Andrzej Lukowski

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.  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 our ultimate guide to where to stay in Paris.  🏘️ Discover the best Airbnbs in Paris How we curate our hotel lists Our team of writers and travel experts review hotels all over the world – new openings, old classics and everything in between – to bring you fresh, honest recommendations,

Greetings of the season. Well, I'm actually writing this in early September. But then, how long is Christmas theatre season in London exactly? Certainly it’s in full swing by late November, with virtually every pantomime and kids’ show in the city up and running way before Advent, with most of them running until the new year. London's best family Christmas shows at a glance: Best cartoon spin off: Bluey’s Big Play, Royal Festival Hall Best immersive show for kids: Fireside Tales, Punchdrunk Enrichment Stores Best musical for all the family: Top Hat, Queen Elizabeth Hall Best returning Christmas classic: A Chistmas Carol, Old Vic Best for babies: Scrunch, Unicorn Theatre and Univers, Barbican I’m Time Out’s theatre editor, and I have seen more pantos and Julia Donaldson adaptations than any human being should. But also it’s always an exciting time of year: Christmas is the best time to take children to the theatre because there are such a dizzying array of options, for all ages. This list is an attempt to try and put some order on the gargantuan breadth of children’s and family friendly theatre across the city during the season. It doesn’t include long running West End shows – you know about The Lion King, right – but is an attempt to compile as many festive shows for young audiences as possible, at theatres big and small. We’ve divided our list into family-friendly Christmas shows – that is to say, shows suitable for children, but that you could easily visit without – and

Oh yes it is! London panto season is back for 2025, 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: Cinderella, Hackney Empire Hippest panto: Jack and the Beanstalk, Lyric Hammersmith Best celebrity panto: Sleeping Beauty, London Palladium Christmas panto you can see on Christmas Day: Cinderella and the Matzo Ball, 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 there

Christmas isn’t just for kids: come the festive season, London’s fringes fill up with adult pantomimes that are strictly 18-plus.  London's best alternative Chrismas shows at a glance: Best adult panto: Beauty and the Beast: A Horny Love Story, Charing Cross Theatre Best festive dinner show: The Great Christmas Feast, The Lost Estate Best random seasonal comedy: Gawain and the Green Knight, Park Theatre We’ve gathered them together here – plus also a selection of other shows running over the Christmas period that are aimed at adults but chime with the seasonal vibes, either in terms of being overtly Christmassy or simply offering a good times night out that chimes with the general vibes of the ‘party’ season. Obviously there’s lots of theatre running over Christmas that isn’t very Christmassy, but this list ignores regular plays and musicals and focusses on cabaret-style entertainments and – for want of a better term – shows you might go on a big Christmas night out to. If you’re dicing with Santa’s naughty list this Christmas – this one’s for you! RECOMMENDED: Find more Christmas shows in London 

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: Hippest musical: Hadestown, Lyric Theatre Best of the oldies: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre Best for families: Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre The next 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.

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 2025. Happy Halloween! RECOMMENDED: Our complete guide to Halloween in London for everyone.

The summer holidays feel like they’re barely over, but suddenly it’s cold and dark and you have to amuse the little ones for at least another week. In other words, welcome to October half term. Despair not, however: there’s always loads to for kids to do in London at this time of year, not least because they blessedly coincide with the run-up to Halloween.  London's best things to do with kids this October half-term at a glance: 🦧 Best for animal lovers: ZooTown. 🛰 Best for space explorers: Space (Science Museum), Space (Natural History Museum) 🎃 Best for a spooky good time: Halloween at Kew/Halloween at Kenwood  🎭 Best for a trip to the theatre: Paddington the Musical 🧮 Best for maths fans: MathsWorld My name is Andrzej and I’m Time Out’s lead kids’ writer and also parent to two children who go to school in Bromley, where for some reason the local authorities think we want a two-week half-term. 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 October half-term this year?  This year, London’s October half-term officially falls between Monday October 27 and Friday October 31 (ie children will be off continuously between Saturday October 25 and Sunday November 2). Some children will be off for two weeks, that is to say Monday October 20 to Friday Octob

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. Between the showtunes of the West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector, there’s a whole thrilling world, with well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work. London's best shows to book for at a glance: Best musical: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre Best Shakespeare play: Othello, Theatre Royal Haymarket Best immersive theatre: Lander 23, Carriageworks Best celebrity show: All My Sons, Wyndham’s Theatre  Best for teens: The Hunger Games: On Stage, Troubadour Canada Water Theatre 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 theatre in 2025, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.   They’re 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 quoted are the ‘official’ prices when the shows go on sale – with West End shows in particular

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. Althoiugh the summer is now basically over, the open air season continues for quite a while, especially at the Globe, where the main outdor theatre remains open until the end of October, and reopens in December for this year’s Christmas show Pinocchio. 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.

