Andrzej Lukowski

Hello, and welcome to the Time Out theatre reviews round up. From huge star vehicles and massive West End musical to hip fringe shows and more, this is a compliation of all the latest London reviews from the Time Out theatre team, which is me plus our team of freelance critics. December is the busiest time of year for London theatre – expect plenty of pantomime reviews and other seasonal fun but also a slew of major openings from across London’s many venues as the industry works itself to a frenzy before shutting down for Christmas. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026. A-Z of West End shows.

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

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 March 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🍝 Central: Osteria Vibrato, Soho 🍠 North: Ling Ling’s, Islington 🇹🇭 South: Kruk, Peckham 🍝 East: Tiella, Bethnal Green 🥗 West: Martino’s, Chelsea March 2026: We have a new Number 1! The newly-opened Tiella in Bethnal Green has scooped the top spot thanks to knockout regional Italian dishes from chef Dara Klein. Other fresh additions include Cafe Kowloon in London Fields, the slinky Martino's in Chelsea, Osteria Vibrato in Soho, Cambodian residency Barang at The Globe in Borough Market, perfect produce at Dockley Road Kitchen in Bermondsey, Korean fusion spot Calong in Stoke Newington, Hunanese heat at Fiery Flavors in Surrey Quays, cool diner energy at Dover Street Counter in Mayfair, Georgian classics at DakaDaka in Mayfair, and veggie-friendly Thai at Kruk in Peckham. Hungry yet? Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food

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: Faulty Towers the Dining Experience, President Hotel Best for Trekkies: Bridge Command, Vauxhall Arches Best for music lovers: Mamma Mia! The Party, The O2 Coolest: Lander 23, Carriageworks 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 immer

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is back for summer 2026. For three weeks (August 7 – August 31, the latest possible dates), a dizzying array of artists will be launching themselves at the Scottish capital in volumes literally unseen anywhere else on the planet. It’s the biggest arts festival in the world, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.   It’s also so big that it’s difficult to know where on earth to start, with over 3,500 shows across genres. That’s a daunting number to pick from even for seasoned Fringe-goers, and whereas with comedy you can guarantee there will be some household names on the bill, theatre is tricky because it tends to be a lot… well, fringier than the biggest of the stand-ups. But that’s kind of the point. Part of the magic of the Fringe is that you’re supposed to be open-minded: by the end of the month, people who were not famous before, will be famous. Still, you’re got to start somewhere and here’s our pick of the best theatre shows accounced so far. We’ll keep adding to the list in the run up to the festival and will update it based upon reviews when the festival actually starts.  While most of our recommendations are for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2026, the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) is running alongside it as usual and we’ll throw in a few tips and hints from its repertoire, which consists of a much smaller number of much larger shows. (NB the initial version of this list has more EIF than Fringe shows as the shows are announced earlier

Thanks to some frankly pretty wacky decisions made at the Council of Nicea in the year 325AD, the Easter weekend famously jumps around crazily from year to year, making the Easter holiday undoubedly the most erratic of all school breaks. For 2026, the school Easter hols stretch from Monday March 30 to Friday April 10, with the Easter weekend tucked away snugly in the middle of that (Good Friday is April 3; Easter Monday is April 6). Theoretically, then, the holiday should be precisely two weeks long with the bank holidays neatly contained therein, although doubtless some schools will tack on a cheeky Monday teacher training day at the end. Easter is a funny old holiday that be perfect outdoor weather and can be bloody awful. But hopefully spring will have fully sprung, and if not don’t worry – there’s absolutely loads to do in London this Easter holiday, and we’ve rounded up teh best option below.  Stuck for ideas on how to fill all this free time? That’s where we come in. Below is a list of ideas for things you can get up to in London with the kids this Easter holidays.  RECOMMENDED: Crack open our full guide to the Easter weekend.  

