Andrzej Lukowski

Christmas isn’t just for kids: come the festive season, London’s fringes fill up with adult pantomimes that are strictly 18-plus.  We’ve gathered them together here – plus also a selection of other shows running over the Christmas period that are aimed at adults but chime with the seasonal vibes, either in terms of being overtly Christmassy or simply offering a good times night out that chimes with the general vibes of the ‘party’ season. Obviously there’s lots of theatre running over Christmas that isn’t very Christmassy, but this list ignores regular plays and musicals and focusses on cabaret-style entertainments and – for want of a better term – shows you might go on a big Christmas night out to. If you’re dicing with Santa’s naughty list this Christmas – this one’s for you! RECOMMENDED: Find more Christmas shows in London 

October 2026: Sunday roast season has finally returned to London. A boozey, end-of-the-weekend lunch is what we're all about in this city. Enjoy masterful takes at by Elm at The Montpelier in Peckham, The Golden Tooth on Green Lanes, The Duke Organic in Islington, and The Camberwell Arms in south London. And we're happy to announce the re-launch of two of our all-time favourite roasts; the vegan slap-up dinner at LD's Kitchen, now at the Imperial Palace of Big Red in Camden, and Ling Ling's Chinese-inspired roast at Godet in Islington.  London’s best Sunday roasts at a glance: 🥩 Central: Quality Chop House, Clerkenwell 😇 North: Ling Ling's at Godet, Islington ⛪ South: Elm at The Montpelier, Peckham 🌈 East: The Nelson’s, Hackney 🍻 West: Blue Stoops, Notting Hill Sunday lunch. There’s nothing quite like it. An elemental meal, one that Londoners take incredibly seriously. Debates about what constitutes the ‘perfect’ Sunday roast have been known to last for hours. There is no shortage of top roasts and Sunday lunch options in London. We’ve rounded up the city’s best Sunday meals from a host of pubs, restaurants and breweries all around town. What makes a good roast? For us, it’s simple; a welcoming room is a good start, maybe in a pub with an open fire during the winter months. Then it comes to the plate – we need perfect roast potatoes, well-cooked lamb, beef or pork and a decent plant-based option too. A Sunday roast is more than just lunch - it’s self-care. From snug ne

There’s perhaps nothing more magical than seeing a play or musical in the open air, and London is absolutely the city for it. In defiance of the weather gods, our outdoor theatre season now stretches from March to late October: we’re are just that tough. Or at least, optimistic about the weather. Substantially it revolves around a few key theatres, notably Shakespeare’s Globe – open March to October and generally boasting a cheeky outdoor Christmas production – and the delightful Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which is open late spring to the very end of summer. The former specialises in Shakespeare plays, while the latter has a musical theatre focus. Although the start of the year open air theatre is largely absent for obvious reasons, the season does get underway relatively early, especially at the Globe, where a truncated Shakespeare play – this year Romeo & Juliet – plays for schools and brave civilians from early March. Not sure what you'll need for an open-air theatre trip? Then don’t miss our guide to practical open-air theatre info.  If you’re interested in taking in some outdoor cinema this summer, head to our dedicated page.

What is immersive theatre? A glib buzzword? A specific description of a specific type of theatre? A phrase that has become so diluted that it’s lost all meaning? Whether you call it immersive, interactive or site-specific, London is bursting with plays and experiences which welcome you into a real-life adventure that you can wander around and play the hero in. London's best immersive shows at a glance: Best for dinner theatre: The Great Christmas Feast, The Lost Estate Best for Trekkies: Bridge Command Best for music lovers: Mamma Mia! The Party, The O2 Best for big name actors: Pirates of the Caribbean, Secret Cinema I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and I have run the immersive gamut, from a show where I had to take my clothes off in a darkened shipping container, to successfully bagging tickets to the six-hour Punchdrunk odyssey almost nobody saw, to a lot of theatre productions where the set goes into the audience a bit and apparently that’s immersive. This page has been around for a while now and gone through various schools of thought, but the one we’ve settled on for now is that the main list compiles every major show in London that could reasonably be described as ‘immersive theatre’, while the bottom list compiles a few of our favouite immersive shows thet you probably wouldn’t describe as theatre though it is, naturally a blurry line. Whatever the case you can mostly only really decide what most of these shows are if you go and do them… prepare to

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. December is the busiest time of year for London theatre – expect plenty of pantomime reviews and other seasonal fun but also a slew of major openings from across London’s many venues as the industry works itself to a frenzy before shutting down for Christmas. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026. A-Z of West End shows.

For many people, musical theatre basically is theatre, and certainly there are a hell of a lot of musicals running in London at any given time, from decades-long classics like Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera to short-run fringe obscurities, plus all manner of new shows launched every year hoping for long-running glory. London's best musicals at a glance: Best of the oldies: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre. Best for families: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre The next big thing: The Greatest Showman, Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Funniest musical: Operation Mincemeat, Fortune Theatre. Best for something different: Kimberly Akimbo, Hampstead Theatre. Here Time Out rounds up every West End musical currently running or coming soon, plus fringe and off-West End shows that we’ve reviewed – all presented in fabulous alphabetical order. SEE ALSO: How to get cheap and last-minute theatre tickets in London.

