Andrzej Lukowski

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.

April 2026: There's a brand new Number 1, with Holy Carrot's Spitalfields opening taking the top spot thanks to some seriously creative vegetarian cookery. Other fresh additions include Guirong Wei’s latest joint The Wei in Fulham, Cafe Kowloon in London Fields, the new Forza Wine and the super fun Osteria Vibrato (both in Soho), numbing Chongqing spice at Jiāonest in Hoxton, perfect produce at Dockley Road Kitchen in Bermondsey, perfect pasta at Burro in Covent Garden, Georgian classics at DakaDaka in Mayfair, veggie-friendly Thai at Kruk in Peckham and Mexican seafood at Cometa in Fitzrovia. 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 April 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🍝 Central: Osteria Vibrato, Soho 🍠 North: Ling Ling’s, Islington 🇹🇭 South: Kruk, Peckham 🍝 East: Holy Carrot, Spitalfields 🥗 West: The Wei, Fulham Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about

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: Beetlejuice, Prince Edward Theatre Best Shakespeare play: Romeo & Juliet, Harold Pinter Theatre Best celebrity show: Krapp’s Last Tape, Royal Court Theare Best for teens: John Proctor is the Villain, Royal Court Theatre Best blast from the past: Cats, Open Air 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 prices

There are over a hundred theatres of all shapes and sizes throughout London, from tiny fringe venues above pubs to iconic internationally famous institutions like the National Theatre. And at the heart of it is the West End, aka Theatreland. What is a West End theatre? Unlike Broadway, where there are strict definitions based upon capacity, there is no hard and fast definition of a West End theatre. However, West End theatres are all commercial theatres – that is to say, they receive no government funding – and on the whole they are receiving houses, that is to say they don’t have in house artistic teams creating the work that they show (although often theatre owners like Andrew Lloyd Webber or Nica Burns may commission or even create the work). London's best West End shows at a glance: Best musical: Hamilton, Victoria Palace Theatre Best for families: My Neighbour Totoro, Gillian Lynne Theatre Best ’80s classic: Les Miserables, His Majesty’s Theatre Funniest show: Operation Mincemeat, Fortune Theatre  Hippest hit: Hadestown, Lyric Theatre They are mostly based in the West End of London, although it’s not a hard and fast rule, with two major ‘West End’ theatres at Victoria. Most West End theatres are Victorian or Edwardian, although Theatre Royal Drury Land and Theatre Royal Haymarket have roots a couple of centuries before that, while @sohoplace is the newest (it opened in 2022). Capacity is similarly all over the shop: the 2,359-set London Coliseum is the biggest; the sm

Fearless 30-year-old writer-director Robert Icke is the great hope of British theatre, reinvigorating our stages with his uncompromising West End hits ‘1984’ and ‘Oresteia’. His next project is an adaptation of Schiller’s ‘Mary Stuart’ for the hip Almeida Theatre. Lia Williams and Juliet Stevenson toss a coin each night to determine who plays Elizabeth I and who plays Mary, Queen of Scots. Why this play? Why the alternating leads? ‘The actual reason is that Juliet Stevenson rang me at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon on the very last day of ‘Oresteia’ and said, “oh my god have I missed it?” And I said “no, come tonight and have my ticket”. I went backstage afterwards and there was all this noise coming from Lia’s dressing room and the two of them – who had never met – were dancing around like kids and I was thinking: the two of them together, that would be exciting. What can we do?’  Your CV is a sort of mad mix of aggressively new stuff and reinvented classics… ‘When I first got to Cambridge I wrote to [director] Michael Grandage: “I only went to this university because you went here and the theatre’s terrible”. I’d write to Michael Grandage to ask what to do about anything, he’d sort out Brexit. But he said “just remember everything you do should be different from the last thing you did” and I’ve retained that as a sort of modus operandi.’ You’re seen as quite anti-establishment – how was directing Sir David Hare‘s current National Theatre show ‘The Red Barn’? ‘Sir David

It’s not quite summer, but it’s the school holidays and it’s actually warm outside: it must be May half-term, aka the only half-term holiday to take place when the weather actually is nice. So of course ‘the park’ and maybe even ‘the seaside’ are on the agenda. But here’s thge best of the rest London has to offer this hols, from a lavish new Natural History Museum prehistoric exhibition to the return of family theatre classic War Horse.  My name is Andrzej and I’m Time Out’s lead kids’ writer and also parent to two London-based children. As ever, the idea with this list is to highlight the best new, returning or last chance to see shows; London also has plenty of evergreen fun for children of all ages, quite a lot of which you can find in out list of the 50 best things to do with kids in London. When is May half-term this year?  This year, London’s February half-term officially falls between Monday May 25 and Friday May 29 (ie children will be off continuously between Saturday May 23 and Sunday June 1, and possibly a little longer as June 2 is a popular inset day).  Here’s our roundup of all the best things to do with your children this May half-term.