Hello, and welcome to the Time Out theatre reviews round up. From huge star vehicles and massive West End musical to hip fringe shows and more, this is a compliation of all the latest London reviews from the Time Out theatre team, which is me plus our team of freelance critics. August is a fairly quiet month for London theatre openings so we’ll be posting relatively little here until things get busy again in September. But if you’d like to see reviews of work that’s likely to be coming to London in the near future, then do check out our coverage of this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025. A-Z of West End shows.

Six. Weeks. Or thereabouts. The sun may be out, the weather may be warm, and we may all be looking forwards to tevalling somewhere warm for a week or two. Nonetheless, the school summer holidays are the greatest test of any parent’s logistical mettle, seeing as they’re longer than most people’s entire quota of annual leave. And this isn’t America where you can just send your children off to a camp all summer and forget about them. We have to keep our kids entertained. So good luck with that! And I mean it: my name’s Andrzej, and I’m Time Out’s theatre and kids editor, and as a parent of two I have to deal with this nonsense every year myself. So to help you organise and plan, here are my picks of the best new and temporary London family events this summer season, from theatre shows to dinosaurs, exhibitions to more dinosaurs (there are a lot of dinosaurs around this year). When are the school summer holidays 2025 Officially the 2025 London school summer holidays run Wednesday July 23 to Friday August 29. But many schools will break on Monday 21 July, and virtually all of them will add a teacher training day or two on at the start of September. What to do in London in the school summer holidays 2025 See below for a list of new and temporary kids’ summer holiday activities.  For evergreen ideas for things to do with children in the capital, see our 50 Things To Do With Kids In London. For summer things to do with younger kids, see our 30 Things To Do With Babies and Toddlers

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

The little brother in question in Eoin McAndrew’s Verity Bargate Award-winning dramedy is Niall (Cormac McAlinden), who at the beginning of the story phones up his big sister Brigid (Catherine Rees) at 3am and tries to make inane smalltalk with her. She is, nonetheless, patient with him and they agree to go for a walk together at the weekend. Then he sets fire to his hand, an incident that understandably reverberates throughout the play.  Which sounds a bit bleak – and indeed is bleak – but Little Brother has a very definite comedic tone, as evidenced by the second scene in which Brigid is at the hospital discussing Niall’s injury with a wildly eccentric nurse (Laura Dos Santos) who burbles on about Northern Ireland’s abnormally high numbers of self-immolations and also how great the hospital water is. The meat of the play’s story concerns the vulnerable Niall coming to live with Brigid while he tries to get his life back together. Despite being busy with work, she has a sweet dedication to her brother that’s touching, if occasionally absurd. The nurse asks her to hide every potential source of flame in the house, which she does, but Brigid is aghast to come home one night and discover her brother is watching The Wicker Man. Compilations arise in the shape of Conor O’Donnell’s Michael Doran. Insisting on going by his whole name, he’s Brigid’s boyfriend, who she initially tries to conceal from Niall before introducing him gently. A big, awkward, childishly self-interested man,

Aussie director Kip Williams made a splash over here last year with his ultra techy, video-centric take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, which used a multitude of crafty camera tricks to create a universe of characters out of one Sarah Snook. Next year, he’ll be doing something similar with a Dracula in which Cynthia Erivo tackles 23 different roles.  Those shows originated in Australia and were part of a specific trilogy of one-woman, camera-based Victorian horror adaptations (there’s a Jekyll & Hyde too). This Donmar adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 classic The Maids is his first original UK production. And the question begged is: are all Kip Williams’s shows ‘like that’, in a visual sense? The answer would seem to be ‘basically, yes’. While there are no camera operators (there’s no room), Williams’s take on The Maids makes copious use of live streaming from iPhones, not to mention an absolute ton of filters. Here, maids and sisters Claire (Lydia Wilson) and Solange (Phia Saban) use them to construct a lurid fantasy world in which they viciously roleplay their similarly filter-addicted Madame (Yerin Ha), who would appear to be some sort of nepo-baby influencer who in turn roleplays a version of her own life for her 24 million online followers. Visually it’s loud, garish and kind of basic. Which is a good thing! Even when Jamie Lloyd does it, live video in theatre tends to have an arthouse vibe. But actually live video is one of the more dominant means of communication on the p