Hello parents and guardians! I’m Time Out’s children’s editor, and as a parent of two childen I can confirm that London is an amazing city raise kids in. You have to put in a bit of commuter time to take full advantage, but there’s a virtually endless stream of stuff for children to do, from playgrounds and parks to incredible kids’ theatres, free museums to slightly more expensive zoos and aquariums, and all sorts of stuff inbetween. London's best things to do with kids at a glance: 🎅 Best for Christmas: visit Santa in his grotto or go ice skating 🦖 Best for dinosaur lovers: Natural History Museum and Crystal Palace Park 🦍 Best for animal lovers: London Zoo and Battersea Park Childen’s Zoo 🚣🏻‍♀️ Best for outdoor action: Lee Valley White Water Water Centre 👾 Best for videogame lovers: Power Up (Science Museum)  🪨 Best hidden gem: Chiselhurst Caves This is a sort of ever-evolving checklist of what we think the 50 best things to do in the city with kids are. Some of it is incredibly obvious: you’re probably aware that London has a Natural History Museum. But it’s worth stressing that it’s a really, really great Natural History Museum, and whether you’re just visiting or have lived here all your life, a visit is a terrific day out. Alongside that, we’ve got 49 other ideas for things to do with childen in London – the focus is loosely speaking on younger children of nursery and primary school age, but we aim to cater for all here, from tots to teens. That’s all ages, al

To say that William Shakespeare bestrides our culture like a colossus is to undersell him. Over 400 years since his death, the playwright is uncontested as the greatest writer of English who has ever lived. Even if you’re not a fan of sixteenth century blank verse – and if not, why not? – his influence over our culture goes far beyond that of any other writer. He invented words, phrases, plots, characters, stories that are still vividly alive today; his history plays utterly shaped our understanding of our own past as a nation. London Shakespeare plays at a glance: Best celebrity cast: Hamlet, venue TBC. Best rarity: King John, Shakespeare’s Globe. Best for Radiohead fans: Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Barbican Centre. Best grab a ticket as soon as they go onsale: Lear, Yard Theatre. Best immersive: Caesar, Hoxton Hall. And unsurpisingly he is inescapable in London. The iconic Elizabethan recreation Shakespeare’s Globe theatre is his temple, with a year-round programme that’s about three-quarters his works. Although based in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company regularly visit the capital, most frequently the Barbican Centre. And Shakespeare plays can be found… almost anywhere else, from the National Theatre – where they invariably run in the huge Olivier venue – to tiny fringe productions and outdoor version that pop up everywhere come the warmer months.  This page is simple: we tell you what Shakespeare plays are on in town this month (the answer is pretty much

Hello! I'm Andrzej, the theatre editor of Time Out London, and me and my freelancers review a heck of a lot of theatre. This page is an attempt to distil the shows that are on right now into something like a best of the best based upon our actual reviews, as opposed to my predictions, which determine our longer range what to book for list. London's critics’ choice shows to book for at a glance: Best musical: Into the Woods, Noël Coward Theatre. Best star vehicle: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, @sohoplace. Best for kids: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre. Best new play: Ilford Boy, Donmar Warehouse. Best long-runner: Hamilton, Victoria Palace Theatre. It isn’t a scientific process, and you’ll definitely see shows that got four stars above ones that got five – this is generally because the five star show is probably going to be on for years to come (hello, Hamilton) and I'm trying to draw your attention to one that’s only running for a couple more weeks. Or sometimes, we just like to shake things up a bit. It’s also deliberately light on the longer-running West End hits simply because I don’t think you need to know what I think about Les Mis before you book it (it’s fine!). So please enjoy the best shows in London, as recommended by us, having actually seen them.

This rolling list is constantly updated to share the best of what’s coming up and currently booking: these choices aren’t the be-all and end-all of great London theatre in 2026, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.   London's best shows to book for at a glance: Best musical: West Side Story, National Theatre. Best Shakespeare play: Lear, Yard Theatre. Best celebrity show: Afterbirth, Royal Court Theatre. Best random play by Quentin Tarantino: The Popinjay Cavalier, Phoenix Theatre. Best for something different: Three and a Bit, Almeida Theatre. London’s theatre scene is the most exciting in the world: perfectly balanced between the glossy musical theatre of Broadway and the experimentalism of Europe, it’s flavoured by the British preference for new writing and love of William Shakespeare, but there really is something for everyone. It’s also beweilderingly big: between the showtune-centric West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector – plus the Wild West of the fringe – there’s well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work. This is my attempt to make sense of all that for you. These are shows worth booking for, pronto, both to avoid sellouts but to get the cheaper tickets that initially go on sale for most shows but tend to be snapped up months before they actually open. Please note that the

November 2026: The frankly exceptional Impala in Soho has taken the top spot as our favourite new restaurant in London, but close behind is Kid, which is just around the corner. Other new additions include gastropubs the George & Dragon and the Horses (both in Clerkenwell), Cassette in Covent Garden, Kismet in Borough Market, Cloudstreet in Stoke Newington, Bar Blondie in Queen's Park, Hon's BBQ in Hackney Wick and Kinz in Notting Hill. Hungry yet? Every week, a frankly silly amount of brilliant new restaurants, cafés and street food joints arrive in London. Which makes whittling down a shortlist of the best newbies a serious challenge. But here it is. The 20 very best new restaurants in the capital, ranked in order of greatness and deliciousness. All of them have opened over the past 12 months and been visited by our hungry critics. So go forth and take inspo from this list, which is updated regularly. Check in often to find out what we really rate on the London restaurant scene. And look here for all the info about the best new openings in November 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🥩 Central: Impala, Soho 🍷 North: Cloudstreet, Stoke Newington 🦐 South: The Victory, East Dulwich 🍝 East: Hon's BBQ, Hackney Wick 🥗 West: Maai by Nikita, Fulham Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in London. The hottest new openings, the tastiest tips, the s