If any city in the world were oversaturated with hotels, it’d be Paris. So a list of the ‘best hotels in Paris’ is casting a pretty wide net. The city has over 1,600 hotels in total, ranging from tiny new boutiques to grand historic hotels charging €25,000 a night – and we wanted to make sure every kind of hotel was represented on this list: the luxurious, the downright cheap, and everything in between. Whatever your vibe in the City of Light, you’ll find a hotel for you here. Updated for 2026: We’ve added the brand-new Hotel Massé in Pigalle, the sickly-sweet Maison Saintonge and the downright iconic Le Pavillon de la Reine to our list for this year – plus some neighbourhood tips to help you choose which hotel is right for you. Enjoy.  In this guide What is the best area to stay in Paris? + − As will surprise no one, the ‘best’ area to stay in Paris is pretty subjective across its 20 arrondissements and 80 or so neighbourhoods. But we do have some pointers. If it’s your first time in the city, you’ll probably want to be as close to the city centre as possible to tick off those major attractions, so anywhere near the 1st arrondissement – Tuileries, the Marais, St-Germain – would be a good bet. If you’re on a budget, however, you’ll find that cheaper options are usually further out in the 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th – and even on the outskirts of the city. Don’t worry, you’ll still be in on the action – this is where the locals hang out, anyway. For the full rundown, here’s 

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: This year’s big Broadway transfer: Beetlejuice, Prince Edward Theatre. Best of the oldies: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre Best for families: Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre The new big thing: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre  Funniest musical: Operation Mincemeat, Fortune 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 – I'm Time Out’s theatre editor and also a parent, something that has a lot of overlap in London, a city with three dedicated kids theatres and where pretty much every other theatre might stage a child-friendly show. London's kids theatre shows at a glance: Best musical: Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre Best for teens: The Hunger Games: On Stage, Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre Biggest new show of last year: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre  Quirkiest show for tweens (and adults): Toto Kerblammo!, Unicorn Theatre  This round up focusses on the flagship shows at London’s kids theatres – that’s the Little Angel, the Unicorn and Polka – plus other major shows aimed at or suitable for youngsters. On the whole, pre-school and primary children are the age groups best served specifically, because secondary school aged teenagers can generally see adult theatre perfectly well (and will indeed often be made to do so!). So while the odd teen focussed show will make it in here, if you’re looking for something to do with teens why not consult our reviews page or what to book list. Our London kids’ theatre page normally contains information for all the main children’s shows running in London theatres this month and next month, and is broken down into three categories. Theatre for all the family is suitable for any age, including adults without children. Theatre for older children is specifically aimed at school-age children and teenagers. Theatre for babies, pre-school

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: Hamilton, Victoria Palace Theatre Best star casting: Romeo & Juliet, Harold Pinter Theatre Best for kids: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre Best old classic: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre  Best for a scare: Paranormal Activity, Ambassadors 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.

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: Romeo & Juliet, Harold Pinter Theatre Best weird: The Tempest, Shakespeare’s Globe Best for kids: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Unicorn Theatre Best rarity: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Shakespeare’s Globe. 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 always ‘at least one’). We we tell yo

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.

Avenue Q was never going to be the number one most zeitgeisty musical of 2026. It’s not that Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s subversive ’00s classic has aged badly, even if a couple of its more wilfully transgressive moments – notable the song ‘Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist’ – land a bit ickily in the MAGA era. And sure, some of its reference points have dated: a song about how everyone uses the internet to watch porn (‘The Internet is for Porn’) was clearly considerably sharper in 2003. On the whole, though, the main flaw with Avenue Q in 2026 is that Avenue Q did it first. By which I mean that the jaw-dropping audacity of a rude musical theatre parody of Sesame Street has now largely gone – it is a very famous show that ran for five years in the West End the first time around and almost 20 in New York.  It’s also been superseded in terms of bad-taste musicals, not least by Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s enduring The Book of Mormon, which they co-wrote with Lopez.  Accept all that, and Jason Moore’s revived production is a fun piece of naughty noughties nostalgia that raises a smile from the sight of its fluffy yellow stage curtain onwards. Princeton (Noah Harrison) is a wet-behind-the-ears young puppet who has just graduated from university (‘What Do You Do with a BA in English?’)  and is now looking for a place to live on Avenue Q, a shabby but affordable neighbourhood in outer NYC that boasts former child actor Gary Colman (Dionne Ward-Anderson) as its superintendent (again,

