Andrzej Lukowski

June 2026: There's a brand new Number 1, with Maai by Nikita in Clapham taking the top spot. Other fresh additions include Auguste and Cafe Kowloon in London Fields, All Roads in Brixton, the latest branch of YeYe's Noodle & Dumpling in Soho, pizza and Lambrusco at Bar Etna in Newington Green (and the nearby Golden Tooth gastropub), Greek goodness at Maza in Mayfair, historic Indian cuisine at Oudh 1722 in Borough, and Logma, a sensational supper club at a Haggerston cafe. Hungry yet? Every week, a frankly silly amount of brilliant new restaurants, cafés and street food joints arrive in London. Which makes whittling down a shortlist of the best newbies a serious challenge. But here it is. The 20 very best new restaurants in the capital, ranked in order of greatness and deliciousness. All of them have opened over the past 12 months and been visited by our hungry critics. So go forth and take inspo from this list, which is updated regularly. Check in often to find out what we really rate on the London restaurant scene. And look here for all the info about the best new openings in June 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🍝 Central: Osteria Vibrato, Soho 🍷 North: The Golden Tooth, Newington Green 🦐 South: All Roads, Brixton 🍝 East: Holy Carrot, Spitalfields 🥗 West: Maai by Nikita, Fulham Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in London. The hott

London’s South Asian food scene is a mosaic of flavours showcasing the culinary traditions of everywhere from India and Pakistan to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Rather than one unified cuisine, it reflects the complex cultural tapestry that has evolved through centuries of migration, trade, and gastronomic exchange across the subcontinent. For the diaspora, food goes beyond sustenance; it’s an expression of identity, memory, and community.  London’s best Indian and South Asian restaurants at a glance: 🇱🇰 Best for Sri Lankan food: Rambutan, Borough Market 🍛 Best for a quick curry: Tamila, Kings Cross ⭐ Best for a Michelin star meal: Trishna, Marylebone 🍚 Best for a street-food snack: Shree Krishna Vada Pav, Fitzrovia 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Best for a family feast: Kokum, East Dulwich Rooted in philosophical teachings, including the mindful and balancing principles of Ayurveda, South Asian food in London emphasises reverence for natural ingredients and the simple joy of eating. From masala-rich Pakistani karahis and delicate vegetarian Gujarati thalis, to the spicy thrum of Bangladeshi bhortha, this list spans the diversity of the cuisine in the city. Whether it’s fine dining, street food at a community centre, trailblazing female chefs, or a family-run canteen, these establishments are love letters to their heritage, connecting Londoners through the warmth of South Asian hospitality, shared flavours and stories.  RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in London. Shekha Vyas is

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

You can feel the comedy year really getting underway in June, as a host of major comics debut shows they’ll be taking to the Edinburgh Fringe in a couple of months, while in a new but not displeasing phenomenon, various member of the Saturday Night UK cast are hitting the stage in the gap between seasons one and two of the unexpectedly great sketch show. There are far, far too many one-off, multi-performer comedy nights in London for us to compile a single coherent page with our favouites on, which is entirely to London’s credit. So do check individual bills of comedy clubs online for that sort of thing. But if you’re looking for an individual comedian with a full headline show then this page is here to compile the Time Out editorial team’s top choices, often with our reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The best comedy clubs in London.The best new theatre shows to book for in London.

June 2026: We've updated our roasts list to reflect the return of sunnier days. Try the Macbeth in Hoxton, which offers a great Portuguese-style Sunday sesh, and the ravishing Jamaican-inspired roast at Buster Mantis in Deptford. There are a couple of posh restaurants in the mix too, with a Nordic roast at the plush Ekstedt at the Yard near Westminster, and a serious meat feast at Quality Chop House in Clerkenwell. We also have a new Number 1 to welcome summer in; the masterful roast at The Golden Tooth on Green Lanes. London’s best Sunday roasts at a glance: 🥩 Central: Sessions Arts Club, Clerkenwell 😇 North: The Golden Tooth, Newington Green ⛪ South: Old Nun’s Head, Nunhead 🌈 East: The Nelson’s, Hackney 🍻 West: The Mall Tavern, Notting Hill Sunday lunch. There’s nothing quite like it. An elemental meal, one that Londoners take incredibly seriously. Debates about what constitutes the ‘perfect’ Sunday roast have been known to last for hours. There is no shortage of top roasts and Sunday lunch options in London. We’ve rounded up the city’s best Sunday meals from a host of pubs, restaurants and breweries all around town. What makes a good roast? For us, it’s simple; a welcoming room is a good start, maybe in a pub with an open fire during the winter months. Then it comes to the plate – we need perfect roast potatoes, well-cooked lamb, beef or pork and a decent plant-based option too. A Sunday roast is more than just lunch - it’s self-care. From snug neighbourhood staples