Yes, Christmas is fun for adults. But it’s mostly fun for kids, who thrill to the sights, the sounds, the light and the implied magical forces of the season. Plus the presents. So many presents.  I’m Time Out’s theatre editor and lead kids writer, and I can confirm that as far as my own two children are concerned, Christmas is the most magical time of year. It’s also one of the few holidays where you’re not necessarily desperately scrabbling to find things to do with your kids every day during a two week holiday that is largely take up with family, opening presents and feasting, plus a handful of days on which London actually, properly shuts down. When are the school Christmas holidays in London in 2026? They run Monday December 21 to Friday January 1 2027. So in effect your children will be off from Saturday December 19 to Sunday January 3. And watch out for the school piling a cheeky inset day on after. Really, though, kids’ Christmas in London starts way before the schools break up: it’s pretty much go from when the big trees go up and the iconic lights are switched on. By the end of November you can easily meet Santa, go for an ice rink and take in a pantomime, all on a single day. This list is a best of things to do with kids over the London Christmas period. There is, unabashedly, a lot of highlighting of classic activities: have you been to Christmas at Kew? Great! You should go again. But there are also a handful of entirely unfestive events because maybe come early J

This ambitious work of speculative fiction from Israeli-British playwright Noga Flaishon bites off more than it can chew – but does so with a conviction that makes you glad Flaishon gave it a go. In the very near future, a company called Memoriam has devised a way of extracting people’s memories and turning them into a lavishly detailed, full-sensory VR-style experience. In the opening scene – which turns out to be the subplot – Becky (Jimena Larraguivel) experiences somebody else’s memory of a surprise proposal. She is moved, and agrees to allow the company to use her memory of childbirth. Becky is attended to by soothingly professional Memoriam employee Rachel (Rachel Barry). At first it seems like she's a soulless corporate drone, but soon we see the ‘real’ her: very neurotic, very single, very Jewish. The soulless corporate drone is in fact her colleague Chris (Ben Wiggins), who brings up the fact that on a boozy work night out, Rachel mentioned that her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. Memoriam had been planning on extracting the memory of a survivor living in New York, but he passed away just a few days before the process was due to take place. Now Rachel’s 92-year-old grandmother Rivka is literally the last known Holocaust survivor on the planet. It finds new ways to discuss a painfully familiar topic. If you think too hard  about all this you’ll hit some problems. Nothing wrong with speculative fiction, but Flaishon keeps moving the goalposts around over what the

Obviously it would be lovely if the final musical from Spring Awakening composer Duncan Sheik and his lyrical partner Steven Sater was a masterpiece.  It’s not. Nero isn’t entirely new, either – a very different version entitled Nero (Another Golden Rome) ran in San Francisco back in 2006 (back then it was billed as a play with songs rather than a musical). But Sater has been actively working on this Southwark Playhouse production from veteran British director Lindsay Posner and so I don’t suppose we can really shrug it off as an early, sophomoric work: this is Nero’s final form. The concept is fun: it imagines the Roman Emperor Nero as a sort of frivolous theater kid who is blindsided when his scheming mother Agrippina (Sally Dexter) murders everyone in his path to the throne. Sater’s book is lurid into the extreme, with Andrew Barth Feldman’s Nero an omnisexual cross-dressing horndog who fritters Rome’s wealth away on golden monuments to himself and maintains a semblance of control by impressive deliveries of the speeches written for him by pragmatic advisor Seneca (Stephen Carlile). This is, to be fair, congruent with ancient histories: which may or may not have been accurate but clearly that’s the version of the man that intrigued Sater and Sheik.  Nero is an omnisexual cross-dressing horndog And that’s fine but the problem is Sater’s book and lyrics make so little effort to understand where Nero is coming from that it loses any emotional impact it might have had. You don

The first thing that grabs you about Aardman Animation’s new immersive documentary Larger than Life is that yes, it is larger than life. All your Aardman faves – Wallace, Gromit, Shaun, various chickens – are blown up to a gargantuan scale on the Lightroom's walls. To an adult Aardman lover, it looks amazing. And the sprinkling of pre-schoolers in the house when I saw it were clearly having a whale of a time, joyously booping into their claymation faves. Larger than Life is a triumph visually and no more so than in its opening moments: it's delightful when the walls transform into row upon row of the extremely recognisable eyes of dozens of your Aardman faves, staring at us through peepholes (a la the cardboard box Gromit hides in during The Wrong Trousers); it’s sublime when we get a full blown song-and-dance sequence featuring everyone from Morph to the Creature Comforts gang. It is of course delightful: it’s Aardman. The problems with Larger than Life as a complete film are twofold. On the one hand, there isn’t that much original claymation, and most of it is confined to the beginning. This is perfectly understandable as it famously takes Aardman years to make their films. But it does mean it peaks early. On the other it can feel a bit diffuse: more often than not it’ll be trying to explain some point about the studio’s history and the walls will be covered in loads of little frames, each with something different going on in it, a disembodied voice from a member of Team Aa