There’s never been a better – or more important – time to celebrate cinemas. They’re the places we go to dream, focal points of our communities, and an all-round great escape. Yet movie theatres are faced with challenges that even lovelty popcorn holders can’t help with. But they’ve survived the advent of TV, Hollywood strikes, a couple of pandemics, and so far, they’re holding firm against streaming and surging costs – and there’s reasons for optimism, too: younger, Letterboxd-savvy audiences are embracing the big-screen experience like never before, and filmmakers like Ryan Coogler, Christopher Nolan and Chloé Zhao are championing it at every opportunity. Just try booking an IMAX ticket for The Odyssey. With that in mind, Time Out’s local experts have collaborated on a celebration of the best cinemas from across the globe. From cult Tokyo cinemas and grand Parisian film temples to beloved Sydney picturehouses and LA film dream palaces, from a Berlin kino with its own nuclear bunker to a Canadian cinema with only 12 seats, we’ve pointed the spotlight on a hundred magnificent movie palaces that all movie lovers should know about – and visit.  NB We’ve gone almost entirely with single-use cinemas rather than venues that double up as theatres or gig venues.  Greatest cinemas at a glance: 🍿 The greatest cinema in the world: TCL Chinese Theatre, LA 🌔 The world’s best outdoor cinema: Cine Paris, Athens 📽️ The coolest cult cinema in the world: The New Beverly, LA Jump to list

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 all our favourite spots for a fabulous feed, from contemporary Greek classics at Oma and Pyro, to pasta at Padella, classy French cuisine at Camille 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.

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

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: American Psycho, Almeida Theatre Best of the oldies: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre Best for families: Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre The new big thing: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre  Funniest musical: Operation Mincemeat, Fortune Theatre Here Time Out rounds up every West End musical currently running or coming soon, plus fringe and off-West End shows that we’ve reviewed – all presented in fabulous alphabetical order. SEE ALSO: How to get cheap and last-minute theatre tickets in London.

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

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

This review is from 2025. Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical returns for 2026. It’s been years since there was anything secret about Secret Cinema. The immersive entertainment franchise that began life as cool screenings of mystery films in mystery locations has long been too big a deal – and required too big an audience – to leave things to chance. But massive success has left it in danger of looking artistically adrift, locked in a competition with itself to stage ever more lavish extravaganzas based around ever more obvious films.  Its last London show, 2022’s Guardians of the Galaxy: The Live Immersive Experience, awkwardly grafted together a lavish immersive theatre experience with its own self-contained plot and a screening of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. The fact you could buy a ticket that didn’t include the film screening felt indicative of where Secret Cinema had found itself.  If the latest doesn’t exactly take things back to basics, then it does at least put the classic 1978 film musical at the heart of the evening: you are going to watch Grease. In fact you’re arguably going to watch Grease twice. In Secret Cinema’s Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical, the original film is shown on large screens that are dotted around the cavernous new Battersea Park venue Evolution, which has been lavishly tricked out to serve as Rydale High, aka the school Grease is set in. But then there are live actors who pop up to take over singing and often talking duties in key scenes,

This hugely enjoyable tech satire-slash-thriller from US playwright Aaron Loeb is so good at bamboozling you as to what it’s going to be about that I almost hesitate to get into the plot. It’s good! Go see it! Isn’t that enough of a review for you? Okay, there isn’t a massive rug-pulling twist in ROI. But there is some fun misdirection in what initially looks set to be a satire on ethical investment funds. Sassy but idealistic May (Millicent Wong) is the protege – or in his words, ‘work daughter’ – of Paul (Lloyd Owen), the seen-it-all boss of ethical investors the Montrose Fund. One day, she stumbles across a unicorn: Willa (Letty Thomas) is a nervy, spectrum-y doctor with zero people skills who wants an insane $30bn investment in her ideas. But what she’s proposing intrigues May: advanced gene therapy that could change the world by eliminating most genetic conditions (eg cancer, Alzheimer’s). Willa contends that big pharma has suppressed such technology because it would tank their profits. May persuades Paul to take the plunge. The whole play is pointing towards ethical venture capitalist May discovering that she’s more capitalist than ethical. But in fact she proves to be a spirited, unbending heroine, winningly played by Wong. Really ROI is about two things: the inevitably of technological change, and how ill-equipped flawed human beings are to be its avatars.  Loeb is clearly interested in tech and what the near future might look like. It’s not po-facedly THIS WILL HAPPE

For the first 15 minutes or so, I thought I had Welcome to Pemfort’s number. Sarah Power’s play presents as a cosily familiar comedy about a clutch of small-town eccentrics pulling together in an effort to stage a fundraising fun day for the titular medieval fort (not a castle!) that forms the chief point of interest in their sleepy town. And Power has crafted a classic trio of oddballs: dotty older lady boss Uma (Debra Gillett), autistic nerd Glenn (Ali Hadji-Heshmati) and hippyish Ria (Lydia Larson), who believes she’s made friends with a deer. The three of them run Pemfort in relative harmony. But it’s the hire of Sean Delaney’s ex-con Kurtis that starts the real story, the quirky villager tropes used as cover to ask some very hard questions about community and forgiveness. Curtis is a good-hearted, sensitive person who has done the work, wants to be better and wholeheartedly regrets the terrible crime he committed as a young man (exactly what it was we only discover around the halfway point). But his arrival is, nonetheless, a seismic event for the small community. Really, Power’s play is a meditation on human nature and the ability to forgive, magnified through the lens of smalltown life, where every addition to the community is scrutinised and dwelt upon. Clearly Kurtis deserves to be given a second chance. But is it realistic to think he’ll get one? Should he have simply lied about his past? These are hard, painful questions that Power asks unsparingly while also, cruc