Nicola Walker is a brilliant TV actor: her sullen, sarcastic charisma brings an edge to sundry MOR terrestrial Brit dramas – we’re talking Spooks, Last Tango in Halifax, River, The Split, Annika – in which her career has flourished. But even though she has done some great stuff on stage – notably her excellent turn in Ivo van Hove’s landmark production of A View from the Bridge – I’m not sure Nicola Walker has ever truly successfully brought her innate Nicola Walkerness to bear in a theatre role. Until now.  Nick Payne’s new Royal Court play The Unbelievers isn’t the instant classic his last one (2012’s Constellations) was. But its star gives a turn that is absolutely, magnificently, unfettered Nicola Walker. Her unique gift for proper nuanced acting filtered via an unshakeable deadpan grumpiness is harnessed to perfection as she plays a grieving mother whose sorrow and grief at the unexplained disappearance of her son has curdled into something darker and more disturbing. The play is set in three timelines, albeit heavily jumbled up and somewhat blurred. There’s the immediate aftermath of Oscar’s disappearance, when Walker’s Miriam is terse and snappy but fundamentally reasonable in both her grief and her burning desire to make progress on the case. There’s one year on, where things are beginning to slip with her. The play opens with a scene from this timeline in which a somewhat out of it Miriam is tending to a wounded hand which has arisen from a complicated series of even

The review is from the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It transfers to the Park Theatre in November 2025. This drama from playwright Isley Lynn and actor Libby Rodliffe is a dark comedy about Bea (Rodliffe), a young millennial who it rapidly transpires is working three jobs, plus dog sitting for the (off travelling) pal whose flat she is staying in for free. Much of the early humour simply comes from the eye watering logistical details of how Bea pulls off the balancing act of holding down a full time PA job while also working as the concierge for a dodgy block of luxury flats while also needing to pick up her friend’s dog by 7pm every night (she also does some out of hours data entry).  The cleverest thing about Lynn and Rodliffe’s script is how it only slowly sneaks up on you to why Bea is actually doing all this. One’s immediate assumption is, cossie lives: Bea is a young(ish) person trying to get by in London, London is very expensive, look at the exaggerated lengths she’s gone to in order to get by, hahaha, not especially imaginative.  But of course somebody paying no rent doesn’t need three jobs, and over the course of ‘Jobsworth’ we discover how detached Bea has become from her friends, who are living normal lives without her. It transpires that she has done something very foolish in order to bail out somebody who has done something wildly irresponsible, and Bea has taken the absurd gamble that she can make it all better by working three jobs and not paying rent. To so

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

This review is from Inter Alia’s National Theatre premiere in July 2025. In March 2026 it will transfer to the West End, with Pike again leading the cast. Playwrights usually want to flex their range after their first big hit. But it’s to the credit of Suzie Miller that she cares so much about the issues explored in her smash Prima Facie that she’s come up with a follow up that you have to at least describe as ‘a companion piece’.  Both Prima Facie and Inter Alia are named after legal terms, both are about high-achieving female members of the legal profession, and while Prima Facie was a monologue and Inter Alia is a three-hander, both have a huge-scale female role at their centre that makes them the perfect vehicle for a screen star looking to scratch the stage itch. And so both have had Justin Martin-directed UK premieres starring major celebrities: Jodie Comer made her stage debut in Prima Facie, while Rosamund Pike treads the boards for the first time in years in Inter Alia. The most crucial similarity, however, is not entirely apparent from the first half hour or so of Inter Alia, which is basically an extended sequence of Pike’s high court judge Jessica frenziedly girlbossing as she juggles her extremely high-powered job with a busy social life and being a mum to vulnerable teen Harry (Jasper Talbot). It’s a breathless performance from Pike, who crests and surges from neuroticism to icy confidence. It’s draining: there’s barely room for us or her to breathe, and a sequ