The bridge that connects Palestine’s West Bank to Jordan is no longer particularly necessary as an actual bridge: the River Jordan has largely run dry where it crosses, its waters diverted away by Israel. What it really is, is a bureaucratic nightmare: a 180 metre span that contains three checkpoints – Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian – and is perpetually incredibly busy because it’s the only direct route out of the country for the West Bank’s three million Palestinian inhabitants.  Palestinian actor and comic Alaa Shehada scored a memorable hit at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe with his moving monologue The Horse of Jenin. And The Bridge is its follow-up: a pungent account of his interminable odyssey to bring a large can of olive oil from the family grove on the West Bank to his aunt, who lives in Jordan: just two hours away as the crow flies, but a nightmare to actually get to. Under happier circumstances The Bridge might amount to a gently absurdist account of a man in a very long queue. And indeed to a large extent that’s what it is: it’s not a polemic but rather a mostly amusing yarn - buoyed by Shehada’s audience patter skills - of him negotiating crazy taxi drivers, mad family remembers and being stuck next to an eccentric old lady on the various required buses over the bridge when he wanted to sit next to the improbably non-flustered looking hot girl. (The bridge itself has three different names, one for each power – Israel refers to it by the old British name of the

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe I really loved Frankie Thompson’s previous Fringe shows Catts and Body Show (the latter made in collaboration with Liv Ello). Both of them were out-there satirical collages of video and voice recordings in which Thompson came across like a clown-world Adam Curtis, with her performance revolving around her dramatically lip syncing to the piece while serving a series of comical, otherworldly looks.  I suppose they gave the impression that Thompson was a gifted but vulnerable Gen Z savant, who barely spoke at all using her own voice: performing, but also hiding behind the recorded audio visuals. While aspects of new show Horrible Things remain distinctly Frankie Thompson – she still lipsyncs to a load of esoteric recordings, she still seems very irritated by the Tories – she now has a voice of her own. Quite a loud one too: clad in a polkadot gown, her persona is as a posh, slightly eccentric despot (think Queenie from Blackadder) who commands the room with a withering imperiousness, pulling faces of pure horror any time anyone threatens to interact with her.  She also vomits a lot. Nothing health and safety need to worry about, but with every dry heave another horrible thing is cued up. Some are nauseating: that recording of a freaky nine-year-old Jacob Reese Mogg you’ve probably heard before; a 1995 interview with the Tory whips office intimating that they’ve smoothed over instances of child rape; Cliff Richard. There is m

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Paddy Young is annoyingly handsome and has one of the best gigs in British comedy, being the co-anchor of SNL UK’s Weekend Update.  So you’d think a stand-up show bemoaning that he’s a permanently single loser might not entirely convince. But no, he’s all good: Will Sir Be Laughing Alone? kicks off with a joke so kamikaze inappropriate that you have to think there’s a vague chance of it escaping isolation and screwing up his career. So probably best not share it here. Young’s surreal, somewhat poetic set paints him as an arch oddball whose singledom can be attributed to weirdness, moroseness and an inability to comprehend the rules of life in general. He obsesses over the first girl he kissed, reasoning she is the answer to his funk, tracking her down to Copenhagen and planning to fly out to see her; he dates a group of 30 men (called ‘the lads’) all at once, a logistical nightmare; he stews over his housemate’s greater romantic success and takes petty solace in the fact he has the better hair of the two. I would say most of this is very definitely made up, but Young’s stand-up has its own weird artificial gravity that kind of means that even if you don’t believe what he’s saying to, you know what he means: the man we see before us is a massive loser, or at least he is for the purposes of the show. And reality and tall tales are amusingly blurred – I don’t believe Young dated 30 men at once but I do believe he injured his

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Paddy Young is annoyingly handsome and has one of the best gigs in British comedy, being the co-anchor of SNL UK’s Weekend Update.  So you’d think a stand-up show bemoaning that he’s a permanently single loser might not entirely convince. But no, he’s all good: Will Sir Be Laughing Alone? kicks off with a joke so kamikaze inappropriate that you have to think there’s a vague chance of it escaping isolation and screwing up his career. So probably best not share it here. Young’s surreal, somewhat poetic set paints him as an arch oddball whose singledom can be attributed to weirdness, moroseness and an inability to comprehend the rules of life in general. He obsesses over the first girl he kissed, reasoning she is the answer to his funk, tracking her down to Copenhagen and planning to fly out to see her; he dates a group of 30 men (called ‘the lads’) all at once, a logistical nightmare; he stews over his housemate’s greater romantic success and takes petty solace in the fact he has the better hair of the two. I would say most of this is very definitely made up, but Young’s stand-up has its own weird artificial gravity that kind of means that even if you don’t believe what he’s saying to, you know what he means: the man we see before us is a massive loser, or at least he is for the purposes of the show. And reality and tall tales are amusingly blurred – I don’t believe Young dated 30 men at once but I do believe he injured his