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is as American as apple pie and the electric chair. So on paper it seems like a strange first choice of play for Michael Sheen’s new Welsh National Theatre.   But never fear: the whole thing manages to be so exuberantly Welsh that you’ll soon forget the town of Grover’s Corners is supposed to be somewhere in New Hampshire. Francesca Goodridge’s production does Welshify a few details: a couple of incidental place name changes, a couple of hymns. But for the most part the difference is that every cast member not only has a chunky Welsh accent – as the omniscient Stage Manager, Sheen finds a whole new layer of fruitiness in his Rs – but there’s also a warmth and heartiness to their deliveries that softens (and maybe sentimentalises) a strange play that’s often intentionally served up cold and dry.  For its more conventional first two acts, Sheen’s stomach padded Stage Manager is a twinkle-eyed, avuncular guide to life in Grover’s Corners at the turn of the twentieth century as we meet the townsfolk and eventually watch the courtship and then wedding of Emily Webb (Yasemin Özdemir) and George Gibbs (Peter Devlin). Traditionally the play is performed on a bare stage, without props but Goodridge’s production uses staging based around Jess Williams’ dynamic, upbeat movement and the lifting, placing, twirling etc of various wooden boards and props.  Amping up the boisterous charm does feel like it changes Our Town: it conceals the cerebral weirdness

Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk is the sort of esoteric classic that only gets staged very occasionally: I think this NT revival is the third UK production ever, and the first this century. It’s not hard to see either the reason for its reputation or its infrequent staging. Concerning a group of dissolute nouveau-riche Russians spending a frivolous summer arguing among themselves as societal storm clouds gather, it is pretty damn Chekhovian. On the other hand its enormous cast and prodigious uncut running time mean it’s well beyond the means of most theatres to put on: it has only ever been staged here by the NT and RSC.  This new adaptation by Nina and Moses Raine is a full hour shorter than its previous National Theatre outing in 1999. It’s still overwhelming at first: it feels like you’ve been plunged into a sprawling existential soap opera, teeming with characters and plot lines that have been running for years that you’re having to familiarise yourself with on the fly. Gradually, though, Robert Hastie’s revival does take shape thanks to some delicious luxury casting. Foremost is Sophie Rundle as the gorgeous, disaffected Varvara, who rails with mounting fury against… everything basically. The rootless insubstantiality of her peers; the annoying men who insist on adoring her; her awful husband Sergei, very entertainingly played as a gravelly voiced boor by Paul Ready. The pleasures are pretty soapy throughout: essentially three hours of compulsive people watching. The 22 charact

This King’s Cross Lightroom now has surely the weirdest repertoire of any venue in London, possibly the world. With an oeuvre based around massive megabit projection-based immersive films, its shows so far have been a David Hockney exhibition, a Tom Hanks-narrated film about the moon landings, a Vogue documentary and a visualiser for Coldplay’s upcoming album. It’s such a random collection of concepts that it’s hard to say there was or is anything ‘missing’ from the extremely esoteric selection of bases covered. But certainly, as the school summer holidays roll around it’s very welcome to see it add an overtly child-friendly show to its roster. Bar a short Coldplay break, Prehistoric Planet: Discovering Dinosaurs will play daily at Lightroom from now until at least the end of October half-term. It is, as you would imagine, a dinosaur documentary. And indeed, if the name rings a specific bell it’s because it’s culled from the David Attenborough-narrated Apple TV series of the same name. It’s quite the remix, though: Attenborough is out, and Damian Lewis is in, delivering a slightly melodramatic voiceover that lacks Sir David’s colossal gravitas but is, nonetheless, absolutely fine. Presumably Attenborough is absent because he’s very busy and very old, because while the film reuses several of the more spectacular setpieces from the TV series, it’s sufficiently different that repurposing the old narration would be a stretch. Any child with any degree of fondness for the mesozoic