The largest arts festival in the world is also the largest comedy festival in the world– there’s nothing quite like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (August 7-August 31 2026). And indeed, for many punters the Fringe is a comedy – pretty much any British stand-up (and many foreign ones) who has a show, will take it to the Fringe. With literally hundreds of comedy shows to choose from, flicking through the phonebook-like Fringe programme can be more than a little daunting. So we’re here to help. From stand-up legends to award-winning newcomers, these are the comedy shows we’ve either seen and reviewed or are most excited about at this year’s festival. Got some downtime between gigs? Then check out our pick of the best pubs, restaurants and afternoon tea in Edinburgh.  RECOMMENDED: Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe The best theatre shows at the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe The best kids’ shows at the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe

The 79th annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe is approaching, with over 3,000 shows taking over more than 250 venues in the Scottish capital. From theatre and comedy to art, music and dance, the Fringe is nirvana for culture lovers. Plus, there’s the Edinburgh International Festival happening at the same time, which brings pioneering theatre, music and dance shows from across the globe. But what to see? Although the Time Out team can only really scratch the surface in terms of reviewing Fringe shows, we aim to see the buzziest, hippest and most acclaimed shows every year: to let you know what to see at the Fringe, but also in advance of many of these shows inevitably transferring to London and beyond. Get stuck in, have a read, and add a few more shows to your ‘must-see’ list. We’ll be updating this page from August 7; the reviews on here now are a couple of shows we saw in London that are transferring uop wholesale. RECOMMENDED:  Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival FringeThe 10 best comedy shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026The 16 best theatre shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026.

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

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.

It’s that time again: the school summer holidays are upon us, and there’s no getting away from the fact they’re long, and that the kids aren’t going to entertain themselves. Not for six weeks anyway.  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. Fortunately, this is London we’re talking about – there is always loads to do, and to help you organise and plan, here are my picks of the best new and temporary London family events this summer season, ie things that are around this summer that aren’t just always around. When are the school summer holidays 2026? Officially the 2026 London school summer holidays run Tuesday 21 July to Tuesday 1 September. That’s a pretty eccentric time to break up, so expect some variation on start day from school to school. Plus virtually all of them will add a teacher training day or two on at the start of September. But that’s approximately what we’re looking at. What to do in London in the school summer holidays 2026? See below for our 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 in London. For general London summer ideas see our summer in London guide. Check out our full round up of kids’ summer the

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

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.

Indian cuisine is deeply embedded in British culture. But do those of us without subcontinental origins know about the history behind it, beyond apocryphal stories about how chicken tikka masala was devised? An impressively sprawling menu that would wow a royal On the whole I would say no, which is why Oudh 1722 is both intriguingly exotic and tantalisingly familiar. The brainchild of double Michelin starred Brummie chef Akhtar Islam, this Borough restaurant is an explicit attempt to evoke the cookery of the royal court of 18th century Lucknow, which stood as the capital of Awadhi cuisine (a sort of slow cooking-centric melting pot of Mughal, Persian and Central Asian influences).  When it comes to what extent Islam has realistically been able to recreate 304-year-old recipes (1722 being the year the Lucknow court was established), I think it’s safe to say these are his own spins. But in an impressively sprawling menu there’s plenty that would wow a royal. Some of the food is outright blingy: many of the dishes come bedaubed in vivid blue and yellow petals, and our ras malai (juicy, cardomommy, great) took it to the next level by sprinkling on gold leaf. We’re not talking Salt Bae ostentation here, though: it just feels like every dish – even ones that are relatively simple – is signed off with the sort of flourish you might expect for a noble table.  It’s an intriguing balancing act. There are some theatrical dishes here, like a creamy, spicy malai murgh chicken leg strewn

