theatre website and prices vary.

Time Out tip: 

If you're looking for cheap seats, the NT releases £10 tickets each Friday at 1pm for the following week. The link is here.

Details

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South Bank
London
SE1 9PX
Transport:
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What’s on

Dear England

4 out of 5 stars
  One of the biggest winners of Euro 2024 was undoubtedly the playwright James Graham. Having promised to update his smash Gareth Southgate drama Dear England following the final tournament of his subject’s tenure as England men’s team manager, Graham must have been thrilled when our boys neither crashed out nor triumphed, but rather did precisely as well as they had done in Euro 2020. Major changes were not therefore necessary; Dear England has been tweaked a bit for its third run in three years, but not a lot. A new cast hasn’t radically changed the vibe either: as Southgate, Gwilym Lee is broadly going going for exactly the same sort of respectful impersonation as his predecessor Joseph Fiennes; likewise Ryan Whittle’s scene-stealingly funny Harry Kane is pretty much the same as Will Close’s scene-stealingly funny Harry Kane. Clearly it’s back because it gets bums on seats rather than because Graham has astonishing new insights to share. But who cares? Graham has written deeper and more important plays than Dear England. But the secret of its success is that – unlike the actual England men’s team – it is consistently, relentlessly entertaining.  Of course there’s the worry that Rupert Goold’s pacy, widescreen production might overhype Southgate, or lionise him in luvvie-ish terms. Yes, by some metrics he’s the most successful England manager in history. But that’s not necessarily how the average England fan sees him.  As ever with England, it comes down to penalties....
  • Drama

Here We Are

He may have been the greatest composer of musicals in history, but Stephen Sondheim’s final musical was, appopriately enough, too arty for Broadway: the posthumously produced Here We Are debuted at major NYC arts centre The Shed in 2023, where its mash up of two disturbing arthouse classics by Luis Buñuel received warm if not uncritical notices, with the general consensus being that in terms of songs, the first half – based upon The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – felt a lot more finished than the second – based upon The Exterminating Angel. Nonetheless, the imminent arrival of new Sondheim is a furiously exciting and sadly never to be repeated experience and what a coup for Rufus Norris to score it as the centrepiece of his final season running the NT.  Directed by Joe Mantello in what has been billed as a new production likely to be different fron his original NYC one, it has a formiddably stacked cast that includes Tracie Bennett, Rory Kinnear, Denis O’Hare, Jane Krakowski and Martha Plimpton. The plot follows Leo and Marianne Brink, who think they”ve dicovered the perfecrt new brunch spot – but things start to get very weird.
  • Musicals

London Road

5 out of 5 stars
This review is from London Road’s original 2011 run at the National Theatre. It will return in 2025 as part of the final season of work from outgoing NT boss Rufus Norris, who directed the show originally. Casting is TBA. With garlands of critical praise now wreathing Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s flower-drenched documentary musical, it’s a measure of how genuinely ground-breaking it is that ‘London Road’ remains a hard sell on paper. A journey through four years in the life of the street in Ipswich where Suffolk Strangler Steve Wright lived, the book and lyrics are derived from interviews conducted with the residents of London Road. (Verbatim is Blythe’s modus operandi – she wrote a residents’-eye view of a Hackney gunman in 2003.) Beginning with a Neighbourhood Watch meeting, ending with the second annual London Road in Bloom competition and directed with low-key sparseness by Rufus Norris, this is as far away from chorus lines and jazz hands as it gets. Three things make ‘London Road’ extraordinary. First are Cork’s verbatim songs. If you can make something with the chorus ‘Everyone is very, very nervous and unsure of everything, basically’ sound both beautiful but also true to the original sentiment – and Cork does – then that is raw humanity captured in music. Second is the outstanding ensemble: unlike previous Blythe productions, where actors parrot the recorded voices which they hear via headphones, here Cork’s manipulation of words means the cast have had to learn...
  • West End

Nye

3 out of 5 stars
‘Nye’ will stream in cinemas as part of NT Live from April 23. The British, in case you hadn’t noticed, tend to get a little sentimental about the NHS.  So it’s understandable that playwright Tim Price and director Rufus Norris are wary of dewy-eyed hagiography when approaching ‘Nye’, a new biographical drama about Aneurin Bevan, the firebrand Labour health minister who founded the service. With the title role played by the great Michael Sheen, there is a danger of going OTT in having the nation’s favourite current Welshman star as the nation’s favourite historical Welshman. And so Norris’s production has a determinedly trippy quality intended to counter the cliches. Billed as an ‘epic Welsh fantasia’, ‘Nye’ is largely presented as the stream-of-consciousness of an older Bevan, who is a patient in one of his own hospitals. There for an ulcer operation, he drifts in and out of the present and into recollections of his past, unaware he is dying of stomach cancer – something his MP wife Jennie Lee (Sharon Small) has determinedly kept from him. Crowned by a truly uncanny wig, Sheen is a delight as the fiery but unassuming Bevan. He never at any point changes out of his red striped pyjamas, a pleasingly absurdist touch at the heart of Norris’s stylish production, in which the green hospital ward repeatedly dissolves into the past to the sound of wheezing lungs.  It’s otherworldly in places, especially the scene where Tony Jayawardena’s overbearing Churchill collars Bevan in the...
  • Drama