Like many a boomer child, Tom Hanks was smitten with the Apollo moon landings; but Tom Hanks being Tom Hanks, he never became unsmitten. The most beloved man in Hollywood has been nurturing a lunar side hustle for some time now: as well as starring in the film ‘Apollo 13’, he’s been involved in lower-key works, producing the HBO miniseries ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ and co-writing the IMAX film ‘Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D’. Staged in Kings Cross’s new, projection-based performance space Lightroom, ‘The Moonwalkers’ is essentially a documentary with bells on, a collaboration between Hanks and the venue, with a script co-written by the actor and Christopher Riley. It is, naturally, narrated by Hanks. Although it makes a point of looking forward to next year’s Artemis mission – the first manned flight to the moon since 1972 – ‘The Moonwalkers’ is a homage to both the Apollo landings and the wonder the Apollo landings instilled in the world.  Starting with JFK’s rousing ‘we choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard’ speech, it’s upbeat and America-centric, but well-judged. The main action and most spectacular visuals are projected on the room’s huge front wall, but the side walls cram in smaller details: the female mathematicians – many of them Black – who made the project possible are duly credited, which they certainly weren’t when I was young (or at the time of the landings,for that matter). There’s no contextualising talk

If you’re expecting a sober history lesson from a show called Vikings: The Immersive Experience, then you have not been paying attention to the current trend for large-scale, teched-up, AI-slop-kissed international touring ‘experiences’ that take an unashamedly fast-and-loose attitude towards historical fact. Even by the standards of the form, Vikings feels unusually batshit. There’s a reasonable amount of sensible historical stuff around the fringes, meaning you probably will learn something if you want to. But there’s no denying that the core of it lies in a couple of grandiose filmed works of incoherent CGI pro-Viking slopaganda (with a girlboss edge). Let’s take the sensible stuff first. For starters, some lovely interactive maps provide a clear overview of the Viking Age, which is here defined as running from the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 until its end, 300-ish years later. Every visitor is issued with headphones that play a sober initial commentary; although the exhibition isn’t exactly heaving with facts, figures or period artefacts, when you get to certain symbols in it, you can press a corresponding button on the handset to conjure detailed historical exposition commentary.  But this is not what you’d call the meat of the exhibition. Using animation, VR and a big sloppity slop immersive film that you watch from a recreation of a longboat (obviously that’s cool), the show nominally tells the story of Kraka, a young woman descended from the gods themselves, who marrie

I could definitely cobble together a wanky theory for you about why there’s so much great horror theatre around at the moment.  But all you need to know is that there just is, and that following Paranormal Activity and A Ghost in Your Ear – and with the Almeida’s fine looking Under the Shadow on the horizon – there’s reason to get your hopes up that when a nominally scary new play comes along it won’t make you die screaming of cringe. Tim Foley is a playwright who has also written several Doctor Who audio adventures, two strands to his career that come together very nicely in It Walks Around the House at Night, a rip-roaring horror adventure that packs in laughs and chills in equal measure without actively crossing the line into full on comedy. Superficially the set up is remarkably similar to Hampstead Theatre’s A Ghost in Your Ear: both are about misfit out of work actors who get caught up in ominous supernatural goings on in spooky mansions. But where Jamie Armitage’s play was heavily indebted to MR James, Foley’s is more of a spicy mix, with early Lovecraft the prominent flavour. Joe (George Naylor) is a cynical gay ‘actor’ – inverted commas because in reality he works in a shitty pub while not getting any acting work. He’s on the cusp of trying to get a real job when one of the regulars – a handsome, aloof man named David who Joe dubs ‘the mysterious stranger’ – asks if Joe could do a gig at his country estate. The idea is that Joe will get bed and board and dress as a V

Maimuna Memon’s Manic Street Creature did the rounds at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years back, where – I’m ashamed to say – I studiously avoided it because I thought it had a silly name. I still think it has a silly name, but Memon has since shown herself to be a truly formidable talent. Her most obvious achievement is an extremely well deserved Best Supporting Actress in a Musical win at last year’s Oliviers (for her turn in the Donmar’s Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812). But she’s a gifted musician too, having done the score for the National Theatre’s luxuriant stage version of The Grapes of Wrath, and due to do the honours for the Open Air Theatre’s imminent A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  And now Manic Street Creature is back in a slightly expanded form. A gig-theatre show that mixes Memon’s original songs with her spoken-word storytelling, she’s joined on stage by a three-strong backing band (cello, drums, guitar), the members of whom speak the odd line but largely leave the acting to her. The story concerns a young musician named Ria, who moves to London and falls for Daniel, a sensitive soul who struggles with his mental health – he is the titular Manic Street Creature (by which I mean there’s a song called that, he’s not a monster or anything). At heart the show is a relatively straightforward affair: Daniel is depressed; he takes antidepressants but they totally change his character; Ria struggles, caught between her love for him as a person, her concern for h