Nobody likes to abuse the word ‘iconic’ more than your pals at Time Out. But the St Pancras Hotel really genuinely is iconic. Honest. The magnificent neo-Gothic building runs straight into St Pancras (the station) and basically looks like some magnificent wizard’s lair – which explains why the camerawork in the Harry Potter films very strongly implies that the Hogwarts Express departs from somewhere around its foyer, and not from its more prosaic neighbour Kings Cross.  Forget Harry Potter, though, let’s talk about real culture. In 1996 The Spice Girls climbed up its grand staircase and into history as they filmed the music video to ‘Wannabe’ on its steps, the idea (presumably) being to juxtapose their fresh and feisty Girl Power attitude with the building’s faded imperial splendour. The steps are basically unchanged today. You’d better believe I got a selfie. Of course, this doesn’t tell the whole story. The building – designed by George Gilbert Scott – opened as the Midland Grand Hotel in 1873 and closed in 1935, its fussy olde worlde services having simply become too costly to maintain. It then spent the next 70 years being used as the world’s fanciest railway offices. British Rail tried to demolish it, but were stopped by a campaign in the ‘60s that led to its Grade II listing. Finally, in 2011 it reemerged phoenix-like as the St Pancras Hotel, resuming its destiny. What are the rooms like at St. Pancras London? Well, it’s perhaps worth saying that a Deluxe King Room (in

I suppose the first thing to say about Beetlejuice the Musical is that it’s not necessarily one for fans of the Tim Burton film. Which doesn’t have to be a bad thing. A lazy criticism levelled at screen-to-stage adaptations is that they’re just works of formulaic transposition. But you only have to look at The Lion King – aka the highest-grossing musical in history – to see that’s blatantly not always the case. Aussie singer-songwriter Eddie Perfect’s all-singing take on the 1988 Burton classic is very definitely a retelling, taking most of the core elements of the supernatural comedy and positioning them together in a very different, very ’20s musical theatre way. And for the sizeable number of audience members who turn up to the Prince Edward Theatre in fancy dress, that is enough. Alex Timbers’ production was a big Broadway hit and has a cast recording that has clearly begat legions of London fans. Many of them, I’m sure, regard the musical and its songs as the key text and have never even seen the film. Alas, I am cursed with such knowledge, and despite my desire to be fair about the myriad alterations I can only really write this review from the POV of ‘grumpy old man who didn’t like how they changed things’. To put it another way, I loved Burton’s surreal vision of a preposterously bureaucratic afterlife, and was dismayed that the whole concept is here reduced to a virtual Easter egg. As much as anything, it just feels a bit unambitious not to tackle it. Ditto the loss

This review is of the original West End cast of Oh, Mary!. As well as ‘normal’ cast changes, a series of high profile Marys have been lined up for the rest of the run: Catherine Tate will perform the role until July 18; show creator Cole Escola will take over July 20 to August 15; Jinkx Monsoon will do the honours August 17 to September 26. It would be a mistake to say the humour in Cole Escola’s massive hit Broadway comedy has been lost in translation to the West End: there was a lot of laughter when I caught Oh, Mary! on a Wednesday matinee. However, I’m afraid it was lost in translation to me.  I didn’t hate this lurid cabaret about Abraham Lincoln’s wife. But after the slew of American critics describing the life-changing injuries they’d suffered from laughing so hard at Sam Pinkleton’s production, the whole thing just felt a bit… ’70s? A little bit Airplane!, a little bit Benny Hill, maybe even a touch of Mr Bean… Really it’s broad, dated humour salvaged by a tremendous cast headed by Jamie Lloyd veteran Mason Alexander Park as Mary and the redoubtable Giles Terera as ‘Mary’s husband’ (ie Abe). Of course, a lot of British people like ’70s humour: this is a country that still remains dangerously hooked on the 1976 Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. But Oh, Mary! is an old-fashioned farce built on two gags: one, Mary is a boozy narcissist – borderline feral – who dreams of the stage; and two, Abraham Lincoln is gay. To be fair, there are few cows more sacred in America