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Larry Dean is the workhorse of Saturday Night Live UK: the Glaswegian comic didn’t necessarily get the kudos of the show’s breakout stars like George Fouracres or Jack Shep, or his younger fellow stand-ups Ania Magliano and Paddy Young. But in season one he performed in more sketches than anybody else, and if you didn’t notice then that’s because he’s a chameleonic presence, his astonishing command of accents making him an invaluable supporting player.  It’s also somewhat unfair to invoke SNL when he’s been a big deal in Scotland in particular for over a decade: certainly he’s playing the biggest room at the Fringe this year of anyone from the show.  A set of old school observational raconteurism And it’s a very pleasant hour of comedy, albeit one that feels summed up by Dean’s late confession that he gave the show the title Hellbent because he was expecting there to be more fractiousness around his recent wedding to his now husband than was in fact the case. The large contingent of Catholics and small delegation of Iranians at the wedding had a lovely time, apparently. Instead the show is framed around his relationship with his autistic, Black County-accented husband - from meeting to marriage - and is essentially a set of old school observational raconteurism.  It’s all very agreeable, elevated by Dean’s gift for accents. He never quite makes it his main thing, but he’s incredibly deft with it: his bit on the two types

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe If the advent of Saturday Night Live UK has offered an Edinburgh Fringe boost for the stars of the show performing here then it’s also offered a calling care to SNL UK’s legion of writers – many of them terrific stand-ups who presumably came close to being included in the performing line-up but there was simply no room for them. One suspects Bella Hull would have been a shoo in if the ‘acerbic female Gen Z stand-up’ slot wasn’t comprehensively filled already by the more famous Ania Magliano, but the volume of press and profiles that have greeted Hull’s latest set suggest she’s waiting in the wings if a vacancy comes up. Who cares if she’s a mean girl when the jokes are this funny? Her schtick on Mad Cow Disease is relentlessly ironic, relentlessly acidic and extremely funny. She wields withering disdain like a samurai with a sword and clearly lies as easily as she breathes, with an opening routine that ends with as spectacularly stone-cold piece of rug-pulling as I’ve ever seen in a comedy show. I’ve no doubt she mines her real life for inspiration: it is not unbelievable that she spent 2025 single; her whole extremely amusing reminiscence about having a chaotic upbringing being raised by her mum and grandma would surely be too random to have made up. But she applies a zingy, lightly poisonous filter to everything – a sequence where she is gratuitously horrible about her flatmate is funny precisely because it’s so wildly

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe If the advent of Saturday Night Live UK has offered an Edinburgh Fringe boost for the stars of the show performing here then it’s also offered a calling care to SNL UK’s legion of writers – many of them terrific stand-ups who presumably came close to being included in the performing line-up but there was simply no room for them. One suspects Bella Hull would have been a shoo in if the ‘acerbic female Gen Z stand-up’ slot wasn’t comprehensively filled already by the more famous Ania Magliano, but the volume of press and profiles that have greeted Hull’s latest set suggest she’s waiting in the wings if a vacancy comes up. Who cares if she’s a mean girl when the jokes are this funny? Her schtick on Mad Cow Disease is relentlessly ironic, relentlessly acidic and extremely funny. She wields withering disdain like a samurai with a sword and clearly lies as easily as she breathes, with an opening routine that ends with as spectacularly stone-cold piece of rug-pulling as I’ve ever seen in a comedy show. I’ve no doubt she mines her real life for inspiration: it is not unbelievable that she spent 2025 single; her whole extremely amusing reminiscence about having a chaotic upbringing being raised by her mum and grandma would surely be too random to have made up. But she applies a zingy, lightly poisonous filter to everything – a sequence where she is gratuitously horrible about her flatmate is funny precisely because it’s so wildly

The Balloon Museum is not a museum of balloons but rather a large collection of tactile inflatable-based artworks that essentially translates into a very posh softplay.  Originating in Italy, it has had various touring incarnations: it last visited London a few years back with a large, eccentric show in central London that earnestly tried to push the ‘art’ side of the project almost as strongly as the ‘fun for kids’ one. A lot has changed in the world of Instagram-friendly, child-orientated immersive experiences since then. On the one hand you have the likes of north London’s long-running Bubble Planet, which essentially offers a similar deal to the OG Balloon Museum but without the artistic pretension. And on the other hand you have the opening of large-scale immersive space ImmerseLDN which allows for a much longer, more settled run. So the Balloon Museum has returned to us for a lengthystint with an incarnation/exhibition dubbed Euphoria – Art is in the Air. Its rooms are still billed as individual art works, each with a name, an artist and an unfathomable description of what it all means. It’s even open on Christmas Day But it feels even more focussed on a younger audience this time, by which I mean the artistic pretensions have been dialed down and almost everything here is nakedly just very posh softplay. Which is a good thing! (It”s also worth mentioning that it’s even open on Christmas Day, should you have the means to get to the Docklands and the need to get the lit

This review is from the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Club NVRLND transfers to London in winter 2026 with a considerably upgraded cast that includes Diana Vickers, George Renshaw, Ceili O’Connor and Peter Caulfield One of the buzziest and frankly most bewildering hits of this year’s fringe is Club NVRLND, a work of (I guess) immersive club theatre that attracted a very large, very enthusiastic crowd on the Tuesday night I saw it. Setting aside the fact it’s a hit, and donning my ‘critic bastard’ hat, the nicest thing I can say about Club NVRLAND is that the creative team have done a wonderful job of coming up with an idea for a show that people – including a lot of young people – are clearly hugely into. But Club NVRLND could have been done better. It feels like a distant cousin to the recent West End musical smash & Juliet, but made by people with no experience or aptitude for musical theatre. As you might guess, the show – conceived of and directed by Steven Kunis – is a riff on JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, set a nebulous number of years after the events of the original story. Peter is on the cusp of 30, and Wendy is now on the verge of getting married. We first meet her as she stumbles tearily in her dress to the door of Club NVRLND, which is – of course – good old Neverland reimagined as a nightclub. There are a few oddities with this: Smee is now a hot jacked guy, the crocodile is a big Romanian gangster. But I think we can basically get on board with the premise.  But the b

