Andrzej Lukowski

Oh yes it is! London panto season is back for 2026, and here’s Time Out’s complete rundown of every major pantomime in the city. London's best pantomimes at a glance: Best ‘classic’ panto: Jack and the Beanstalk, Hackney Empire Hippest panto: Cinderella, Lyric Hammersmith Best celebrity panto: Cinderella, London Palladium Christmas panto you can see on Christmas Day: Dick Whittingberg Gets Into a Pickle, JW3  Best adults only panto: see our adult panto list For some Londoners the only time of year they'll visit a theatre, panto season is a bizarre, joyful, quintessentially British time to come together and watch some light-hearted spoof fairytales that revolve around men dressing up as women and/or farm animals. Within that, though, there’s huge variation, from the megascale London Palladium show with its filthy figurehead Julian Clary, to Clive Rowe’s brilliant panto purism at the Hackney Empire and JW3’s amusing Jewish spin that runs on Christmas Day itself. I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and while this page is simply intended as a round-up of London pantomimes, then it’s an *informed* round up – I have seen approximately four billion pantos over the last 15 years or so, and know what they’re all like, plus we’ll update this page with star ratings when our reviews of this year’s crop start rolling in in late November. London is a city that takes pantomime seriously, and even if the idea of seasonal frivolity fills you with dread, there’s a panto out the

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: The summer’s big hit: Jesus Christ Superstar, London Palladium/Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Best of the oldies: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre Best for families: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre The next big thing: One Day, Garrick 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, 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.

September 2026: There's a brand new Number 1, with the frankly exceptional Impala in Soho taking the top spot as our favourite new restaurant in London. Other fresh additions include Kismet in Borough Market, Cafe Clement by the Thames in Temple, Hon's BBQ in Hackney Wick, Cue Point in Notting Hill, Jackson Boxer's Vesper in Clerkenwell 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 September 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🥩 Central: Impala, Soho 🍷 North: The Golden Tooth, Newington Green 🦐 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 spiciest reviews: we’re serving it all on our London restaurants WhatsA

Borough is known for having one of the best food markets in the world, but it’s also home to some seriously good restaurants as well as the brilliant market. The Borough Yards development – just next to this historic, edible wonderland – is where you’ll find some of the latest and greatest spots to have a sit-down feast, including west African restaurant Akara and southern Thai sensation, Plaza Khao Gaeng. If you’re off to SE1 and your stomach is rumbling, then consult this list so you can hunt down our favourite spots for a fabulous feed, from contemporary Greek classics at Oma and Pyro, to pasta at Padella, classy French cuisine at Camille (our favourite London restaurant for 2026), and seafood at Applebee’s.  RECOMMENDED: The best restaurants in London Bridge. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

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 autumnal outdoor fun: As You Like It, Shakespeare’s Globe 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 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 (

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: Chat Noir!, The Lost Estate Best for Trekkies: Bridge Command Best for music lovers: Mamma Mia! The Party, The O2 Best for a fancy dress adventure: 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 immerse

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: The Greatest Showman, Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Best Shakespeare play: Lear, Yard Theatre. Best celebrity show: The Lives of Others, Adelphi Theatre. Best revival of a modern classic: August: Osage County, Noël Coward Theatre. Best for something different: Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Barbican Centre. 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 op

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 long-running musical: Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre Best for teens: The Hunger Games: On Stage, Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre Biggest new musical: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre  Best for babies: Home Song, 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-schoolers and younger children d

Autumn is here and the Edinburgh Fringe is over – two big events in the comedy world, as it heralds both the arrival of big new tours from the likes of Mo Gilligan, but also a rapid transfer of some of the Fringe’s biggest 2026 comedy hits, as the likes of Crybabies and Freddie Meredith surf their great reviews directly down to London. (A curiousity of this autumn is that the many SNL UK stars at the Fringe have had to reshcedule their September dates due the show’s second season – but there‘s still plenty of chuckles to go around) There are far, far too many one-off, multi-performer comedy nights in London for us to compile a single coherent page with our favouites on, which is entirely to London’s credit. So do check individual bills of comedy clubs online for that sort of thing. But if you’re looking for an individual comedian with a full headline show then this page is here to compile the Time Out editorial team’s top choices, often with our reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The best comedy clubs in London.The best new theatre shows to book for in London.