There is a sober spine of historical fact just about propping up this cheerily lurid new immersive exhibition. Much as Cleopatra: The Experience is jam-packed with fanciful CGI, information panels do repeatedly acknowledge that we know relatively little about the life of the last and most famous of the queens of Egypt.  Obviously, we do know a fair amount. She ruled the country after deposing her brother-slash-husband (it was a thing then!) Ptolemy XIV. She then shrewdly hooked up with Julius Caesar, correctly reasoning that rising power Rome could protect Egypt, before less shrewdly hooked up with his co-successor Mark Antony – not a bad idea per se, but she backed the wrong horse in the struggle for control of Rome. But, the displays point out, much of our current received wisdom about Cleopatra is basically just salacious gossip dreamed up by Roman historians in the centuries after her death. There is an awful lot of fairly mind-boggling digital spectacle But what this latest immersive touring show from MAD – Spanish purveyors of This Sort Of Thing – has the courage to do is say ‘no, Cleopatra almost certainly didn’t kill herself with an asp. But what if we nonetheless showed you a VR CGI film of her getting menaced by a gigantic asp in the afterlife? What about that, eh?’ There is an awful lot of fairly mind-boggling digital spectacle in Cleopatra, which I should point out is fairly cagey about describing itself as an ‘exhibition’. And with a team of over 80 artists and

This review is from 2016, and of the original, two-part version of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This will close in September 2026, and in October 9 2026, it will slim down to a single show approximately two hours and 55 minutes in length. In the unlikely event you were worried a leap to the stage for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series would result in it becoming aggressively highbrow, self-consciously arty or grindingly bereft of magical high jinks, just chill the hell out, muggle.  ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ is an absolute hoot, a joyous, big-hearted, ludicrously incident-packed and magic-heavy romp that has to stand as one of the most unrelentingly entertaining things to hit the West End. Writer Jack Thorne, director John Tiffany and a world-class team have played a blinder; if the two-part, five-hour-plus show is clearly a bit on the long side, it’s forgivable. ‘The Cursed Child’ emphatically exists for fans of Harry Potter, and much of its power derives from the visceral, often highly emotional impact of feeling that you’re in the same room as Rowling’s iconic characters.  There’s also a sense that this story of wizards and witches is being treated with the respect its now substantially grown-up fanbase craves. No disrespect to D-Rad and chums, but the leads here are in a different acting league to their film counterparts’: Jamie Parker and Alex Price are superb as battered, damaged, middle-aged versions of old enemies Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Sam Clemm

Director Clint Dyer has put a very bold spin on Ken Kelsey’s countercultural classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The former National Theatre deputy has reimagined Dale Wasserman’s 1963 stage adaptation as an intersectional work about racial hierarchies, in which the outnumbered white staff of a psychiatric hospital keep a largely Black patient population in check via icy self-belief and exploitation of their charges’ vulnerabilities. On paper it’s a solid metaphor for systematic oppression, that chimes with the civil rights era in which the play was written.  But Kesey’s essentially libertarian allegory for how the system crushes bright, interesting and rebellious individuals does not really translate that well into a parable of collective solidarity. And it’s not just a question of intent, but quality. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is not exactly Shakespeare-level stuff, ie a text so fundamentally robust that it can take aggressive reinterpretation. Rather, it’s a paranoid individualist hippie’s view of the mid-century US mental healthcare system. It’s not without merit in 2026, but as a cultural artefact it clearly peaked in significance over half a century ago with the Jack Nicholson film (something its Christian Slater-starring last London revival unabashedly channelled). Pre-show, information is projected onto the walls about the historic African-American gathering space of Congo Square in New Orleans, and the origin of the city’s Black Mardi Gras Indians. Ben Sto

This review is from the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This simultaneously cuddly and filthy musical two hander from London-based Latin American-centric Alpaqua Theatre Collective concerns Jesús, a sexually confused young man from Peru. Over the course of Jeezus! he acts as our guide to both the Latin American country’s extremely repressive police and social values, and also his own, very specific awakening.  Played by the show’s writer Sergio Antonio Maggiolo, Jesús is very clearly gay, something obvious to everyone but him. But as a confused yet pious adolescent he buries his feelings into his love for his near namesake, Jesus (the magic cross guy). The plot skips around with cartoonish sweetness crossed with essentially blasphemous  naughtiness  - at one point the tender young Jesús tries to purge himself of impure thoughts by sodomising himself with the family’s large wooden crucifix.  Maggiolo plays Jesús with wide-eyed aplomb: it’s the fact they seem to be taking everything so deadly seriously that really makes Jeezus! work. Well, one of the things - the tunes are melodic and funny and as much as the show is very rude, there’s an old fashioned but surprisingly muscular Monty Python-ish streak of humour that keeps it ticking forward. Co-singer/performer Guido Garcia is great in a multitude of roles in Laura KIlleen’s production, from Jesús’s parents (his mum is a sweetie, his dad is basically a Nazi) to – dare I spoil it – the actual Jesus, who his namesake meets via th