Though you can buy all of Michael Bond’s books in the gift shop, let’s be clear here: the Paddington Bear Experience has very little to do with the first 50 or so years of the marmalade-loving ursine’s existence. Rather, the lavish new central London immersive experience makes no bones about fact it’s a live extension of the world of the two (soon to be three) StudioCanal movies. Theoretically I suppose that’s a shame. Debuting in print in 1958, Paddington has a rich history and London’s first proper attraction dedicated to him doesn’t explore it at all. But who are we kidding here? The Paul King films are modern masterpieces, and Paddington would be left as a beloved but past-his-prime nostalgia character if it weren’t for them. He’d have his little statue at the station. But nothing like this. You don’t absolutely need to have seen the films, but there are countless callbacks to them in this gentle adventure, which essentially an immersive theatre show. As we begin by waiting at a small recreation of Paddington Station to board our train to Windsor Gardens, we’re serenaded by a pre-recorded version of the band from the films playing ‘London is the Place for Me’; when we make it to Windsor Gardens for this year’s Marmalade Day Festival, designer Rebecca Brower has faithfully recreated the entire downstairs of the Brown’s boho Notting Hill pad. And then of course there’s Paddington himself - constantly teased as just out of full sight, his prerecorded voice would seem to be t

This review is of the original 2021 cast.  Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada will play the Emcee and Sally Bowles until Jan 24 2026. 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 ’73 to ’83 (more on designer Tom Scutt later), the Oscar-winner really goes for it as the Emcee. Indeed, I’d v

As debut plays go, this one from Will Lord is pretty… debut-y in places. But he’s definitely onto something with his satirical look at workplace culture and ‘CEO mindset’ bullshit. Richie (Nathan Clarke) and Darwin (Ashley Margolis) are junior analysts at a company of vague scope. As The Billionaire Inside Your Head opens, Richie is expressing his admiration for Elon Musk to a skeptical Darwin. Richie is in awe of the tech billionaire’s gargantuan success, even if he concedes he’s a bit uneasy about his ethics.  Richie talks the tech bro talk. But as we discover in his interactions with BFF Darwin, not only is Richie languishing in a junior role, he clearly has… further issues. At first it seems like it’s something purely neurological like OCD or Tourette’s. He freaks out when Darwin jokingly does a ‘got your nose’ on him, pleading for his nose to be given back. He apparently needs to utter the phrase. ‘I’d fuck her’ to steady his nerves, which often turns out poorly for him.  But there’s more to it than that. Allison McKenzie doubles in the role of company CEO Nicole and ‘The Voice’, a hectoring monologue inside Richie’s head that spouts increasingly deranged advice to him. There are some good ideas here. But I found Lord’s depiction of whatever is supposed to be the matter with Richie confusing. A tech bro with debilitating OCD is a solid conceit for a character. But the ever intrusive Voice suggests he is suffering from much more serious issues – perhaps paranoid schizophr

Bryony Kimmings has one heck of a fanbase: some big comedy names have played the 1,000-seater Soho Theatre Walthamstow since it opened in May, but none of them have mounted a two-and-a-half week run, as Kimmings has with new show Bog Witch. Still, if you’re unfamiliar with her, it wouldn’t be a shock: she hasn’t done a stage show in seven years, and she is ultimately a performance artist (whose only full-on mainstream achievement to date is co-writing seasonal Britflick Last Christmas).  Press-night audiences aren’t representative, of course, but unless Bog Witch is dead the rest of the run, the fans are real. And deserved. Last decade she was an enchanting, amusing and provocative regular presence on our stages, with a run of funny, inventive, deeply personal and visually arresting shows beginning with her breakthrough Sex Idiot (about her efforts to trace which former partner gave her chlamydia) through to I’m a Phoenix, Bitch (a mini-musical about post-natal depression). Bog Witch is quintessential Kimmings, using funny songs, fun costumes and unfiltered, matey honesty to describe the latest chapter in her life: living off grid after falling for Will, an eco-warrior. That said, Bog Witch proves disarming in being more diaristic than narrowly focussed on the headline topic. As illustrated by Will Duke’s beautiful shadow puppet-like projections, it’s really about the turn of an eventful year in Kimmings’s life. Of course it’s heavily influenced by her circumstances: making n