Yes, trick-or-treating is a no brainer in terms of Halloween fun for kids. But there’s more to the second-most fun holiday of the year (after Christmas, of course) than trying to extract bucketfuls of sweets from your long-suffering neighbours.  Halloween typically coincides with the school half-term holidays (it does this year) and typically most major London attractions have a half term theme that will run for at least the length of the holidays, if not longer. meaning you and the family can really make the most of the city’s spooky, child-friendly events on either side of October 31. While our half-term list does include some of the bigger Halloween events, much of what’s on it has no bearing on the spooky season – this one, however, is strictly haunted events only. From pumpkin picking to scary movies, there are loads of wicked things to do on and around October 31 2026. Happy Halloween! RECOMMENDED: Our complete guide to Halloween in London for everyone.

For over a decade, TV channel Dave took it upon itself to crown the ‘best joke’ of the Edinburgh Fringe each year. It proved quite a challenge, given that the arts festival welcomes hundreds of shows and hopeful comics to the city. Its annual competition, the Funniest Joke of the Fringe, named a winner from a competition shortlist drawn up by a panel of comedy critics, before members of the public are asked to pick their three favourite jokes. However, as of 2025 Dave said the Joke of the Fringe award is ‘resting’ and wouldn’t be happening. In response, production company Need to Know Comedy announced it would revive its (Some Guy Called) Dave Award, which was initially a pandemic-era substitute for Joke of the Fringe.  It was broughg back in 2025 and again in 2026, with this year’s victor announced as 2019 Dave winner (and regular shortlistee) Olaf Falafal. See his winning gag below. The proliferation of joke contests in a post-Dave world means it can be hard to say what the ‘official’ best joke is now – so also a shout out to Fil Milton, who won the new £1,000 Cheeziest Joke of the Edinburgh Fringe 2026 – sponsored by Cheez-It, which is apparently a type of cracker – with his gag ‘My brother convinced me to go halves on a used funeral car. I can’t believe I was so easily co-hearsed’. However, for now we’re going with (Some Guy Called) Dave as the spiritual successor. The £500 (plus a trophy!) award is based upon a slightly whimsical strategy of asking comedians to submit u

If it looks like a Chekhov play and it pines wistfully in the pre-revolution Russian countryside like a Chekhov play… that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a Chekhov play. Sure, Lyndsey Turner’s deft revival of Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country uses a not un-Chekhovian 1992 translation from Brian Friel; okay the bulrushes on Leslie Travers’ set could have been recycled from last year’s Barbican Seagull; yes it’s a story about a sprawling cast of dysfunctional aristocrats and their hangers-on falling apart on a country estate. But even in spite of all that, a little time with the play reveals it to in fact be very much its own thing. At the heart of this particular country estate is Sophie Okonedo’s jaded aristo Natalya Petrova. Legally, even wealthy women lacked real power in 19th century Russia. And yet even if Natalya doesn’t have any particularly grand ambitions, her flinty force of will, elegant looks and scorched-earth approach to anyone who annoys her means the teeming denizens of the house bend to her whim and hang on her mood. She is a much more forceful presence than her technology-obsessed husband Arkady (Thomas Arnold), who spends his days cheerily prattling around with his unreliable new winnowing machine, oblivious to the fact his pal Michel (Alistair Petrie) is in love with his wife, and that she has designs on their daughter’s tutor Aleksey (Patrick Gibson) Although there is a moment where Daniel Rigby’s sublimely annoying doctor Ignaty drops his loser facade

Tracey Scott Wilson’s US newspaper drama The Story is definitely more red top than broadsheet in tone. But there’s always a place for some thrills in the theatre. Making its UK debut almost a quarter century after its 2003 US one, its roots stretch even further back in time: it’s inspired by the story of Janet Cooke, a promising young Black reporter for the Washington Post who was forced to return her Pulitzer Prize after her 1980 story about child heroin addicts on the streets of DC turned out to be largely fabricated.  Wilson has her mind on more ambitious stuff than that, however, as she takes us into the ‘Vanguard’ section of a Post-alike newspaper in an unspecified American city. Manned by a somewhat eccentric team of three reporters, all Black, Vanguard is nominally an ‘around town’ style gossip section that has been repurposed as a African American community news by Pat (Lorraine Toussaint), the steely Civil Rights veteran who rules over the section with an iron fist.  She is supported by Neil (Ashley Thomas), her chief underling and longterm mentee, who knows his place. And she enjoys a somewhat frosty relationship with newbie Yvonne (Letitia Wright), an impressive young reporter who has a less easy relationship with the Black community than her co-workers. Bullied by her Black peers as a child, stints in boarding school and Harvard have left her feeling like an outsider, and she is engaged in a clandestine relationship with the paper’s white head of news, nepo baby J