In a parallel universe in which a harmonious two-state solution was achieved in Israel/Palestine, you might question why a theatre would revive Ryan Craig’s solid (but not classic) Jewish family drama barely a decade after it debuted at the National Theatre,  We do not live in that parallel universe. And so it’s obvious why director Lindsay Posner might choose to revive The Holy Rosenbergs. A brand new play in which a north London Jewish family is rent asunder by IDF-serving son Danny’s death in Gaza and daughter Ruth’s work as a human rights lawyer looking into IDF war crimes would seem at best on the nose in the post-October 7 landscape. But as a period drama set in 2009 – which is stressed by the blaring ‘00s bangers during the transitions – it gains something, a timelessness, that reminds us of the bleakly circular nature of the situation. The fact you could make this play today and it would be equally relevant is why it feels more relevant than if it was actually made today. If that makes sense.  It is the night before Danny’s London memorial - he’s already had a funeral in Israel - and things are not going well for the Rosenbergs. Hot mess third sibling Jonny (Nitai Levi) is angry and sloppy. Rabbi Simon (Alex Zur) has popped over to advise Ruth that there are protests planned over her presence at her beloved brother’s funeral and could she maybe skip it? And then there’s dad David (Nicholas Woodeson) and mum Lesley (Tracy-Ann Oberman), both locked in rictus-like bonhom

Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass is a really weird play. A lot weirder than official summaries tend to divulge. Which is impressive given that official summaries will tell you that it concerns a Jewish Brooklyn housewife who is inexplicably paralysed in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Germany’s 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom.  But that doesn’t touch the fact that Miller’s last big hit is a seething Freudian stew, spiced with Jewish guilt, a heady, occasionally surreal blend of desire and regret. Its protagonists are the paralysed Sylvia (Pearl Chanda) and her husband Philip (Eli Gelb), and while they’re middle aged - and director Jordan Fein seems to have intentionally cast actors too young for the roles as written - it’s hard not to view it through the lens of Miller having been in his late seventies and looking back with his own regrets when Broken Glass premiered in 1994.  The man had lived an extraordinary lifetime, and written extraordinary dramas. But he’d rarely explicitly written about either sex or Jewishness. Here he does both in a strange period piece that doesn’t conform to the thunderous classical tragedy of his most famous works. But certainly there is much about it that proves tragic, not least in Philip, whose fear of his own passions and heritage have led to a superficially successful but ultimately unfulfilled life.  The couple’s regrets are substantially tied to sex, although they struggle to articulate that until it’s slowly prised out of them by Harry Hyman (Alex Wa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not Now You See Me: The Musical. Nor is even Now You See Me: The Play. But this spectacular stage adaptation of the hugely successful ‘cool magicians fight crime’ series of films hones in on the thing the people clearly want: illusions. Big ones. And lots of them. A collaboration between entertainment impresario Simon Painter and Australian musicals guy Tim Lawson, it’s fully official and endorsed by Lionsgate, the studio that makes the films. What is the Now You See Me stage edition, then? Well basically it’s a slick, bombastic, high-tech magic show that nominally revolves around a live performance by the films’ Four Horsemen, the white collar crime-thwarting posse of magicians whose membership is helpfully ever changing and usually quite a lot more than four. It doesn’t sound like they are likely to solve much actual crime during the course of the show but reviews from its Sydney debut praised it as a slick, slightly silly spectacle that at least made some smart allusions to the film series (even if you probably shouldn’t hold your breath for a Jesse Eisenberg cameo). Image: Now You See Me: Live Having played Sydney and Singapore, we’re the next stop as it plays a five-week summer stint at the gigantic London Coliseum. It’s pitched a bit younger than the films (again, no crime) so should make for fine summer holiday fodder, being suitable for ages five and above. Casting is TBA, though you’d be pretty gutted if you were one of the magicians in the above poster and th