Although Aussie director Simon Stone has staged only a handful of shows in the UK, it has to be said that you can see a pattern developing. Take a classic play – previously Lorca’s Yerma and Seneca's Phaedra – rewrite the whole thing into aggressively modern English that revolves around long, light hearted stretches of posh people swearing amusingly, season with a bit of Berlin-indebted stage trickery, and finally change tack and wallop us with the tragedy, right in the guts.  The Lady from the Sea is based on Ibsen’s 1888 drama of the same name, and shares its basic plot beats while tinkering with much of the underlying characterisation and motives.  In a starry production. Edward (Andrew Lincoln) is a wealthy neurosurgeon married to his second wife Ellida (Alicia Vikander), a successful writer. They live with Edward’s two pathologically precocious daughters from his first marriage: Asa (Grace Oddie-Jones), who is at university, and Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike), who is at school. Tossed into the mix are Heath (Joe Alwyn), a hot but nerdy distant cousin who has come to Edward to get a diagnosis for a worrying neurological symptoms, and Lyle (John Macmillan), Edward and Ellida’s droll family friend, who is also hot but nerdy. On Lizzie Clachlan’s bougie white thrust set – suggestive of a fancy modern home, without spelling it out – The Lady from the Sea proceeds exactly as you’d expect a Simon Stone play to proceed. There is a lot of very posh banter, that’s very entertaining in

Like many of Shakespeare’s deeper cuts, Troilus and Cressida is a bizarre (bordering on broken) play that is clearly only performed (sporadically) in the twenty-first century because of who its author is. I don’t think that makes it bad, just weird. It’s handy to appreciate the historical context of Shakespeare’s cynical remix of the Iliad. The late Elizabethans really dug the Trojan War. And they also dug the tale of Troilus and Cressida, a tragic love story set during said conflict that was invented in mediaeval times that has now basically faded into obscurity bar this one play.  So while to us it seems peculiar that Shakespeare wrote a drama that combined the familiar story of the Trojan War with an unresolved love story about two randoms, a theatregoer in 1602 would totally get it.  It’s still weird though. I don’t think the traditions of the day forced Shakespeare to make the Greeks such dicks, or to write it as a semi-dark comedy. Owen Horsley’s production leans vigorously into all that to turn the whole thing into something that resembles a demented reality TV show, as Achilles’s dishevelled, dishonourable Greeks square up to Hector’s slick tracksuit-clad Trojans. Sometimes it’s hard to follow every idea Horsley throws in, and in particular it feels difficult to work out to what extent the war is ‘real’ or not (a scene in which Oliver Alvin-Wilson’s Hector is surrounded by soldiers dressed as Globe stewards wearing Helen of Troy masks is visually arresting but I’m not

Tom Fletcher is best known as one quarter of millennial guitar-pop sensations McFly, though parents may be at least as familiar with his other guise as the author of a hugely successful array of children’s books including the, erm, seminal The Dinosaur that Pooped… series. And now he’s been tapped to write the songs and lyrics for the biggest Brit musical of the decade: Paddington. That one word says all you need to know. An exemplary group of talent – director Luke Sheppard, playwright Jessica Swale, super-producer Sonia Friedman – have spent five years devising the first modern stage outing for the marmalade-loving Peruvian bear. There is a veil of secrecy behind exactly what they’ve cooked up – especially in terms of how Paddington himself well be portrayed – but all will be revealed when it starts its run next month. Photo: Jay BrooksThe (bear-free) cast publicity photo for ‘Paddington the Musical’ How did Paddington figure in your childhood? ‘I compare him to my experience with the Beatles. I don’t remember the first time I heard the Beatles. I just seemed to have absorbed their music and at some point realised I could sing almost every Beatles song. I don’t remember the first time I saw Paddington, but it always seems to have been there, although I think a lot of people from my generation remember the stop-motion cartoon.’ Somebody who only knows you for McFly might not appreciate that you have written a lot of children’s books. ‘Yeah, I think I’ve written about 30.

Suzie Miller’s Inter Alia was the jewel in the crown of the National Theatre's summer season, a follow up to the Australian playwright’s West End smash Prima Facie – once again directed by Justin Martin – that scored great reviews (including four stars from Time Out). It was a hit, and in this it didn’t hurt that it boasted a similarly big name to the Jodie Comer-starring Prima Facie: for Inter Alia it was Rosamund Pike making her NT debut as another troubled female member of the legal profession (this seems to be Aussie playwright Miller’s ‘thing’). And now it’s transferring to the West End for 2026, with Pike returning in the lead role of Jessica Parks, a high flying, fun loving High Court judge, whose feminist ideals are severely compromised when her teenage son is accused of rape.  We can presumably blame the unfortunate cancellation of Pike’s Amazon show The Wheel of Time for her availability for a chunk of 2026, but it’s being billed as a strictly limited run, and given the Gone Girl/Saltburn actor’s general busyness, that’s probably true (as opposed to a theatre euphemism for ‘unless we sell more tickets than we expect to’). Although the show is dominated by Jessica/Pike, there are a couple of male roles: her son Harry and husband Michael. Jamie Glover will return as Michael with casting for Harry TBC. Inter Alia transfers to Wyndham’s Theatre, Mar 19-Jun 20 2026. Tickets go on sale Oct 24 at noon. The best new London theatre to book for in 2025 and 2026. The best Chri