Sam Ryder is not the Messiah. But he did come second for the UK in Eurovision, which places him close in some people’s eyes. And you can see the logic of casting him as the lead in a splashy summer revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. Though he wasn’t born until almost 20 years after Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical theatre romp debuted, Ryder’s eclectic, guitar heavy pop should theoretically position him well to front this loveably mercurial rock opera.  And with all due caveats re: the fact he’s clearly not Middle Eastern, he also looks a bit like Jesus, or at least popular Western depictions of Jesus, which is at least mildly qualifying, surely.  Can’t act though, can he? Well, maybe that’s unfair. He can act a bit. It’s not horrible for a stage debut. But it’s not really lead-actor-at-the-Palladium stuff either. This production actually started 10 years ago at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, where star Declan Bennett didn’t look a thing like classic Jesus, but had brooding charisma to spare, a troubled man struggling to accept his fate and the difficult questions being asked of him by his relentless frenemy Judas.  Ryder by contrast looks like a mildly perturbed middle manager distracted by some tricky mental arithmetic. A lot of Timothy Sheader’s production involves Jesus listening to Tyrone Huntley’s wiry, street rat Judas and looking conflicted while not saying anything. Bennett aura farmed the hell out of this. Ryder does not have the chops.  The logic

This review is of the original West End cast of Oh, Mary!. As well as ‘normal’ cast changes, a series of high profile Marys have been lined up: Jinkx Monsoon will do the honours until September 26; Lolly Adefope will then take over until December 5. Scott Karim plays ‘Mary’s Husband’. It would be a mistake to say the humour in Cole Escola’s massive hit Broadway comedy has been lost in translation to the West End: there was a lot of laughter when I caught Oh, Mary! on a Wednesday matinee. However, I’m afraid it was lost in translation to me.  I didn’t hate this lurid cabaret about Abraham Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd Lincoln. But after the slew of American critics describing the life-changing injuries they’d suffered from laughing so hard at Sam Pinkleton’s production, the whole thing just felt a bit… ’70s? A little bit Airplane!, a little bit Benny Hill, maybe even a touch of Mr Bean… Really it’s broad, dated humour salvaged by a tremendous cast headed by Jamie Lloyd veteran Mason Alexander Park as Mary and the redoubtable Giles Terera as ‘Mary’s husband’ (ie Abe). Of course, a lot of British people like ’70s humour: this is a country that still remains dangerously hooked on the 1976 Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. But Oh, Mary! is an old-fashioned farce built on two gags: one, Mary is a boozy narcissist – borderline feral – who dreams of the stage; and two, Abraham Lincoln is gay. To be fair, there are few cows more sacred in America than Lincoln, and this is of course que

This review is from the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Conceptual comic Joseph Morpurgo hasn’t been totally absent this last 10 years: he recently brought back his classic 2015 show Soothing Sounds for Baby. However, Highlander 70 is his first new work in nearly a decade although you’d hardly guess it if you didn’t know: he throws himself into a show with truly esoteric subject matter with the breezy energy of a man who pumps out a weirdy Fringe show a year. And although he’s not an observational stand-up type who was going to talk us through what he’s been up to, there’s just something admirably ballsy about announcing his return with this. Wearing clay-coloured face paint for whatever reason, he dives straight into the premise. He allegedly randomly happened across a 1970 high school yearbook for a US high school called Highlander Academy, in New Jersey. And from the pictures contained therein he spins an eccentric and amusing yarn about David Moon, a student who appears multiple times in the book. Of course Murpurgo has no real idea who Moon was. But he has crafted a narrative that Moon sits at the heart of, when a private diary detailing the straitlaced student’s love for the most popular girl in school goes missing on graduation day, prompting an epic quest to retrieve it.  I would assume that somehow Morpurgo did happen upon the real yearbook – it seems like too mad a thing to have entirely fabricated – but clearly the wild stories he tells of David and his adventures