Late last year, immersive titans Secret Cinema sent out a teaser email to its entire mailing list saying its new show would be announced the following day, while Deadline dropped a story saying that it was going to be an immersive staging of Barbie. There was no announcement the following day and there has been no sign of a Barbie show, and while I have heard rumours an all new Secret Cinema event at a new site will be announced soon-ish, then long story short this summer it’ll be bringing back last year’s hit staging of Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical. And why not? Returning to Battersea Park, the show that launched a thousand Instagram snaps was a hit for the company and saw Secret Cinema blessedly return to a format wherein the audience actually had to watch the movie (a point that had increasingly become an afterthought in recent Secret Cinema events).  Also, those fancy sets recreating Rydell High and its neighbouring fairground were presumably just gathering dust somewhere and deserve a second airing via a fun show that supplements the recorded John Travolta, Olivia Newton John et al with live dancers and singers. Obviously the baller move would have been to stage Grease 2 instead, but arguably that would have been a recipe for total financial disaster. Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical is at Battersea Park, Jul 22-Sep 13. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026. The best immersive shows in London. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – fr

Although part of Gillian Anderson will forever live on as FBI Special Agent Dana Scully, there’s no denying that intimidating matriarchal figures have proven to be something of a speciality for her in recent years, from Miss Havisham to Margaret Thatcher and Margo Channing to Blanche DuBois.  In other words it’s not a stretch to imagine Anderson as the acid-tongued Martha, the toxic antiheroine of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The role was most famously played by Elizabeth Taylor in the classic film version, and in recent years it’s been brought to the stage by everyone from Kathleen Turner to Imelda Staunton. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine better casting than Anderson as Martha, and this autumn we’re getting it. A new production by the great Marianne Elliott will see Anderson co-star with US actor (and recent West End regular) Billy Crudup as George, Martha’s Ivy League academic husband who invites a young colleague and his wife over for drinks and subject them to blistering arguments and bizarre games. The icing on the cake? It’ll be staged not in a old school theatre but in the West End’s newest venue, @sohoplace, which is intimate both in terms of its relatively small size (600 seats) and its in-the-round configuration that means the action happens in the centre of the room and all seats are close to the actors. We’re looking at a real theatrical treat, in other words, although the cosiness of the venue is likely to make it an alarmingly hot tickets – bett

After two years of its blockbuster Ballet Shoes, this winter will see the National Theatre stage a massive new Christmas show in the form of The Jungle Book. It is, of course, a fresh version of Rudyard Kipling’s beloved short story collection about the adventures of the literally raised-by-wolves Mowgli. The most famous incarnation of the story is, of course, Disney’s classic 1967 animated film which was remade into a live action version in 2016.  This new stage version comes from Indian playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar, who previously gave the National Theatre a stonking hit with her Gandhi play The Father and the Assassin. We’re promised some fairly major changes here, with the action explicitly relocated from central India to the Sundarbans mangrove swamps of the Ganges Delta (that now straddle India and Bangladesh). You can also be fairly certain that the imperialist undertones of the source material are liable to receive some degree of interrogation, though one also imagines that Chandrasekhar will be pretty playful about it if The Father and the Assassin is anything to go by. It’s also the case that Kipling’s original Jungle Book was a cycle of short stories that weren’t all adapted by Disney, so the playwright could be fairly faithful while taking quite a different route here. Really, the main thing you need to know is it’s a new stage outing for Mowgli, Baloo, et al and that you can imagine that Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell’s large scale animal puppets will be jolly

Go down to the Barbican Centre today, and you’ll find its huge theatre shut for a refurb.  But what you’ll find instead is… a mysterious booth, showing high quality, new and exclusive five-minute Irish theatre shows for free.  While the main theatre is closed – ahead of an even bigger shutdown in 2028 – Europe’s biggest arts centre has risen to the challenge with its Scene Change season of theatre in alternative venues. And for next week-and-a-half, you can be the sole audience member in Theatre for One, a series of five minute new Irish plays staged for free in a booth in the foyer. Theatre for One is the brainchild of its artistic director Christine Jones, and some very big name writing talent is involved, including Enda Walsh and Marina Carr, two of the Emerald Isle’s biggest playwrights. For members of the public, Theatre for One will work like this: you’ll go along to the big booth in the foyer, join the queue (if there is one) and when it’s your turn you’ll sit down, the door will close, and a screen in the middle of the booth will slide back revealing an actor, who will perform one of six plays to you at random. I went along to a special press preview at which I saw all six plays, which won’t be your experience but I can confirm that they‘re all good (some better than others of course), and with gratifyingly wild variation in quality and tone, with shows running the gamut from bittersweet naturalism to goofy comedy to full tilt magical realism. I don’t especially want