Australian theatre auteur Simon Stone is still riding high on his current smash hit for the Bridge Theatre, his own stage adaptation of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, with a superstar cast headed by Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln. He’s clearly having a jolly good time as the Bridge – which admittedly has a slightly freewheeling approach towards programming – has just announced that he’s coming back next year, with another freewheeling adaptation of a classic play and another big name Hollywood celebrity as its lead. The play is Ivanov, which is one of Chekhov’s lesser known works – ie it’s not one of the ‘big four’ that are staged almost constantly – but it does get a major revival every now and again (the National Theatre did it in 2016). And in the title role of the mournful Ivanov – a man whose life has hit a rut, and is now looking mournfully back at past glories – is none other than Chris Pine, the US actor best known for his role as Captain Kirk in the rebooted Star Trek films, plus sundry other roles including the Wonder Woman films. He’s no stranger to the stage, having actually acted on stage for 15 years before his screen career took off. Stone is a singular writer-director and we undoubtedly know roughly what to expect from his update: it’s going to be modern dress, with modern language, and probably have a lot of swearing in it. But it’ll probably be pretty damn moving too. Further casting is TBA, but Stone is bringing back the creative team behind The Lady fr

The gargantuan Beckenham Place Park is an icon of London’s deep southeast, a vast space that dwarfs Hyde Park and has had some serious investment put into it in recent years by Lewisham council. It’s played host to events for years now, and in a typical year you’ll probably get circuses, funfairs and the odd music festival. Nothing, though, quite so big as the Winter Gardens, a huge new seasonal event – dare we call it the Winter Wonderland of Zone 4 – that brings together a thrilling array of fun festive things into Beckenham Place Park’s vastness. The Gardens will include: Lewisham’s first covered ice rink; performances from regular BPP winter visitors the Revel Puck Circus; a Christmas market and Christmas tree vendor; a Christmas-themed crazy golf; plus bars, games areas and various food options. Entry will be free although inevitably the ice skating, golf and circus are all ticketed (and can be booked for online in advance). There are, on the whole, probably slightly more magical festive sights than Lewisham in the winter – but the Winter Gardens should give it that bit of extra sparkle. The Winter Gardens are at Beckenham Place Park, Nov 15-Jan 4 2026. Book tickets for the ice rink, golf and circus here. The best pantomimes in London this Christmas. Plus: the top London Christmas activities for kids. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel. Stay in the loop: sign up t

Love him or hate him, Andrew Lloyd Webber absolutely cannot stop winning at the moment. Four years ago the musical theatre titan was at low ebb: declaring he’d rather go to prison than allow his extremely mid new musical Cinderella to open with social distancing was not be any stretch of the imagination his finest hour.  There has been no new musical since then, although him and Tim Rice have written the songs for this year’s Birmingham Rep Christmas production, and a full scale new one called The Illusionist is now in the works. But his back catalogue has yielded hit after hit as the memories of naff ’80s productions that ran for years and years have been put behind us and hipper, younger directors have given us sexy new interpretations. Foremost among these is Jamie Lloyd, whose gloriously iconoclastic revamps of Sunset Boulevard and Evita are some of the most talked about shows of modern times. And let’s not forget Luke Shepherd’s take on Starlight Express, which has been packing ’em in over in Wembley Park for couple of years now. And now it’s time for Cats. The original 1981 production of Webber’s adaptation of TS Elliot’s children’s poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats ran for 21 years, and then came back to the West End in 2014 and 2015 in a slightly revamped version that included a rapping Rum Tum Tugger, something we basically all now try and forget. As we do the 2019 film version, which horrified the world only marginally less than the following yea