This review is of the original 2021 cast.  Matt Willis and Katie Hall will play the Emcee and Sally Bowles until May 23 2026. Jamie Muscato and Joy Woods will play the Emcee and Sally Bowles from May 25 to Sep 19 (Muscato) and Sep 5 (Woods Come to the cabaret, old chums, and see the stage performance of the year from Jessie Buckley! Gasp at the terrific supporting cast in Rebecca Frecknall’s luxury revival of Kander & Ebb’s musical masterpiece, foremost Omari Douglas’s passionate, tender, little boy lost Clifford! Be wowed by Tom Scutt’s literally transformative design! Wonder at the free schnapps you’re offered on the way in, and nod in polite appreciation at the pre-show entertainment! Also… there’s Eddie Redmayne. Now, I have absolutely nothing against the guy. But the presence of any hugely famous, Oscar-winning star is bound to distort the role of the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club, the Weimar-era Berlin bar in which Cabaret’s tragic heroine Sally Bowles plies her trade. The Emcee is a vital supporting role: his sardonic songs set the mood of the show, and map Germany’s descent into darkness. But it’s in no way the lead part – in fact, the character barely interacts with the actual story. Putting by far the most famous actor in the show in the role would be enormously distracting even if Redmayne didn’t do… all this. Wearing a series of beautiful, subtly sinister outfits that kind of feel like they’re trying to process every single one of David Bowie’s sartorial choices from

In an era where even Andrew Lloyd Webber has concluded he needs to move with the times, West End super producer Cameron Mackintosh remains obstinately grounded in the twentieth century. That’s not to say the man’s a dinosaur: he’s the UK producer of Hamilton, for starters. But he has a core of shows that have been in his stable for decades, that he returns to semi-frequently and sometimes claims to be reinventing. Really, though, the new takes on Miss Saigon, or Mary Poppins, or Les Mis are the equivalent of giving an old trophy a good buff and polish – you might make it sparkle a bit more, but it’s the same trophy.  Mackintosh was not the first producer of Lionel Bart’s all-singing Charles Dickens smash Oliver! – he was 13 when it opened – but he did produce a 1977 revival that was totally faithful to the original 1960 incarnation, down to using the same sets. He revived it once again in the ’80s, then did a new version in 1994, which was brought back in 2008. Now we have a ‘fully reconceived’ take from two old Oliver! hands: Mackintosh and director Matthew Bourne, the choreographer on the last incarnation.  Bourne is best known for sexy gothic dance pieces, and he certainly brings his full gothic sexiness to bear here: a cumulonimbus-worth of dry ice seeps through the inky recesses of Lez Brotherston’s brooding multilevel Victorian London sets. Sweeney Todd’s barbers could plausibly be just ariound the corner. Bourne’s choreography is not very ostentatious, but there are a

Into the Woods finishes its Bridge Theatre run on May 30. It will transfer to the Noël Coward Theatre in September, with Kate Fleetwood the only confirmed cast member so far. The Bridge Theatre has an incredibly consistent track record with musicals. Admittedly that’s because it’s only previously staged one musical. But it was a really good one, the visionary immersive production of Guys & Dolls that wrapped up a two-year-run in January. And great news: rising star Jordan Fein’s sumptuous revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods makes it two for two. After the slightly stodgy tribute revue Old Friends and the weird semi-finished ‘final musical’ Here We Are, this is the first actual proper major Sondheim revival to be staged in this country since the great man’s passing. And the main thing worth saying about 1986’s Into the Woods is that it’s the work of a genius at the peak of his powers: a clever send up of fairytales that pushes familiar stories into absurd, existential, eventually very moving territory. It’s both playful and profound, mischievous and sincere, cleverly meta but also a ripping yarn. While Sondheim is the marquee name, the book is by James Lapine (who also did the honours for Sunday in the Park with George and Passion), who does a tremendous job twisting the convoluted narrative into droll, accessible shape. But every second is filled with Sondheim’s presence: his lush, motif-saturated score of baroque nursery rhymes feels as vividly alive as the forest

This review is from 2019. The Flying Bath returns for 2026. Sometimes it seems like picturebook writer extraordinaire Julia Donaldson and her rotating cast of illustrator collaborators must provide the source material for about 50 percent of all kids’ theatre.And why not? She offers tight, kinetic rhymes, a relentless cavalcade of memorable characters and gently subversive twists on classic kids’ stories. Illustrated by David Roberts, ‘The Flying Bath’ is one of Donaldson's lesser-known books, and feels a splash familiar in the telling (there are echoes of the more famous ‘Zog and the Flying Doctors’).But there’s real invention in this theatrical telling, for ages two to five. Instead of being about a trio of bath toys – a turtle, a frog and a duck – who come to magical life and zip about in the titular tub solving water-based emergencies, Samantha Lane’s production casts the entire thing as imaginative bathtime play between a fractious brother and sister (Elliot Pritchard and Phoebe Hyder).Accepting that their three ‘main’ toys (designed by Emma Tompkins) are suspiciously large and look suspiciously non-waterproof, it smartly avoids obvious puppets. Instead, a whole world of H2O-centred fun is conjured from the items strewn around the colourful set, as oddball characters are created from flannels, sponges and, er, a novelty baboon bog brush.It’s a nice story that’s a better piece of theatre, a lovely tribute to the power of imaginative play, combined with relatable bathtime