Although a projected screen version of Matt Haig’s 2013 novel The Humans seems to have been long lost in development hell (it was announced by Haig at the same time as the book), next year will see a major West End adaptation of the story, with a major star in the lead role. Erstwhile Doctor Who, current Daemon Targaryen Matt Smith will return to the stage for the first time since 2024 to star as Cambridge mathematician Professor Andrew Martin – or rather he’ll technically play the nameless alien who has possessed Martin in an effort to sabotage humanity. But uh-oh: he (or it) is required to live out Martin’s day-to-day domestic life, and in doing so discovers that maybe humans aren’t as bad as all that. It’s a slightly out of the blue adaptation: Haig has not been widely adapted for the stage, with a 2019 touring version of his non-fiction work Reasons to Stay Alive the only major previous outing. But as well as Smith there’s a formidable creative team behind this one, with big shot director  Jeremy Herrin helming things and the adaptation by the hugely versatile Jack Thorne, who is well-versed in bringing fantastical stuff to the theatre, having done the honours for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Let the Right One In.  The Humans will be at Theatre Royal Haymarket, Oct 30 2027-Jan 28 2028. Buy tickets here. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026 and 2027. Rupert Goold has announced his debut season at the Old Vic. Get the latest and greatest from the B

★★★★ A truism I’ve seen applied to Caryl Churchill’s 1979 breakthrough play Cloud 9 is that it’s ‘dated’ and in a sense it is: it’s relatively apparent that it was written towards the end of the twentieth century. But that’s like saying Shakespeare’s works are dated because you can date them to the Elizabethan era: yes, obviously, but that doesn’t mean they have nothing to say to us.  Dominic Cooke’s revival follows Lyndsey Turner’s recent-ish Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Top Girls in taking a Churchill play originally done on a modest budget and throwing the kitchen sink at it. And part of the reason Cooke’s revival feels so fresh is it has a set from Miriam Buether that’s so jaw-dropping it could never feel hackneyed: I can’t really describe the second half set without spoiling, but the sight greeting us upon our return to the theatre after an extended interval is a proper coup de théâtre and no mistake. Photo: Johan Perssonloka Ivo (Joshua) The first half, I can talk about. The set is a lush jungle surrounded by a giant, gilded frame with old fashioned red theatre drapes, the setting is an unnamed African country at the height of the late 19th century Scramble for Africa. The story focuses on a sexually repressed (but very horny) English colonial household: the shadow of Monty Python looms large over the antics of priapic colonial administrator Clive (Sam Troughton) and his febrile family, many of them played by cross-dressing actors. It’s very funny: as Clive’s

The most anticipated London theatre season of 2027 has finally been announced! Rupert Goold led the Almeida Theatre in Islington through a decade-long golden age of bold, provocative theatre and seemingly endless West End transfers. Really quite a long time ago (in 2024) it was announced that he and his associate director Rebecca Frecknall (best known for her long-running Cabaret revival) would be leaving the Almeida and taking over at the much larger Old Vic. Both Goold and the Old Vic’s outgoing boss Matthew Warchus took their sweet time going, with lengthy final slates of work. But now, finally, we have the first programming for Goold’s Old Vic tenure and it looks very good. First up, Damian Lewis will make his Old Vic debut in Goold’s own production of Shakespeare’s Henry V (Jan 26-Mar 27 2027). It’s a hugely popular play that can be interpreted as anything from a patriotic story of English derring do, to a bitter anti-war treatise. We don’t know what to expect exactly, but we’ve been promised this one will be provocative. Whether or not we see Milly Alcock as Supergirl again, we’ll certainly see her back on the London stage, following her debut a few years back in the NT’s The Crucible. She’ll take on the title role of August Strindberg’s searing tragedy of class and lust Julie (Apr 10-May 29 2027), playing the titular young woman who has a torrid, troubling relationship with her father’s servants. It’s directed and adapted by Frecknall. Next year has proved a complicate

★★★ In his first ever screen to stage adaptation, director Robert Icke has taken Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning 2006 film about a disgruntled Stasi spy and turned it into a big, slick, entertaining West End thriller starring Keira Knightley. To get it out of the way early: The Lives of Others isn’t up there with the bold reworkings of classical tragedies that have been Icke’s greatest triumphs. It ultimately feels beholden to a screenplay to which Icke’s own adaptation and translation was never likely to give a radical overhaul to. But as an English language remake designed for a West End audience that has no need to be familiar with the source material (it helps if you have a general idea of what East Germany was) it hits the spot. Icke’s wilder directorial instincts have been subsumed by a sincere desire to tell Von Donnersmarck’s story on stage.  Photo: Pamela RaithKeira Knightley (Christa-Maria Sieland), Luke Thompson (Georg Dreyman) Nonetheless, it has a gutsy noir-ish sweep to it, defined aesthetically by thunderous use of the instrumental tracks off Bowie’s Berlin opus Low and Hildegarde Bechtler’s elegant revolving house set, whose gauzy walled inner chamber remains opaque and unknowable. He’s also persuaded producer Sonia Friedman to fork out for an enormous cast: there are 15 core members plus 24 ‘supernumeraries’ whose presence allows the stage to be flooded with bodies when called for: it’s not a flashy story, but there’s a sense of no expense