This review is of the original 2021 cast.  Jamie Muscato and Joy Woods will play the Emcee and Sally Bowles from May 25 to Sep 19 (Muscato) and Sep 5 (Woods); Skylar Astin and Sarah Hyland will take over the roles from Sep 21, to Dec 12 (Astin) and Jan 23 2027 (Hyland). 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

House of Dreamers is a similar idea to a series of all-ages immersive experiences that flourished around 2024: think the Balloon Museum, think Dopamine Land, think Bubble Planet (which is still going). As a veteran of these sorts of things (my kids go nuts for them), there are very definitely some familiar elements to House of Dreamers: the gigantic ballpit is a classic, as is the pretend train journey where you sit in a carriage and video screens give the illusion of movement. Originating in Italy (it’s the creation of designer sisters Elena and Giulia Sella), what sets HoD apart from the pack is the relentless barrage of aspirational slogans and cookie-cutter ‘you got this!’ positivity. Somewhat ambiguously described as being ‘the first immersive exhibition dedicated to dreamers’, the show occupies a vague middle ground between actually being dreamlike and celebrating hopes and dreams via the medium of messages like ‘enjoy today’ or ‘never give up’. I think maybe when I was younger and didn’t have kids, and my cynicism outweighed my pragmatism, the whole thing would have made me want to scream, especially when my journey ended with an uplifting quote from JK Rowling, personalised just for me (we are given individual wristbands with our names electronically imprinted on them – my kids both lost theirs in the ballpit). But now, I just say live, laugh, love.  The show is relentlessly photo friendly House of Dreamers is perfectly good fun so long as you are aware of what you'r

As You Like It is mostly a play about a large assortment of oddballs living in a forest for some reason. It definitely has a plot, but it also kind of plays out like an eccentric Tudor sketch show. And I’ve seen a lot of productions get lost in the woods (badoom) of its teeming character and their largely low-stakes adventures – you can watch this show a dozen times and not be entirely clear who, say, Silvius is if the director doesn’t lead you through it. Fortunately dual directors Sean Holmes and Charlie Josephine – plus their creative team headed by designer Paul Wills – are excellent guides though the trees.  This is not a production that (as far as I can tell) comes with a high concept. I don’t think the reason why the opening court-set scene sees the characters dressed in a sort of eye-poppingly absurd 17th century style – big wigs; insanely silhouetted dresses; vaguely kinky; general Marie Antoinette-on-acid vibes – comes with any great point other than that it looks awesome and it sets up a contrast with the longer more rustic sequence that follows when most of the key cast are banished or have run away to the Forest of Arden. It is very fun to spend time in designer Paul Wills’ whiteboard forest But by making every character as vivid as possible, visually and personality-wise, it’s just a great, boisterous production where you don’t find yourself questioning ‘and who is THAT guy?’ two hours in. From Lola Shalam’s highly strung romantic lead Rosalind and Grace Oddie-

Adam Riches’ virtually method approach to comedy – in which he loses himself entirely in a character and accent – has taken a logical turn in the last couple of years, with him now making one-man-shows that sit in the theatre section of the Edinburgh Fringe programme. They’re still funny, but that’s not the main point of these detailed characted studies of real life figures.  Last year it was Jimmy, in which Riches took on the persona of Jimmy Connors, a complicated, pathologically competitive tennis star of the ’70s who’d fallen into obscurity before making an extraordinary comeback in 1991. There are definitely similarities to its follow-up, The Captain. Both concern quixotic-bordering-on-eccentric real-life figures, who were written off only to triumph… in a fairly qualified way. The captain in question is James Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel (in 1875), a feat that was all the more remarkable because despite this being the great Victorian age of exploration, almost nobody gave a hoot about what Webb was trying to do: swimming was only just starting to tentatively take off as lesiure activity and wouldn’t really become popular until the early 20th century. The really big difference between Riches’ two theatre shows is that we do not see The Captain from Webb’s point of view. Instead it’s that of his swimming coach Fred Beckwith, a kind of Ishmael to Webb’s Ahab. It’s a smart move, I think: despite the century separating Webb and Connors’ lives, I can see wh