Show writer Kate Trefry explains all you need to know about ‘The First Shadow’. ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ is a sprawling maximalist monolith, a gargantuan entertainment that goes beyond being a mere ‘play’. It’s too unwieldy and too indulgent to be a theatrical classic. But nonetheless, this prequel to the Netflix retro horror smash is the very antithesis of a cynical screen-to-stage adaptation.  As overwhelming in scale as as the show’s monstrous Mindflayer, it’s a seethingly ambitious three-hour extravaganza of groundbreaking special effects, gratuitous easter eggs and a wild, irreverent theatricality that feels totally in love with the source material while being appreciably distinct from it.  It’s clearly made by a fan, that being big-name director Stephen Daldry, who used his Netflix connections (he’s the man responsible for ‘The Crown’) to leverage an official collab with the Duffer Brothers, creators of the retro horror smash.  It starts as it means to go on, with pretty much the most technically audacious opening ten minutes of a show I’ve ever seen, as we watch a US naval vessel deploy an experimental cloaking device in 1943, to catastrophic effect. Yes, the sets wobble a bit, and yes, writer Kate Trefry’s dialogue is basically just some sailors bellowing cliches. But we’re talking about watching a giant vessel getting pulled into a horrifying parallel dimension on stage. It is awesome; and when it cut into a thunderous playback of Kyle Dixon and Michael St

If you know Christopher Brett Bailey you will surely know him for 2014’s This Is How We Die, a hallucinatory, hilarious beat poetry-style road trip monologue that ended in an awesome roar of sound as the show – hitherto just Bailey at a desk – morphed into a cacophonous post rock gig.  There have been other lower-key projects since, plus at least one major dead end in the form of Carnival: At the End of Days, a film the Canada-born, US-raised, London-resident Bailey co-wrote with Terry Gilliam (it has suffered the fate of many Terry Gilliam films and seems unlikely to ever in fact be made).   But it’s probably reasonable to call I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven Bailey’s first major live show since This Is How We Die (which toured for years).  Viewed through a strict theatre lens, there hasn’t been a huge amount of progression since TIHWD: it’s Bailey sitting at a desk again, delivering a hallucinatory road trip monologue again, only without the rock gig bit this time (select performances including the press night do include a batshit coda: it would be unfair to spoil the surprise and weird to discuss it as part of the show when it usually isn’t). But that’s not a particularly fair way of looking at it, I don’t think. With his mad-scientist hair and mad-scientist stare and general mad-scientist vibes all round, Bailey is a compelling live presence. He is, however, a guy sitting at a desk reading from typed pages (we know they’re not just a prop because he points out some typos). Th

They say we all have one great story in us. Well, actor Martina Laird arguably has three. But it may not have been a great idea for her debut play Driftwood to try and tell all of them at once. The setting is an intriguing, little-dramatised one: the Trinidadian capital Port of Spain on the eve of the 1956 general election which would set the island and its sibling Tobago on the route to independence from Britain. The action revolves around Alma, a drinking den that’s owned by posh, childish white Brit Mansion (Roger Ringnose), but run by the hardnosed, weary Pearl (Ellen Thomas) and her beautiful, fiery daughter Ruby (Cat White). Justin Audibert’s production brings this small corner of a lost world to life very nicely indeed. Calypso blares on the radio; different brands of rum are sampled and argued over; the superficially charming but under the surface obnoxious Mansion loudly refuses to believe that the – to his mind – hapless Black population would ever vote for independence. It’s an intriguing snapshot of both the times and Trinidad’s diversity, with its significant Indian population represented by Seldom (Shane David-Joseph), an affable policeman, whose comings and goings are dictated by the febrile politics of the island. Though you soon adjust, the accents are far from the generic Caribbean lilt – it’s very authentic and impressive work from dialect coach Aundrea Fudge. Still, Laird never really drills down into this as she might, with the plot rather focussing on th