This review is from 2024. Toto Kerblammo! returns for May 2026. Don’t be fooled by the jaunty name, or that Toto Kerblammo! is a kids’ show about a dog: avant-garde theatre maker Tim Crouch’s latest is unsettling and existential and I would be pretty serious about enforcing the nine-plus suggested age rating. It’s also brave, moving, inventive and steadfastly emotionally truthful, an exploration of both unconditional love and the inability to accept love, told via the story of one girl and her faithful hound. Oh, and also Toto Kerblammo! is a headphones-based work, with the cast of two augmented by sophisticated binaural sound design from Helen Skiera that both amps up the atmosphere and sense of intimacy, and allows for the inclusion of additional pre-recorded actors to play a trio of secondary adult roles – Crouch has roped in some decent names for this, notably the reliably brilliant Sinead Matthews who really puts some heart into the role of troubled protagonist Effie’s mum. To the almost constant sound of driving, oppressive rain, the story starts in the middle, with Peyvand Sadeghian’s 12-year-old Effie and Felipe Pacheco’s Toto hit by a car, apparently as a result of her being in some considerable emotional distress. It then diverges into two threads. In one Effie and Toto are in some otherworldly space – represented by Lily Arnold’s fluffy carpet set – after the accident, with him able to speak, and us gradually understanding that she is in a coma. In the other, the s

Anya Reiss’s new adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a panic attack in textual form, that smartly amplifies the debt-related anxieties that underpin the 1879 original into something extremely modern and extremely nerve-wracking. Nora (Romola Garai) is an anxious, impulsive woman, who we first meet in her bougie rental house surrounded by obscene amounts of Christmas shopping. Her workaholic husband Torvald (Tom Mothersdale) is taken aback by the sprawl of purchases, but Garai’s Nora remains brittly giddy, reminding him of how different this is to their last Christmas: they are on the cusp of being rich, with the last stages of the multimillion-pound sale of his company going through.  It is, however, all built on a lie, albeit a lie Nora has very nearly gotten away with. Desperate after Torvald’s drug addiction almost ruined them, she laid her hands on a vast sum of money to pay for him to go to a fancy rehab centre. He believes – or chooses to believe – that it was paid for by an improbable inheritance from Nora’s late father. In fact, she acquired it by illicit means that finally come out when Torvald lets go of his longterm employee Nils (James Corrigan), who tells Nora that her secret is dependent on his being reinstated.  Reiss’s updates are an impressively incisive, white-knuckle engagement with contemporary anxieties Reiss is a former Royal Court prodigy who made a big splash in her late teens and early twenties before mostly drifting off into TV. Although Jamie L

The Greenwich Planetarium has been shut for a big old refurb, and while it might be exaggerating the case to say that this has left the city’s astronomers lacking anything to do with their time whatsoever, it is true that a fair number have been dragooned into helping out with Astronomers Take Over, a new temporary exhibition at the Maritime Museum.  It’s a very enjoyable experience: there are big, bright colourful guides to the heavens, ranging from jaw-dropping images of galaxies, to an in-depth look at the Mars landers, to a sort-of-cute mood board-style area looking at what the astronomers’ various inspirations were for getting into what I’m going to call ‘space stuff’ - they range from Helen Sharman to Captain Scarlet to sci-fi obsessed US prog band Coheed and Cambria.  It turns out that the ultimate interactive display… is a person It’s all visually striking, but there’s no denying the USP here isn’t the displays but the people: there are lots of actual astronomers* roaming about, in fun NASA-ish boiler suits, giving demonstrations and generally on hand to answer questions. (*FWIW, I asked, and this means they all have astronomy degrees, not that all are technically astronomers by trade). Their enthusiasm and knowledge are, of course, wonderful, but moreover, it’s just incredibly rare to go to any sort of exhibition and find large numbers of helpful staff on hand and heavily involved. It turns out that the ultimate interactive display… is a person. I spent some time gr

Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit turns 15 this year: but it just keeps getting bigger and bigger as it plots a fresh West End run with some truly massive names.  The playwright has made a career out of ‘cold read’ plays, that is to say mischievous works designed to be performed by a different actor each night who has never seen the show before and doesn’t know what’s coming, and is therefore responding to the prompts and text given to them live and for the first (and only) time. Although this has become Soleimanpour’s hallmark, in White Rabbit, Red Rabbit there was a particularly pointed reason: the actor was literally acting as a stand-in for the playwright, who at that time had been forbidden from leaving his home country of Iran.  The play has never really dated, and indeed with Iran so grimly back in world news it remains a playful, grimly fascinating look at everyday life under its controlling, paranoid regime.  More to the point, bigger and bigger names keep wanting to do it, and it returns for 2026 with a fresh host of slebs on board as it settles in for a West End residency under the auspices of new production company There & Then, formed by Soleimanpour and his regular director Omar Elerian. Running at the Duchess Theatre on Mondays (when its regular show The Play That Goes Wrong isn’t on), it will go on for several months, and we don’t have every celebrity name yet. But we do have a lot of them, including such heavy hitters as David