‘But how did Marilyn Monroe really die?’ is not necessarily a question you’re expecting to have answered down the theatre in 2026, especially not via the medium of a play starring late ‘00s pop star Pixie Lott.  But here we are. Sharleen Cooper Cohen’s drama – conspiracy thriller, even – opens with Lott’s extremely breathy, extremely blonde Marilyn hovering near the bed where her body was found. She tells us we don’t really know the real her, and to prove it she drops an F-bomb (Marilyn Monroe did swears???) and takes us on a whirlwind tour of her life.  Not a very illuminating one. In part because Lott’s limitations as an actor leave her stranded doing what amounts to a Monroe impression and in part because Cohen clearly thinks subtext is for cowards there’s simply no depth of character here. A ‘real’ Marilyn is constantly alluded to, but her whole life still seems like a performance. Everyone talks in exposition. Lott’s Marilyn never does anything casual or insignificant. The stilted dialogue is simply a cavalcade of modestly interesting facts about her career, marriages and death. And then there’s the conspiracy. Although the fact of Monroe’s death is dropped at the start, Cohen essentially precedes in a purely linear fashion, only revealing how she believes her subject died at the end. Rather than present it in a literary way, Cohen simply trundles through and says ‘this is how it happened’… and then has Marilyn confirm it herself. Lott’s Marilyn never does anything casu

If it hasn’t necessarily always been entirely clear why Matthew Warchus decided to reconfigure the Old Vic to an in-the-round set up for his final year in charge of the theatre (some sort of bucket list thing?) it does all pay off with this fine revival of an early Alan Ayckbourn classic. By the now venerable playwright’s standards, 1969’s How the Other Half Loves is relatively low concept, ie unlike many of his later plays, it’s not about robots. It is, however, explicitly written to be performed in-the-round (ie the stage is in the middle of the theatre), with a single central set standing in for the homes of couples Frank and Fiona Foster and also Teresa and Bob Phillips. Moreover, time is telescoped and chopped up, so that two very different dinner parties that happen on consecutive nights at the two different homes are spliced together into one amusingly unpredictable whole. Roger Allam’s Frank is a classic naive Ayckbourn protagonist, a well meaning, breathtakingly unperceptive director at a local firm who is absentminded to the point you probably couldn’t write a character like this now without audiences assuming he has dementia.  One thing he’s not absentminded about is his wedding anniversary, which he remembered, unlike his wife Fiona (Dorothy Atkinson), who – sick of Frank’s lack of attentiveness – was out boffing neighbour Bob (Rowan Polonski), who she has been having an affair with.  Not that the terminally amiable Frank really has any suspicions. But as the cogs

This review is from the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Club NVRLND transfers to London in winter 2026. 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 book, by rising star Jack Holden, is at best negligible, a flimsy account of the various characters working throug

Although Elton John’s musical adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada had a slightly fraught birth – its original incarnation was scrapped after a messy Chicago run – it’s really made its mark in London, and has been packing them in at the gigantic Dominion Theatre for almost two years now with no signs of slowing down.  The entire time, the iconic role of venomous fashion mag editor Miranda Priestley has been played by US singing and acting star Vanessa Williams, who has presumably loved her time here and in the show as that’s a really very long stint for a lead actor, especially a famous American star. Still, even the great editors move on eventually and Williams’ final performance is September 19, with Brit stage veteran Debbie Kurup holding down the role for the following month. And then another big name, and indeed another Desperate Housewife, as Williams’ former co-star Teri Hatcher takes over the stage role that was made legendary on screen by Meryl Streep. While Hatcher is best known for her small screen roles – Desperate Housewives and The New Adventures of Superman being the biggies – she’s done a couple of musicals in the US in the shape of Cabaret and The Addams Family, but this will certainly be her biggest stage gig to date. Quoth Hatcher: ‘I’ve been fortunate enough to play some pretty formidable women throughout my career, but very few can compare to THE Miranda Priestly. I'm absolutely delighted to be joining The Devil Wears Prada in the West End. Miranda is inte

★★★★★ Reviewing the actual Bayeux Tapestry feels like an undertaking of hysterical hubris: why not just review the Norman Conquest while you’re at it? The tapestry isn’t just a work of art: it is literal history, a near-1,000-year-old artefact that is also the primary source for our understanding of the most momentous year in the story of our own country. I feel like I don’t really need to offer a lot of background for why the tapestry – woven in England, displayed in Bayeux, Normandy – has made it to the British Museum. Blah blah blah landmark Anglo-French deal, blah blah blah insanely popular: probably the most popular museum exhibition of our lifetimes. Now here it is.  Are we not so familiar with the tapestry already that seeing it in situ is a bit underwhelming? Honestly, not a bit of it. Photos of a few key moments in your school textbooks – Edward the Confessor on his throne, the appearance of Hailey’s Comet, Harold getting shot in the eye – maybe encompass its highlights in terms of the major historical talking points. But they scarcely touch on it as art. Laid out flat in one continuous 70 metre strip, the Bayeux Tapestry is astonishing, a heady mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar that teeters somewhere between outsider art, medieval illumination, action cartoon, historical document and blithe propaganda (it’s widely thought to have been commissioned by William the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo, who certainly pops up in it in a flattering light a suspicious number