It’s November, and like it or not, Christmas theatre season is coming – oh yes it is! Okay, right now the idea of heading out to a panto feels faintly insane. But by the end of the month London’s festive theatre will be in full sway. Our November theatre recommendations haven’t gone too mad on the tinselly stuff – you can catch up with our wider Xmas theatre recommendations here – but a couple of bigger pantos are in the mix, plus the return of a new version of a classic festive show that’s been coming to London for over 30 years.  Elsewhere it’s a typically eclectic month of thespy London thrills, ranging from the long-awaited arrival of the RSC’s Shakespeare x Radiohead mash-up, a couple of massive shows from the National Theatre, Rupert Goold’s final piece of programming at the Almeida, a starry stage adaptation of Christian Kracht’s Eurotrash and an exciting new play about the little-known Zambian space race. The best new London theatre shows in November 2026 1. Hamlet Hail to the Thief The original Manchester incarnation of this audacious collaboration between Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and the RSC was not without its flaws. But director Steven Hoggett has said it has been tweaked for its London debut, and although the melding together of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Radiohead’s sixth album Hail to the Thief (pictured top) was never going to be friction free, there are moments of pure magic, a terrific cast, great songs, and it’s just kind of awesome that Yorke is doing a Shake

The reinvented Yard Theatre has had a storming comeback season since its greatly expanded new building opened this summer. But there’s no question that one show stood out more than the others. The imminent Lear will mark 87-year-old living legend Sir Ian McKellen’s first time on the stage since a tumble cut short his turn as Falstaff in Player Kings a couple of years back. Even with its larger auditorium, the new Yard is pretty dinky, with a little over 200 seats, and it’s no surprise that Lear sold out months ago, in under 30 minutes. Photo: Yard TheatreIan McKellen Well, today there are two exciting bits of news regarding the show. The first is that Sir Ian has more or less kissed goodbye to having any time at all off over Christmas in order to add seven new dates to the run, which are December 12, 2:30pm; Christmas Eve, 12:30pm and 4:30pm; Boxing Day, 2:30pm and 7:30pm; New Year’s Eve, 7:30pm; and New Year’s Day, 7:30pm. Short of working on Christmas Day it’s basically impossible for McKellen to pile in any more performances of this thing. But he won’t be alone on stage! Also giving up her Christmas is US screen star Taylor Russell, who starred in Jamie Lloyd’s National Theatre production of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect a few years back. While it was always apparent that Lear – by Simon Stephens and Yard Boss Jay Miller – would be based upon Shakespeare’s King Lear, it seemed to be presented as a solo performance from McKellen, presumably somewhat in the vain of Stephens’ h

Yet another 2027 London theatre season has been announced, and it’s a good ’un: the Royal Court’s latest. Theatre boss David Byrne is no longer the new kid on the block at the UK’s home of new writing, and his fourth year in charge continues his ‘something for everyone’, balancing act style of programming that mixes new writers and experimental work with big celebrity names and a major US transfer. It kicks off with the transfer of the 2025 winner of the Tony Award for best Broadway play: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose (Jan 16-Feb 27). Directed by the great Phylicia Rashad for Chicago’s legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company, it’s an epic family drama – complete with Jacobs-Jenkins’ trademark provocative twists – about three generations of a privileged Black family who find themselves snowed in together, with explosive consequences. Like this year’s John Proctor is the Villain, it’s the original production; unlike John Proctor, we’re getting virtually the entire original US cast – four of them Tony nominated for their roles – which is obviously very exciting.  Photo: Royal Court TheatrePurpose Continuing with the bigger Downstairs theatre first, next up is The Apology (Mar 19-Apr 24), a remarkable sounding world premiere of a play written by V (aka Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues). It’s a fictionalised apology from Ensler’s dead father (played by Tobias Menzies) to her for the abuse she suffered at his hands. But the very exciting thing is that it’s a production

Continuing the current London theatre trend of announcing an entire year of programming in one go, west London’s ever-hip Lyric Hammersmith theatre has today announced its entire 2027 roster. Following this year’s Christmas panto Cinderella, the new year will get underway with a return for the smash 2025 UK premiere production of Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (Jan 20-Feb 27), her hugely enjoyable comedy about the ebb and flow of life in an African hair salon in New York.  Next up, the London transfer of Barber Shop Chronicles writer Inua Ellams’ highly praised drama Once Upon a Time in Sokoto (Apr 13-May 8), which concerns the founding of Nigeria and the intra-African slave trade, centring on the relationship between an enslaved woman and her former master. Then, it’s a swift transfer for the RSC’s production of Stewart Pringle’s Brock’s Mill (May 13-Jun 5), a homage to the glory days of stop-motion kids’ animation that follows an elderly former animator as he finds himself confronted by his daughter May, who is grown-up and in need of having aspects of her childhood explained. The show is directed by former National Theatre boss Rufus Norris – it’s his first show to be seen in London since he left the NT in 2025. The first world premiere of the year is a good ’un: big-name Irish playwright Conor McPherson adapts Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s 2015 novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Jun 17-Jul 17), a series of interweaving magical realist stories about an unusual Toyko c