Richard E Grant gives such immaculate ‘West End stage actor’ vibes that it’s easy to overlook the fact that he’s a relative stranger to Theatreland, having not done a play in London since Simon Gray’s Otherwise Engaged 20 years ago. This autumn, however, he cashes in all his suave older actor chips to take on one of the greatest British comedies of the 20th century, as he stars opposite beloved US TV star Christine Baranski – making her West End debut – in a massive new revival of Noël Coward’s all-time classic Hay Fever.  One of Coward’s greatest plays, the outrageous 1925 comedy tells the story of David and Judith Bliss, the heads of a bonkers, bickering upper class family who each invite guest to stay on the same weekend with disastrous consequences. It gets staged a fair amount, mostly because it’s very funny: the last big London production in 2012 featured a scene-stealing turn from a young Phoebe Waller-Bridge. So there are plenty of opportunities for younger cast members (who are TBA), but like a lot of Coward’s work, much of the enduring appeal lies in the fact that it provides great roles for older actors. It’s being directed by Emily Burns, a rising star with a knack for comedy, with her presence suggesting that while unlikely to be a by numbers take, this will likely be going for the funny bone rather than aggressively deconstructing the 101-year-old classic. Which is all to the good and probably what people want from Withnail & I legend Grant – but frankly it’ll j

The Young Vic’s second season proper under new boss Nadia Fall is a pretty damn exciting one, and gets off to an appropriately full-throttle start with the world premiere of a new musical adaptation of Ridley Scott’s ’90s feminist thriller Thelma & Louise (Sep 3-Oct 24). If the prospect of an all-singing stage version of the iconic road movie about a sharp-tongued waitress and repressed housewife who go for a drive one day and never stop seems a bit questionable – don’t worry too much. We’re not talking about a big West End thing but rather the edgy Young Vic. And the creative team is massively intriguing, with a book by Callie Khouri (who wrote the original screenplay) and songs by US alt country legend Neko Case, who is certainly not your typical writer of showtunes – she does have some more tuneful bangers, but her music tends towards the brooding and surreal. It’s definitely one of the most curiosity-piquing shows of the year. Heavyweight Brits Amy Lennox and Rachel Tucker will take on the title roles. Next up and almost as big a deal is the English language stage premiere of Colin Teevan’s adaptation of Christian Kracht’s bestselling novel Eurotrash (Nov 13-Jan 9 2027). It will star Ben Whishaw and Kathryn Hunter as a mother and son who go on a road trip through the Swiss Alps in an effort to give away their vast family fortune and escape the shadow of their past. Walter Meierjohann directs. That’s the really big news, but there’s lots of other fine-looking stuff in the

Giving one of his trademark hard stares to the competition, Paddington the Musical confirmed itself as the hottest theatre ticket in London right now with a triumphant seven wins at last night’s prestigious Olivier Awards, which were broadcast live on BBC2 for the first time (catch up with them on iPlayer if you are spoiler-phobic). After last year’s rather indecisive ceremony (where no show got more than three gongs), Paddington scored a good old fashioned sweep, with its haul equalling that of previous musical record holders Hamilton, Sunset Boulevard, Cabaret and Matilda. It has to be said that there wasn’t hugely strong competition for the title of best new musical, but as much as anything that’s because West End producers didn’t want to put a show up against a guaranteed smash like the charming and innovative Paddington. It bagged best new musical, best actor in a musical (James Hameed and Arti Shah, who split the role of the bear), best actor in a supporting role in a musical (Tom Edden), best actress in a supporting role in a musical (Victoria Hamilton-Barritt), best director (Luke Sheppard), best costume design and best set design. It was always going to be Paddington’s night, and though a killjoy might quibble over the slight weirdness of male-female team Hameed and Shah taking home an explicitly male gong, they did deserve to win something, so fair enough. Nothing else came close to Paddington’s haul, though a further five shows (Into the Woods, Evita, All My Sons,