Sometimes London theatre news is truly momentous and surprising and sometimes it’s simply relaying something you could have guessed anyway, and this news falls fairly squarely into the latter category. The RSC’s Game of Thrones prequel The Mad King – written by Duncan MacMillan – debuted in Stratford-upon-Avon last month and scored generally strong reviews. And if you were expecting a London transfer to follow you’d be absolutely correct: it has today been announced that it’s coming to London in 2027. Helpfully we know absolutely nothing more than that: no date (beyond 2027), no venue, and no casting details. Given we already knew the show existed and was liable to be heading to London, you sort of wonder why they couldn’t just hold off until they had something more for us, but hey ho. To speculate some more: the fully George RR Martin-endorsed show is likely to need a big theatre, which are generally in short supply in London. The Gillian Lynne Theatre – aka the current home of the RSC’s My Neighbour Totoro – is a decent shout, but it is staging that weird-looking Traitors play all summer. The Mad King could replace it in the autumn but one would assume the idea is to extend its run. The hulking Prince Edward Theatre has just become free from January as Beetlejuice has curtailed its run by four months. But Miss Saigon is moving there in June: considering the popularity of Game of Thrones it would be surprising if The Mad King was restricted to a limited run. Also it’s worth

The Barbican’s revival of Sunday in the Park with George was set to be the biggest London theatre show of 2027. Then the problems started. Time Out’s theatre editor looks at what’s next for the troubled production. RECOMMENDED: The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026 and 2027.  Sorry what the hell are you talking about I've missed all this? Sunday in the Park with George is a classic Stephen Sondheim musical, set across two timelines that focus on the painter George Seurat and his cynical great-grandson, also named George. We were supposed to get a production in 2020 starring Jake Gyllenhaal, but the pandemic put paid to that. Then earlier this year it was announced that Wicked leads Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey would star in a summer 2027 revival at the Barbican, an absurdly hot ticket. But in early August pop star Grande pulled out of all public events following the conclusion of her current world tour, amid speculation about her health. Then a month later Bailey quit via a vague Instagram statement implying he was leaving in solidarity with his friend Grande or something (but whatever the case he was definitely leaving). Oh no! Have ticket holders been refunded? Fortunately tickets never actually went on sale, which has saved some headaches as clearly Grande/Bailey stans would have snapped up the vast majority of the tickets. Is the production still going ahead?  Fundamentally, it’s going to be fine. The Barbican stages a big musical every summer – in f

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of the biggest Brit musicals of the last decade, running for over three years at the massive Theatre Royal Drury Lane, a feat that no musical – not even Disney’s Frozen – has equalled since. Adapted from Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s classic 1971 film – and with all yer favourite songs including ‘Pure Imagination’ present and correct – the 2013 musical was adapted for the stage by top Scottish playwright David Greig, with additional songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. With the Wonka film a recent hit and a whole new generation of children who’ve had no chance to see the Charlie musical, now seems like a fine time to bring it back, in a brand new production from Nikolai Foster. The artistic director of Leicester’s musicals powerhouse the Curve Theatre, he directed this summer’s revival of Kinky Boots, which ran at the huge London Coliseum, and it’s the same deal for next summer as the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory debuts at the Coliseum in June, running until mid-September. It’s obviously positioned as a summer holidays hit, running the breadth of them, but while there’s something for the kids there, there’s also something for older musicals fans in the form of twinkly-eyed charmer Michael Ball, who will be stepping into the role of capricious chocolate overlord Wonka. Although Ball is so titanically cuddly it can be hard to imagine him as the borderline sadistic Wonka, he didn’t get to be the best in the biz withou