It’s hard not to be slightly confused by the idea of London Zoo’s newest attraction. You go to the zoo to see animals. But ZooTown only features beasts of the cuddly toy variety.  Taking up residence in the old Reptile House (which was vacated last year in favour of fancier new digs), ZooTown is a zoo-themed role play area for kids ages three to eight. Sessions cost £1, with bookings opening online three days beforehand, and each session lasting 45 minutes.  This is clearly a big chunk of time out of your trip to the zoo, especially during shortened winter opening hours. But here’s the thing: as evidenced by me and my two kids later abandoning an attempt to make it to the monkey walkthrough (because everyone was on the verge of killing each other by that stage), a trip to the zoo consisting of nothing but animal watching can actually be pretty draining for youngsters. ZooTown, however, they could have stayed in longer.  The most popular room involved making a pair of zebra backsides poo out brown plastic balls all over the floor If anyone remembers erstwhile Westfield institution KidZania then ZooTown is a not totally dissimilar idea, albeit all animal-themed and without any of the icky corporate stuff. Basically, it’s shaped like a big loop (à la the old Reptile House), and at every point on the way there are 13 beautifully, brightly designed role play stations themed around aspects of zoo life, from a vets, to a cafe, to an animal enclosure, to a quiet reading area magnific

The National Theatre has just announced its 2026 spring season of four plays, a heavy-on-the classics affair that kicks off with a rare revival in the small Dorman Theatre, which is usually used for new writing only. In fact Anthony Lau’s revival of Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy (Jan 30-Mar 14 2026) is the odd one out of the season in more ways than one – it’s actually new NT boss Indhu Rubasingham’s first piece of programming in the Dorfman, due to emergency upgrade works delaying her predecessor Rufus Norris’s final shows there, and begins its run some time before the other shows. The play is a drama about Gregor Antonescu (Ben Daniels), a ruthless international financier who takes refuge in the New York apartment of his estranged son Basil (Laurie Kynaston) as he attempts to regroup and bounce back from the ravages of the Great Depression. The rest of the season kicks off in March, with the biggest Olivier theatre playing host to a new version of Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk (Mar 6-Apr 29 2026), a drama about a group of Russian bourgeois enjoying a frivolous summer as storm clouds gather around them. Adapted by the acclaimed playwright Nina Raine with her brother Moses (whose Russian bona fides are excellent, being descended from the great novelist Boris Pasternak) it’ll be directed by NT deputy Robert Hastie, who recently did the honours for Hamlet, with casting TBC. Photo: Alexandre BlossardLesley Manville and Aidan Turner The starriest show of the season is a revival of 

★★★ Tracy Letts’s 2018 play embraces and subverts bio-drama cliches. It’s the story of an alcoholic woman who lives a hard life, largely as a result of being the daughter of an alcoholic woman who also lived a hard life. Did Mary Page Marlowe ever have a chance? What sets it apart is the way Letts has chosen to tell the story. Instead of a linear narrative, Mary Page Marlowe covers the eponymous midwestern Boomer’s entire life – from babyhood to near to the end – in 11 scenes that run in non-linear fashion, with plenty of her story wilfully omitted, or slyly deployed late on. Moreover, rather than a single big central role, the title part is performed by five actors (six if you count a dummy of a baby), the abiding effect of which is to give Matthew Warchus’s intimate in-the-round production an anthology-like feel, exploding Mary Page’s life into multitudes rather than feeling like it only tells one woman’s story. Two of the Mary Pages are famous. There’s Andrea Riseborough, the Oscar-nominated Brit character actor who hasn’t been on a stage since the ‘00s. She makes up for lost time: in just three scenes she dominates the play as the middle-aged Mary Page. In the opening scene she speaks in a hushed voice, a dead-eyed mum explaining to her two kids that the family is breaking up. When questioned by her children, she sticks to an evasive, politician-like script. And indeed the exact reasons for the marriage’s end are never fully explained – nor do we meet the kids’ father – b

The West End is stuffed to the rafters with theatrical phantasms, some terrifying, some benign, one a dolphin. Here's a round-up of our favourites (limited to one per theatre – apologies to Drury Lane's large posse of spirits). 1. Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree Where? Her Majesty’s Theatre. Who was he? The marvellously named Beerbohm Tree was a Victorian/Edwardian actor-manager, famous for his progressive approach. He owned Her Majesty’s Theatre and literally lived in it. How scary? Like, scary-ish if you’re in the top box, stage-right – he’s said to be responsible for sudden, inexplicable drops in temperature. By all accounts this is the only bit of the theatre he haunts, making him this list’s most niche ghost. 2. Eleanor Cooper Where? Dominion Theatre. Who was she? Eleanor Cooper was a teenage girl tragically crushed by the collapsing wall of the Tavistock Arms on Tottenham Court Road in the London Beer Flood of 1814. The Dominion was built on the site. How scary? Pretty creepy: a lot of phantasmal giggling and the odd bit of spooky poltergeist activity. 3. William Terriss Where? Adelphi Theatre. Who was he? Terriss was a celebrated Victorian actor murdered by Richard Archer Prince, a fellow thesp he’d had removed from a minor co-starring role. Stabbed at the stage door, he was allegedly brought inside and then died on the stage itself, declaring with his last breath: ‘I shall come back’. How scary? Reasonably: he’s thought to appear as a hovering light and make ominous noises