At the risk of stating the horribly obvious, recent events in the Middle East have given a grim new topicality to the Almeida’s adaptation of Babak Anvari’s 2016 horror film about a mother and daughter menaced by supernatural forces in wartorn 1980s Tehran. Then again, Nadia Latif’s production aspires to timelessness. While it tells an Iranian story with a cast of Iranian origin, the fact Carmen Nasr’s script is in English obviously puts a different spin on things than the Persian-language film. As does Ben Stones’ living room set, a tasteful middle class home that transcends obvious place, and even time: bar the tiny old style telly, there’s no tell that this is the ’80s.  And its timelessness gives it power, a dark universal parable about living under two shadows: war, and a totalitarian state. Leila Farzad’s Shideh is a frustrated wife, whose dream of becoming a doctor has foundered due to her blacklisting for leftwing activities during the Iranian Revolution. Now she stews at home with her daughter Dorsa, as enthusiastic about being a housewife as a tiger is about being caged.  And then there’s the war. Tehran is being bombed, and there’s talk of missiles soon too. But could there be something worse? Allegedly mute neighbourhood boy Mehdi has apparently whispered to Dorsa that vengeful djinn are abroad. When their building is hit by a missile, it seems like something has come in with it.  The djinn are a very good metaphor for the horror that intrudes on civilian life dur

This review is from Soho Theatre Walthamstow in 2025. Bog Witch transfers to the Edinburgh Fring in August 2026. 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 is 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

One of theatre’s greatest mysteries is how Disney literally made the most successful musical of all time and then proceeded to learn absolutely nothing from it. Virtuoso director Julie Taymor included all the dumb stuff required by the Mouse in her version of The Lion King – farting warthogs, basically – but nonetheless crafted an audacious and iconic production that departed radically from the aesthetic of the film and is still in theatres today. Subsequent Disney musicals like Aladdin and Frozen aren’t bad, but they take zero risks – effectively just plonking the film onstage – and are not in theatres today. And here comes Hercules, the next in the megacorp’s long line of perfectly adequate, not very imaginative adaptations of its bountiful ’90s animated roster. Book of Mormon director Casey Nicholaw’s production is good looking and high energy. Robert Horn and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s book is appropriately big hearted with a handful of very funny gags. The show’s not-so-secret weapon is the retention of the film’s sassy quintet of singing Muses. Here turbocharged into a full-on gospel group, they’re a whole lot of finger snapping, head shaking, quick-changing fun, and also add a note of character to Alan Menken’s likeable but unremarkable Alan Menken-style score. Hercules is a unit of generic Disney stage entertainment However, the Muses are also symptomatic of the fact that the show’s Ancient Greece comes across as a reskinned small-town America, without having any comment to m

This review is from the 2018 Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre run for Dinosaur World Live.  The last time the beasts of the Mesozoic era descended upon Regent’s Park it was for Dinosaur Zoo, a puppet-based dino romp that was a lot of fun, albeit somewhat defined by its obstinate refusal to feature dinosaurs that weren’t from Australia (the show was in fact Australian, but dinosaur nationalism is a pretty weird concept). Anyway, Dinosaur World Live is a not dissimilar idea, except that the British show, written and directed by Derek Bond, isn’t afraid to give the audience what it wants – that is, a T-rex. In fact, there are two T-rexes, an adult and a baby, plus a brace of Triceratops and some semi-obscure additional dinos (Giraffatitan, Segnosaurus, Microraptor) that parents may or may not have heard of depending upon the extent of their children’s dino-love. There’s a framing plot, which goes on a bit and may sail over the heads of smaller audience members, wherein perky Miranda (Elizabeth Mary Williams, with the squeaky-clean pep of a Butlin’s Redcoat) recounts how her family discovered a mysterious island full of living dinosaurs, which they are now exhibiting across the breadth of the UK in a larksome roadshow. It’s a set-up to introduce us to a succession of lovably unruly puppet dinosaurs, beautifully designed by Max Humphries and manipulated by a versatile team of puppeteers overseen by Laura Cubitt. There’s a spot of audience interaction – feeding, grooming – and the no