On hämmästyttävää ajatella, että vielä kymmenen vuotta sitten menestynyt Super Mario Bros. -elokuva olisi tuntunut perin epätodennäköiseltä ajatukselta. Vaikka unohdettaisiin viiksivallun vuoden 1993 live action -fiasko, yleinen totuus oli, etteivät suuret elokuvayleisöt koskaan ottaisi pelileffoja omakseen.  Mutta nyt, vain yhden elokuvan jälkeen, Mario on yksi nykyelokuvan varmimmista rahasammoista. Vuoden 2023 The Super Mario Bros. Movie on vuosikymmenen yhdeksänneksi tuottoisin elokuva – sekavasta nimestään huolimatta – ja tämä jatko-osa on niin varma hitti kuin olla voi. Kyse on siitä, että elokuvantekijät ovat hoksanneet juuri oikean tyylilajin tämänkaltaisiin teoksiin. Lego Elokuva raivasi tien Mariolle (sekä Sonicille ja Minecraftille) osoittamalla, että mikä tahansa brändi voi menestyä, kunhan se näyttää hyvältä ja se kuorrutetaan metahuumorilla, julkkisten ääninäyttelyllä ja nörteille suunnatuilla viittauksilla eli niin sanotuilla “pääsiäismunilla”. Elokuvassa on käsin kosketeltavaa rakkautta luotua maailmaa ja hahmoja kohtaan The Super Mario Galaxy Movie on jälleen erinomainen esimerkki tästä tyylilajista. Siinä on jopa jonkinlainen juoni, vaikka se onkin sama kuin ensimmäisessä osassa: putkimiesveljekset Mario ja Luigi (alkuperäisinä ääninä Chris Pratt ja Charlie Day) joutuvat pelastamaan prinsessan Bowserilta. Okei, prinsessa on eri kuin viimeksi (Brie Larsonin Rosalina). Ja Bowserkin on eri (Benny Safdien Bowser Jr.). Mutta pointti on, että tarina on täysin tois

Classy revivals dominate April on the London stage. There are exciting new productions of old faves – notably starry takes on classics like Les Liaisons Dangereuses, A Doll’s House and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are old productions of old faves as Avenue Q returns to the West End and Inter Alia transfers. And then there’s whatever the hell the Wooster Group’s Nayatt School Redux is, as the legendary New York experimentalists make a very rare appearance on the London stage with a dissection of one of their classic ’70s works.  The best new London theatre shows opening in April 2026 Photo: Alexandre Blassard 1. Les Liaisons Dangereuses An extended streak of celebrity-driven National Theatre productions – to be clear, not a bad thing – kicks off with this ravishing revival of Christpher Hampton’s classic adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ sexy epistolary novel about pervy French aristocrats. Lesley Manville will star as the manipulative Marquise de Merteuil, with Aidan Turner as the moral void Vicomte de Valmont and rising US screen star Monica Barbaro as the innocent Madame de Tourval. The great Marianne Elliott directs her first National Theatre show in years.  National Theatre, Lyttelton, until June 6. Buy tickets here. Photo: Nadav Kander 2. A Doll’s House Ibsen’s proto-feminist classic A Doll’s House gets staged a lot, with troubled heroine Nora one of the great theatre roles for women. Still, you can imagine this Almeida production will have a few su

★★★★ John Proctor is the Villain is a period drama about 2018. By that I don’t specifically mean that the Broadway smash nails the exact experience of going to a US high school in the late ’10s: frankly, the American education system is so alien that there are points where Kimberly Belflower’s play might as well have been set on a Mars colony space academy for all the resemblance it bears to the average Brit comp. But what Belflower does do brilliantly is nail the intersection between the relatively brief apex of the #MeToo movement and a generation of smart, naive school girls who would have been the right age to absorb its rhetoric at the precise moment they’re discovering what it was a reaction to. Plus, it has a banging soundtrack, with Lorde’s 2017 hit ‘Green Light’ embedded deep in its bones, and discussed in reverent tones by its young characters in a way that feels poignant and illuminating: school girls don’t geek out over ‘Green Light’ anymore, and they probably don’t discuss #MeToo either. If this sounds like it has the potential to come across as a bit like a po-faced lecture then that couldn’t be further from the case. Danya Taymor’s production – which transfers recast from a smash Broadway run – is an absolute blast, the many serious issues raised all of a piece with its breathless ebullience and Belflower’s endlessly witty text. As much as anything else, it’s a wholehearted celebration of teen girl dorkiness and a rebuttal to the idea their lives should be view

To non-parents, Easter is just a lovely extra-long weekend off work with a chocolate-slash-Jesus related added dimension. To parents and kids, it’s a two-week school holiday that needs to be planned for with military precision.  Or not! We’ve elsewhere rounded up the best Easter holidays kids’ events in London in 2026, with a focus on major new attractions or ones that it’s your last chance to see. Many of these are worth booking – or at least planning for – in advance. But what if you don’t want to spend more money on your awful children? What if you refuse to plan? Or perhaps to be fairer, what if you’re in the market for some cheaper and more spontaneous activities mixed in over the 16 days of holiday? Well worry not: we’ve got you covered with our comprehensive-ish round up of the best free kids’ activities going on in London this Easter. When are the Easter holidays in 2026? This year the Easter holidays for London schools start on Monday March 30 and last until Friday April 10. The best free things to do with kids in London in Easter holidays 2026 1. Step into a Fairy Tale at the British Library Obviously it goes without saying that most of London’s major museums and art galleries are – as ever – free at Easter. On the whole you will have to pay for their fancier temporary exhibitions, but not at the good old British Library, where major new free show Fairy Tales opens just in time for Easter. It’s an immersive journey through the world of fairy tale that makes use of