UPDATE: in a surprising new piece of casting, superstar comic Romesh Ranganathan has been added to the cast – he’ll make his stage debut to play Bill, husband to Sheridan Smith’s character Susan. Although he’s never acted in a theatre, he has acted, having starred in the sitcoms Avoidance and Romantic Getaway, plus a voice role in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Last time Sheridan Smith was in the West End it was with Ivo van Hove’s Opening Night, a leftfield art musical that in no way deserved the sneering notices it got in the more backwards quarters of the press, but at the same time was clearly much too weird for a mass Theatreland audience. But Smith’ll bounce back this Christmas, rejoining forces with Opening Night producers Wessex Grove as she plots her West End return.  Photo: Oliver Rosser That said, an Alan Ayckbourn okay definitely sounds like a safer commercial bet than a formally challenging Euro-musical: she’ll star in a revival of the veteran British dramatist’s hit 1985 play Woman in Mind, directed by ex-Donmar boss Michael Longhurst.  As with much of Ayckbourn’s work, this one comes with a conceit. It concerns Susan (Smith), a woman who takes a bump to the head and starts to experience two versions of reality: one real, one imagined.  It’s certainly an interesting play to revive: Ayckbourn was at his commercial zenith when it premiered but it’s been an age since he was last in the West End. It’s not entirely risk free. Then again, it sounds very much up th

Douglas Adams's satirical sci-fi masterpiece about a lone, confused human named Arthur Dent who survives the random total destruction of the planet Earth – demolished to make way for an intergalactic bypass – certainly feels like it’s due a revival as humanity continues to generally disgrace itself. There were rumblings until quite recently of a big budget US TV series, though that seems to have been cancelled. But good news for London, as a large scale immersive adaptation of the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy story – originally a radio series in 1978, later a hugely successful book and TV show – takes over Riverside Studios, for a production that will see you traverse the entirety of the arts complex as you follow Arthur from pub to space and beyond as his alien pal Ford Prefect helps him escape the ravages of planet-demolishing bores the Vogons and journey further into an eccentric and callous universe. It’s definitely a tricky one to carry off, and it’ll be interesting to see what ‘immersive’ really means in this instance (ie are we interacting with the characters or just moving between an ambitious series of sets) but it’s admirably bold. It’s also co-created Adams’s former protégé Arvind Ethan David, who has been the driving force behind various adaptations of Adams’s other big series Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and now turns his sights on the big one. Fittingly for something that started life as a radio play, there’s a top notch celebrity voice

Caught between the flood of new openings that come with September and the imminent arrival of pre-Christmas blockbuster season, October is a slightly random but very enjoyable looking month in the London theatre calendar this year. A cheeky take on Hamlet and a rare revival for Troilus and Cressida make it a good month for fans of weird Shakespeare, but there’s really a little something for everyone, from the one mega-celebrity opening in the form of the Susan Sarandon-starring Mary Page Marlowe, to a welcome opportunity for London to see hyped transfers for gorgeous mini folk musical Ohio and sprawling Polish avant-garde epic Rohtko. The best new London theatre openings in October 2025  Image: Guy J Sanders 1. The Unbelievers Playwright Nick Payne has been a stranger to the theatre of late, with the Constellations writer having drifted into screenwriting, notably his A24 film We Live in Time. But there’s every reason to be very excited about his return, as a lot of other great people seem to be excited too. War Horse and Curious Incident director Marianne Elliott will direct The Unbelievers, which stars the reliably awesome Nicola Walker as a grieving mother experiencing every moment since her son disappeared simultaneously. Hard to know what the hell that means, but Payne did pull off a multiversal romcom in Constellations, so if anyone can do this, he can. Royal Court Theatre, Oct 10-Nov 28. Buy tickets here.   Image: Bryan Mayes 2. Mary Page Marlowe Hands down the st