Brainiac Live! comes to the Garrick Theatre in 2024. This review is from the 2013 run. Unless you’re hoping your kids grow up to have a career in blowing stuff up and electrocuting people, it’s probably worth stating from the off that ‘Brainiac Live!’ isn’t really an educational show – you’ll probably learn more about science from a Harry Potter novel. Still, even the most sensitive of children tend to derive a certain amount of pleasure from watching things explode. And in that respect this live spin off of the defunct Sky children’s show Brainiac: Science Abuse delivers. It starts with a caravan being detonated and ends with the destruction of a microwave: in between various gas-filled balloons are exploded, one of the enthusiastic young presenters gets strapped to a rocket propelled office chair, and several of them learn the hard way how an electrified fence works. There’s a sort of boffins-gone-rogue aesthetic to the whole thing, with much donning of lab coats and brandishing of goggles. Yet only the most apologetic of explanations interrupts the bangs and pops – call me Herr Gove, but Brainiac’s palpable terror at being seen as improving felt like a slightly missed opportunity to me. Still, I suppose children have schools to learn stuff in. What Brainiac Live indubitably lacks is a big personality host a la the TV show, which employed the likes of Vic Reeves and Richard Hammond. Backed by three mute assistants, presenters Rik Warren and Andy Joyce are likeable enough, b

A few weeks ago we brought you news of the West End’s Summer Theatre Sale. Now we return to you with tidings of the Big Summer Theatre Event, the event in question being… a theatre sale. Long story short, they’re by two different ticketing agencies (TodayTix and London Theatre Direct, if you care) and all it really means for you is even more of a chance to get tickets to a big name West End show for a nice than usual price.  Not only that but aside from offering hearty discounts (up to 50 percent) to the usual mix of long-running classics – The Devil Wears Prada, Wicked, Mamma Mia!, The Book of Mormon, My Neighbour Totoro – and the big hits of tomorrow – Cyrano with Adrian Lester, The Oresteia with Mary-Louise Parker and David Morrissey – the Big Summer Theatre Event is also offering something a little extra. You can just use it to buy discounted tickets during the period it runs and leave it at that, but if you want to take full advantage then there are a selection of special extras, exclusive to the sale, that are tied to buying tickets to a specific show, and if you’re not 100 percent clear what we’re talking about, check out the full list below. Big Summer Theatre Event 2026 best deals Mamma Mia!, Photo (selfie) with cast on stage (post evening show), Sep 8 Hadestown, Photo (selfie) with cast on stage (post evening show), Sep 2 Titanique, Photo (selfie) with cast on stage (post evening show), Jul 31 I’m Every Woman, Photo (selfie) with Alexandra Burke on stage (post mat

Not only has sunshine and toasty temps returned to London, this weekend one of the city’s most beloved cultural events is back. The annual West End Live will take place on Saturday and Sunday, a two-day free festival of musical theatre that takes place in Trafalgar Square . West End Live is often referred to as ‘the Glastonbury of musical theatre’ and while it’s not in fact that much like Glasto, you can see where the comparison comes from: West End Live invariably secures performances – usually five to 10 minutes long – from every musical currently running in Theatreland and beyond. This year, once again, the line up pretty much consists of everyone, from long running classics like Les Misérables, The Lion King and Phantom of the Opera, to brand new classics including Beetlejuice, Sinatra and Paddington. As ever the big names are clustered around Saturday morning and early afternoon, as they can fit the WEL performance in around a matinee schedule. But there are plenty of interesting things on the Sunday, which leans more towards fringe and touring shows and previews of shows coming to London in the future. There are a couple of surprise shows on the Sunday too – we have genuinely no idea what they are but hopefully they’re worth keeping secret. QUICK LINKS:🎭 Saturday lineup.⏱️ Sunday lineup.🎟️ Ticket information.Weather forecast When is West End Live 2026? West End Live will run Saturday June 20 and Sunday June 21. Where is West End Live? It’s in Trafalgar Square, you ab