★★★★ Curiously unmentioned in the publicity around the National Theatre’s most anticipated show of 2026 is that it’s one of those productions where the two leads – that’s Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss – toss a coin at the start to see who plays which role.  It’s an idea that has some resonance with the themes of duality and identity that permeate Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 cinematic masterpiece Persona, the source text here. It must send its stars deeper into the show’s psychological rabbit hole.  But from the POV of an audience member who will (probably) only ever see it one way around, let’s call it what it is: a flex over how good Blanchett and Hoss are. And they’re really, really good: even if Benedict Andrews’ production doesn’t entirely ‘work’, the sense that it is just bloody amazing having two incredible actors doing an enormous amount of acting – and that we’re actually only seeing half of it – carries the night. Photo: Monika RittershausCate Blanchett (Electra), Nina Hoss (Clytemnestra) and Ella Lily Hyland (Chrysothemis) Persona follows Elisabeth, a star of stage and screen who is sent to an isolated country retreat with her nurse Alma in the hope she’ll recover after being mysteriously struck dumb following her performance in a production of Sophocles’s Greek tragedy Electra.  It would be overstating the literalness of Andrews’ adaptation to say that the claustrophobic, clowning-inflected version of Electra that starts the night is intended to be the same one that Eli

UPDATE: Ariana Grande has withdrawn from the production and all other public appearances following the conclusion of her current world tour, which probably partly explains why the May onsale date for Sunday in the Park with George never materialised. Jonathan Bailey will remain in what is, after all, the lead role, with further casting TBA: expect it to stay a hot ticket but probably not as crazily as it would have been, which is probably no bad thing from from POV of a Londoner trying to get tickets. It’s now due to go on sale in the autumn. FURTHER UPDATE: Jonathan Bailey has now also quit Sunday in the Park with George, following a vague Instagram post in which he affirmed his love for both Arianna Grande and the show’s director Marianne Elliott. This is certainly a plot twist and no mistake, and leaves a production that was once hinged on its superstar Wicked leads now having no superstar Wicked leads. Fortunately no tickets had been sold and dates had only been vaguely set so there’s plenty of time to pull it back with new casting. Is Jake Gyllenhaal busy, we wonder? Hardcore musical theatre nerds may remember that in 2020 we were due to get a transfer of the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1984 classic Sunday in the Park with George. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a typically virtuosic work by the late genius that was inspired by the pointillist painter Georges Seurat's work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, and follows a f

While some West End shows blissfully drift on for decades, most of them have limited runs based around the availability of the cast. Shows therefore come and go, but typically there are two periods of the year when loads close at once, making way for the next slew of big openings. There’s early January, and then there’s right about now, as most of the big summer and spring shows bid us farewell this Saturday (September 5) and next (September 12). The one show that’s been running longer than all that is Disney’s Hercules, which wraps up a slightly more than a year run at Theatre Royal Drury Lane on Saturday September 5 – if you’ve been hankering to see it this really is your last moment. Hercules will be replaced by Sting’s musical The Last Ship and then this summer’s Sam Ryder-starring production of Jesus Christ Superstar will transfer over. However, September 5 will be your last chance to see JCS at the London Palladium, and it’ll be over a month until it resurfaces at Drury Lane for a final London stint before heading out on tour in the new year. The last musical to close is the troubled stage adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, which also winds up its run September 5 – this is, let’s be honest, probably your last chance to see it anywhere, ever. Photo: Marc BrennerSusanah Fielding (Roxane) and Adrian Lester (Cyrano) Finally, four major dramas are coming to the scheduled ends of their limited runs. First, the wildly-praised Adrian Lester-starring RSC production of

While it’s traditional for September on the London stage to be busy after the lull of the summer, it’s hard to remember a year so stacked with massive sleb-led productions as this one. Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, Letitia Wright, Gillian Anderson, Josh O’Connor, Mark Rylance and indeed Sting are all starring in different projects this month – madness. If you’re averse to famous people (or their ticket prices) then there’s still plenty of fun to be had, notably a couple of quirky new musicals – Thelma & Louise is an all-singing stage spin on the classic feminist road movie with songs by alt-folk icon Neko Case, staged at the ever-hip Young Vic; Kimberly Akimbo is the UK premiere for the five-Tony winning Broadway musical about a schoolgirl who ages freakishly quickly. Plus the chance to see rising star Ava Pickett’s follow up this summer’s most talked-about play, 1536. The best new London theatre shows in September 2026 1. Man to Man Although Tilda Swinton (pictured top) still often pops up at European theatre festivals with performance art-style shows that are probably easiest described as ‘very Tilda Swinton’, the legendary actor essentially said goodbye to a conventional stage career by the time she’d hit 30. Her extraordinary 1987 solo performance in Manfred Karge’s one-woman-show Man to Man as a woman who takes on her late husband’s identity in order to secure work in inter-war Germany is regarded as her key stage work on the way to cinematic greatness.  Good news: she’