Inter Alia

The last Lyttelton theatre show to be programmed by Rufus Norris prior to his departure looks like a good one: following the Jodie Comer-fuelled West End smash Prima Facie, writer Susie Miller and director Justin Martin join forces with a new star for for follow-up Inter Alia. Rosamund Pike has had a good few years with screen hits Saltburn and The Wheel of Time, and now she makes her National Theatre debut to star as Jessica Parks, a maverick high court judge who precariously balances her work and her home life. We don’t know a lot more about the Miriam Buether-designed show just yet, but the fact Pike will be joined by actors Jamie Glover and Jasper Talbot points to the fact that this won’t be a monologue in the vein of Miller’s last.
  • Drama

Bacchae

This is a bold opener for Indhu Rubasingham’s first season in charge at the National Theatre: first time playwright (though he’s got decent pedigree as an actor) Nima Taleghani offers up what sounds like a racously modern – and probably quite foul-mouthed – adaptation of Euripides’s shockingly violent Ancient Greek tragedy. Rubasingham herself will direct the show, which has a cast including James McArdle, Clare Perkins and Ukweli Roach. Following its NT run a version of the show – probably without the famous people in it – will tour to secondary schools.
  • Drama

Hamlet

A short kids’ adaptation aside, Rufus Norris was the first artistic director of the National Theatre to not programme a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at all: it’s been 15 years since Rory Kinnear took on the role for Norris’s predecessor Nicholas Hytner. But new NT boss Indhu Rubasingham isn’t messing around, and her deputy Robert Hastie’s production is her first piece of programming in the Lyttelton. Hiran Abeysekera – best known for his Olivier-winning turn in the Hastie-directed Life of Pi – will take on the mantle of Shakespeare’s Great Dane. We don’t know a huge amount about the production beyond that, though the initial publicity images suggest a certain amount of irreverence, while the 7.15pm start times suggest it’ll be long, but maybe a bit clippier than the average Hamlet. Joining Abeysekera in the cast will be Phil Cheadle, Ayesha Dharker, Tom Glenister, HariMackinnon, Francesca Mills, Alistair Petrie, Siobhán Redmond and Geoffrey Streatfeild.
  • Shakespeare

Ballet Shoes

3 out of 5 stars
This review is from Christmas 2024. Ballet Shoes returns for Christmas 2025. The National Theatre’s big family Christmas show is a sumptuous adaptation of Noel Streatfeild’s classic 1936 children’s novel Ballet Shoes. It’s slick, classy and meticulously directed by Katy Rudd. But ultimately it lacks dramatic punch. The story follows the eccentric household initially headed by Justin Salinger’s Great Uncle Matthew (aka GUM), a paleontologist in the old-school explorer vein. A confirmed bachelor, he is initially aghast when he is abruptly made legal guardian of his 11-year-old niece Sylvia (Pearl Mackie). But he soon changes his tune when freak circumstances lead to him taking in three baby girls: Petrova (Yanexi Enriquez), Pauline (Grace Self) and Posy (Daisy Sequerra), each of whom he found orphaned while out on an expedition. But then he disappears on one of his trips; the meat of the story is about his three daughters growing up in the unconventional, almost entirely female household headed by Sylvia and their redoubtable housekeeper Miss Guthridge (Jenny Galloway). Each girl’s life is defined by seemingly having a calling that they are simply born with: Pauline to be an actor, Petrova to be a mechanic, and Posy to be a dancer, spurred on by the titular ballet shoes left to her by her mother.   To be honest… that’s sort of the whole plot. On a beautiful, fossil-filled set from Frankie Bradshaw, Rudd directs gracefully, pepping things up with various plays within the...
  • Drama

The Playboy of the Western World

New National Theatre boss Indhu Rubasingham has said she’d like to internationalise the NT more during her tenue, and certainly one striking element of her first announced programming are two collaborations with Dublin’s Abbey theatre and its artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin. Admittedly one isn’t for a while: Paul Mescal will star in Tom Murphy’s A Whistle in the Dark in 2027. Rather earlier, though, is a big old revival for John Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, a lyrical dark comedy that follows Christy Mahon, a young man who stumbles into the pub claiming to have killed his own father – something that greatly impresses the fickle locals. Nicola Coughlan, Éanna Hardwicke, Siobhán McSweeney and Marty Rea will all star in McLaughlin’s production.
  • Drama
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