★★★ ‘Can Rebecca Lucy Taylor act?’ is I guess the big question here.  Well, I don’t think there’s any evidence from the pop star’s straight-up play debut (she previously co-starred in Cabaret) that the artist also known as Self Esteem is a hugely versatile character actor. But: the answer is ‘yes’. The theatrical, theatre-literate singer potently channels what feels like a lot of personal stuff into the role of Maggie Frisby – a minor rock singer, angry, amused and very drunk as her band disintegrates at a 1969 Oxford student ball. And I think if you’re a proper hardcore Self Esteem fan you’ll probably see David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth ’n’ Smiles as a means to an end, a vehicle to fire Taylor up as she pours her heart and soul and cynicism at the music industry into the role of Maggie, combusting spectacularly – and at one point, almost literally – at the tail-end of the ’60s.  Helen MurrayNoah Weatherby (Inch), Rebecca Lucy Taylor (Maggie), Samuel Jordan (Smegs) and Jojo Macari (Peyote) The trouble is the play has not aged brilliantly, a fact that, to his credit, Hare has acknowledged in the past (though he’s been supportive of this revival).  He was right! Teeth ‘n’ Smiles was inspired by Hare’s observations of a washed up Manfred Mann at the playwright’s own university ball. Which is interesting. But in 2026 it’s astonishing how unclear it is what point Hare is really trying to make.  I think it’s a passage of time thing. In 1975, this slightly absurdist drama about an ad

Back in its early ’00s days, Secret Cinema really was a secret. The identity of the films that were given inventive immersive screenings were kept a mystery until you got to a location only divulged at the last minute.  Blockbuster success has changed this quite a lot: it’s obviously not very practical to put on a massive scale, massive budget screening of a huge hit film but not tell anyone what or where it is. It has tended to flit around London, popping up unpredictably, often at venues that don’t technically have a name.  Image: Studio DJL & Dale Croft Well that’s all set to change from later this year, as Secret Cinema opens a new, permanent flagship home in the Greenwich Peninsula towards the end of 2026. And very pretty to looks to be too, from the fancy artistic renderings you can see above. Beyond the pictures we don’t actually know a lot about the venue, not even its name (so there are still some secrets I guess). It’s also not entirely clear if ‘opening at the end of 2026’ means there will be an accompanying show. It seems improbable that there would be year-round programming, and with the company’s Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical returning to Battersea Park this summer, it may be a while before we get a show at the new venue. Then again, it may not: a lavish new screening-slash-staging of Barbie was seemingly almost announced last year – could the new venue open with that? All will be revealed in due course. Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical is at Evolutio

French and Saunders officially bowed out in 2009 with a farewell tour that followed the end of their eponymous show in 2007.  Nonetheless, if Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders look relatively unlikely to come back as a sketch comedy act, retirement only goes so far, and they’re still comedy megastars who are still friends, and have sporadically teamed up on the odd charity sketch, compilation show and a pandemic-era podcast. Among their various projects, they’ve both starred in the West End’s megabudget London Palladium pantomime, sharing a stage with their alternative comedy peer Julian Clary. However, they’ve never starred in it together, but in what amounts to a serious comedy power move, they’ll play the Ugly Sisters in this year’s Cinderella. It’ll be their first stage performances together in 17 years. This is naturally very exciting, and while some might say starring in a pantomime is a bit of an anticlimactic way to get the band back together for what might be the very last time, it’s worth saying that aside from being the biggest panto in the country, the Palladium’s annual shindig is notorious for letting its stars simply do their own thing and you can certainly expect a very French and Saunders take on the roles. Expect them to have a lot of fun with being officially deemed Ugly (a term that has drifted out of fashion in panto of late) and to generally mount the first serious challenge to Clary’s status as Main Source of Attention since the panto’s inception over a

Although we’ve long lived in an age where pretty much anything can and will be turned into a musical, it is nonetheless mildly surprising to hear that Irvine Welsh’s classic ‘90s novel Trainspotting is being turned into a musical. Lest we forget, the extremely adults-only book follows the adventures of a gang of Scottish misfits on the fringes of society and features copious amounts of heroin use, gratuitous violence, underage sex and extremely dense Scottish accents.  It was, of course, famously adapted into a hit 1996 film that made a star of Ewan McGregor and director Danny Boyle, and did make copious use of music, albeit in a ‘soundtrack’ rather than ‘the cast is singing’ way. A cult stage version has also enjoyed long term albeit fringey success, often at the Edinburgh Fringe. A big (well, medium) budget musical, though? It’s clearly going to be a challenge, although Trainspotting the Musical is as legit as it comes, being written by Welsh himself, in a version that will expand on the original story of Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie et al via a couple of new characters and a bit of a material from his 2012 prequel Skagboys.  Not only that, but he’s written (some of) the songs, in collaboration with Steve McGuinness, with whom he recently teamed up to make an accompanying album to his 2025 novel Men in Love. Exactly how handy they are with a showtune is TBC. But we’re promised the song list will be further pepped up by covers of songs from the soundtrack: negotiations are still