Originally known as ‘Nurse Matilda’ in British author Christianna Brand’s original ’60s children’s books, you may recognise the name Nanny McPhee from the brace of Emma Thompson-starring films about a magical Victorian nanny who flits between unruly families, gradually becoming less and less ugly as she solves their problems. Following Nanny McPhee (2005) and Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010), Thompson – who wrote the screenplays as well as playing McPhee – had hoped to make a third film, and while that never came to be, a West End musical has been in the works for some years now (it was originally announced in 2018).  Finally it looks to be coming our way in 2027: we don’t have a venue or exact dates yet, but we’re told it will in the summer, and we have a full creative team led by Thompson as writer and Katy Rudd – who has a great pedigree in magical realist West End hits, notably The Ocean at the End of the Lane and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – as director. Photo: Davide PadovanEmma Thomspon Although it’s Thompson’s baby, don’t go looking for her to reprise the title role (she’s barely performed on stage since 1990), but her presence in the background should provide a little shot in the arm for a tilt at the family musicals market that perennially occupied by Disney shows. The plot sounds like it’s basically that of the first film, as the catastrophically unruly Brown family is slowly brought to heel my the mysterious McPhee’s inscrutable ways. Nanny McPhee

There’s no question that the most acclaimed London theatre show of the year has been Pride, Matthew Warchus and Stephen Beresford’s adaptation of their own hit Britflick that recounted a real life tale of solidarity between the gay community and the striking miners during the ’84/’85 strike.  Like pretty much everyone else, Time Out gave the production five stars. In his review Tom Wicker declared: ‘It’s an impassioned and timely plea for seeking out common ground. You’ll laugh-cry your way through it’. Critics were united on its being a brilliant mix of comedy, tragedy, rallying cry and tear-jerker. Rather than play one of the National Theatre’s big venues, Pride debuted in the small Dorfman Theatre, part of a new NT policy of incubating new musicals in the more intimate venue to let them bed in. Photo: Manuel HarlanJhon Lumsden (Mark) The show has been sold out for ages and a transfer seemed inevitable, and now it’s here: it will be heading to the Bridge Theatre, which has had a suspiciously empty schedule for a while now, with Pride free to slot in hot on the heels of current show The Oresteia. Pedants might note that the Bridge is generally not classified as a West End theatre – for starters it’s not in the West End – but this is effectively a West End transfer, with Pride moving to a much larger, non-subsidised venue. On a side note Bridge’s future plans have been in limbo since it was bought by Trafalgar Entertainment recently – is this an indication that it will in f

It’s a testament to the endless iconographic appeal of Steven Knight’s Brummie gangland drama that Peaky Blinders: Underworld isn’t even the first immersive Peaky Blinders experience to run in London – that honour went to Peaky Blinders: The Rise, a show so awful I prayed the Shelby gang would drag me out of it and shoot me dead. Peaky Blinders: Underworld is a very different, greatly improved kettle of fish which doesn’t even use the word ‘immersive’ in its marketing, although to all intents and purposes that’s what it is. (To be clear, it’s made by completely different people, being attributed to the rather inscrutable ‘KMJ Entertainment in partnership with Banijay Rights’). Made with the blessing of show creator Steven Knight what’s unusual is the fact that Underworld is divided into two sections, one of which is free. Or free-ish: it’s a pub. You don’t have to pay entry to be admitted to The Garrison, which is nominally a recreation of the Victorian boozer that serves as the Shelby gang’s HQ in the show. But to be clear, the pints are very definitely not 1920s prices (that would be about 2p a go).  Photo: Justin SutcliffeA barman at The Garrison Built into the London Bridge arches in what I believe is the old location of Southwark Playhouse, I found The Garrison a slightly weird concept: you can’t faithfully magic up an historic pub just like that. It is ultimately a Peaky Blinders theme pub. Still, I wouldn’t rule out a casual pint here if I was in the area: it’s spaci