Clearly, we can’t get enough of David Nicholls’ tearjerker 2009 novel about soulmates Emma and Dexter, who spend the night together as students on July 15 1988 and who the story revisits on that day for the next 20 years, charting a dizzying selection of ups and downs. One Day was made into a film in 2011 and Netflix series a couple of years back, and now its final form of a musical. It began life at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh earlier this year, where top playwright David Greig – the theatre’s outgoing artistic director – wrote the book, with songs by Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez, and direction from Max Webster, whose West End hits include Life of Pi and the NT’s The Importance of Being Earnest. It debuted in March with a cast headed by top West End stars Jamie Muscato (current Emcee in Cabaret) and Sharon Rose (Hamilton, Sylvia) and they’ll be the ones leading it to London glory as it moves to the Garrick Theatre. Photo: Matt CrockettJamie Muscato and Sharon Rose There was some controversy about the fact that critics weren’t invited to its Edinburgh run, with the logic being that the producers wanted to keep their powder dry for the rapid London transfer. While it’s kind of a first world problem, it does mean that there is no critical word on whether it’s any cop or not, although world of mouth suggests it was decent and it did extend its initial run by a fortnight. Whatever the case, it’s not long until we find out. By the by, this means that after a respectable r

With its real life spacecraft and other wildly impressive extraterrestrial paraphernalia, the Science Museum is about as close as you can get to going to actual space without leaving Zone One. And your proximity to the cosmos is about to increase a heck of a lot with the imminent launch of Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience, a 40-minute free-roaming VR experience that will take you into the deepest and most spectacular parts of the galaxy. And not just in a ‘lurid CGI slop’ way – as the name suggests, the experience (which recently debuted in Washington DC) has been developed in tandem with the US’s flagship Smithsonian Museum and its Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. So while the literally otherworldly scenes of space you find yourself stepping into are digitally crafted, they’re meticulously crafted on the backs of decades of real scientific data. Image: SmithsonianSmithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience What happens in it? Your journey starts off with a tour of our world’s observatories before heading up to the Hubble Space Telescope… and then far beyond. Diving headlong into the cosmos – we’re told you will ‘witness the birth and death of stars, explore distant galaxies, and come face-to-face with a black hole’. It all sounds pretty stunning, and as with other Science Museum special experiences like the Wonderlab and the IMAX, you will have to pay for it: prices are TBC but will be revealed on June 9 when it goes on sale for a June 26 start wit

BOOK NOW James Graham is probably the most successful British playwright of our age, having scored hit after hit from the unlikeliest subjects, from his breakthrough This House – about the whipping operation in the hung parliament of the ’70s – to his most recent Punch, his staging of the true story of a fatality caused by a single punch that went on to win every major theatre award going this season gone. He’s also done pretty handily on TV, often with adaptations of his plays – the recent Dear England being a prime example – but with original stories too, notably his hit BBC series Sherwood. That’s all a way of saying that a new James Graham play is a big deal, and that while most of them are – frankly – about superficially boring sounding subjects, he is phenomenal at spinning relatively dry historic episodes into wildly entertaining gold. Hence we have The Standard of Living. Graham’s latest play will star Rory Kinnear as radical economist and Bloomsbury Group stalwart John Maynard Keynes, whose theories that a government could spend its way out of a recession have proven immensely influential in the years and decades that followed. Graham’s play sees Keynes and his radical circle – including his wife Lydia Lopokova and lover Duncan Grant – facing up to the Great Depression. Fresh from his success with the Tony-winning Giant, Bridge boss Nicholas Hytner directs. The Standard of Living is at Theatre Royal Haymarket, Sep 21-Dec 12. The best new London theatre openings to bo

David Mamet’s most famous play Glengarry Glen Ross is a timeless study of toxic masculinity and feral capitalism. It gets dusted off every few years because one, audiences love it (the cult 1992 film has a large part to play), and two, it’s short, sharp, punchy, and has a couple of great roles for an older and a younger celebrity. Arguably this story of fractious realtors in early ’80s Chicago is too punchy, precise and tied to its period for a director to do much to, with productions essentially relying on celebrity casting to provide novelty. Witness Patrick Marber’s Broadway production of last year, which starred Kieran Culkin as hotshot salesman and all-round alpha Ricky Roma, and Bob Odenkirk as yesterday’s man Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levene. But Marber clearly knows that to actually do something new with Glengarry, you have to fuck around with it a bit. He went on record saying he planned to have an all-female second cast to his production, and while that didn’t happen in New York, here he is a year later with an all-new Old Vic take, with a Y chromosome-free ensemble. There’s a fascinating duality to how all this plays out. Officially, nobody’s names and genders have changed, which inevitably gives some of the more testosterone-raddled bits of it a satirical edge: endless references to balls and being men, and a particularly ironic spin on the scene in which Mercedes Bahleda’s sadsack Lingk timidly confronts Rosa Salazar’s Roma over a sale he wants to back out of at his