The National Theatre turned 50 this weekend, which may surprise those who remember the National Theatre turning 50 back in 2013. That’s because for the first 13 years of its life the NT didn’t actually have a proper home – it instead did seasons at the Old Vic and in Chichester. It was only in 1975 that its iconic South Bank building was completed and the nation’s flagship theatre finally had a fixed abode. To celebrate, a new installation just outside the theatre called 50 Stories for 50 Years will offer a selection of memories of the NT from the likes of Hugh Jackman, Lesley Manville, Lucian Msamati, David Oyelowo, Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter, plus archive musings from past icons like Laurence Olivier, Peter Hall and the NT’s architect Denys Lasdun.  To warm you up, a selection of the NT great and good have exclusively picked the great shows from the past that they wish they could have seen – or, indeed, see again. Photo: Dion BarrettNational Theatre (2026) The Romans in Britain (1980) Indhu Rubasingham, artistic director and co-chief executive of the National Theatre ‘I’d loved to have seen Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain, first staged in the Olivier theatre in 1980. Directed by Michael Bogdanov, the production drew bold parallels between the Roman invasion of Celtic Britain and British military presence in Northern Ireland. It was seen as a controversial piece at the time, sparking a lawsuit from conservative activist and morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse ov

Nicholas Sparks’ romantic 1996 novel about a young couple separated by class and war in ’40s America was a big hit; the 2004 screen adaptation starring a young Ryan Gosling and Rachael McAdams was an even bigger one. Will it be third time luck with this new musical?  The Notebook – A New Musical (as it’s literally called) did reasonably well on Broadway a couple of years back (it ran for about nine months) and is now headed our way to serve as the inaugural production at the renamed Shaftesbury Theatre – now called the Judi Dench Theatre. Written by playwright Bekah Brunstetter and singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, it’s co-directed by Michael Greif (most famous for Dear Evan Hansen) and Schele Williams (who has a big hit with her revival of The Wiz).  Although nominally adapted from the book rather than the film, it’s definitely playing to fans of the movie – in his review, Time Out New York’s Adam Feldman takes pains to point out that the production perfectly recreates the iconic ‘snog in the rain’ sequence when protagonists Noah and Allie are reunited following the Second World War and various other romantic misadventures.  Basically if you loved the film or the book or are just in the market for a musical romance, then it’s worth a look. Casting is to be announced but should be with us soon, given that it starts previews as soon as March. The Notebook is at the Judi Dench Theatre, booking Mar 10-Dec 11 2027. These are the best new London theatre shows to book for in 202

If you were to knock a top five of the most successful British plays of the 21st century, there’s absolutely no doubt that 2004’s The History Boys would be in there. The great Alan Bennett’s late career smash about the disaffected students and staff of a Sheffield boys’ grammar school in the ‘80s was a mega hit, played four seasons at the National Theatre, two in the West End, one in Broadway, spawned a film and launched the careers of a whole generation of young male stars, from Sacha Dhawan to James Cordon. It’s almost certainly the crowning achievement in the career of its director Nicholas Hytner, and the emblematic achievement of his artistic directorship of the National Theatre, widely seen as a both an renaissance and a commercial golden age for our flagship theatre. And now The History Boys is coming back! It’s not quite as simple as a straight-up revival of the original production, as while Hytner is directing again and Bob Crowley is designing, the rest of the creative team is liable to be new and the whole thing is being explicitly billed as a ‘reworking’. Don’t expect it to be radically different as to some extent this is just the nature of theatre: you can’t just pop an old show on after 20 years with no changes (the recent revival of War Horse is probably a good comparison). Nonetheless, you do have to wonder whether some of the play’s more controversial aspects will feel magnified in 2027, especially the very morally ambiguous behaviour of ‘inspiring’ history t

Half-term is almost upon us and as ever the delight of spending more time with our little ones is tempered by the fact that this is going to cost us money. We’ve got plenty of advice for you on the best things to do at October half-term and the best kids Halloween activities in London, but what if you wanted to amuse the little ones without spending any actual currency? As ever there are some really fun new things to do in London that go beyond ‘going to the park again’. From a Pokémon trail to Bayeux Tapestry-themed fun, here’s our round-up of the five best. The best free things to do in London this October half-term  1. Explore the Natural History Museum’s newest gallery The Natural History Museum is always an incredibly safe bet during the school holidays as aside from all the pre-existing cool stuff there are also special ‘Ocean October’ bonus half-term activities (Oct 26-Nov 1). This half-term it’s even cooler than usual thanks to the fact this is the first holiday since its brand new, totally free Nature and Us gallery. It’s not huge, but it’s very atmospheric and certainly worth a look as part of your visit. Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD. Oct 26-Nov 1.  Photo: David ParryNature and Us gallery at the Natural History Museum   2. Fly off into space with Pikachu at the Science Museum Again, the Science Museum is a stone cold holiday classic thanks to being massive and free and having some bonus half-term activities including a self-guided Halloween tra