Update: we now know a lot more about the stage play of The Traitors. Called The Traitors – Acts of Betrayal, it will run at the enormous Gillian Lynne Theatre from May 11 next year. Its big USP is that there will be five different variations on the plot, with each story starting differently and playing out differently as different people are chosen to be Traitors. There will be a different story Monday to Friday, while on Saturday the audience gets to decide who the Traitor is. Tickets are currently on sale and cost £25-£160. The Traitors is, famously, quite a popular TV show, the niche party game of Mafia blown into a gripping televised opera of trust, betrayal and raw humanity. Unsurprisingly, The Traitors has already spawned an immersive theatre version right here in London, that allows members of the public to participate in their own short but pretty sweet miniature game of the Claudia Winkleman-hosted show.  Now there’s a Traitors… play? It’s been announced today that Traitors TV producer Studio Lambert and top West End production company Neal Street Productions will join forces for ‘a stage adaptation’ of The Traitors that’ll start its run in 2027. The show will be written by John Finnemore and directed by National Theatre deputy Robert Hastie and that’s… all we know for now.  Although the details are being kept under wraps, the show’s publicist did confirm that it is definitely a play in the conventional sense. Finnemore as writer also offers some clues: he’s not know

The good thing about the West End’s large stock of relatively blandly named theatres is that there’s always something to rename after our greatest stage legends. Following in the recent footsteps of the Harold Pinter Theatre (née the Comedy Theatre) and the Sondheim Theatre (née the Queen’s Theatre), here comes an honour for out of our greatest stage and screen actors: the Shaftesbury Theatre is to be renamed the Judi Dench Theatre. It’s not just an arbitrary naming, either. The Shaftesbury – formerly the Prince’s – is the largest independent theatre in the West End, and is owned by the Taffner family, whose company produced Dench’s much-loved sitcom As Time Goes By, which ran with great success throughout the ’90s.  Moreover, while we don’t believe Dame Judi has acted on its stage, she did personally help to save the theatre in the ’80s. She was part of a collective called The Theatre of Comedy who bought the Shaftesbury and saved it until the Taffners could take over a decade later. Photo: Shaftesbury Theatre, 2026The Shaftesbury Theatre, currently playing host to ‘Avenue Q’ Mostly, though, the 91-year-old living legend Dench is simply eminently deserving to join the select few actors that have a theatre named after them, and while she has effectively retired from stage work bar the odd Q&A, she seems to be in good health and spirits. And what’s cooler than having a building named after you? Quoth the lady herself: ‘The Shaftesbury Theatre has always held a special place

The most singular production of Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet to be staged in the last couple of years was Hamlet Hail to the Thief, an abridged version of the text set to Radiohead’s underrated 2003 album Hail to the Thief. Co-directed by US director Christine Jones and the legendary Steven Hoggett, it was made with the active collaboration of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, who reorchestrated the songs for performance by the show’s live band (NB not Radiohead). The ambitious project was staged by the RSC and played sold-out 2025 seasons in Stratford-upon-Avon and Manchester, but it didn’t go to London. Well, now it will with bells on: traditionally the RSC transfers two shows to the Barbican for an autumn/winter season, but for 2026/7 it’s just Hamlet Hail to the Thief with an extended run. The production will largely hold on to its original cast, with Samuel Blenkin returning as Hamlet and Paul Hilton as Claudius. Reviews from last year were largely positive, and in the accompanying blurb for this transfer Hoggett has indicated that this isn’t the same show as last year, but one taken to the next level (‘The chance to put all the learnings into the next stages of a show is a great privilege. What were guesstimates and hopes become areas we can now push into, knowing we can create more precision’ quoth he). Personally, I had a few problems with it when I saw it in Manchester, so I'm glad to hear it’s come along. But at its best it’s thrilling, and let’s be honest this is almost

The school summer holidays are long, hard and unavoidably expensive: six straight weeks of being forced to entertain your beloved children. And every year SOLT – that’s the Society of London Theatre, which runs the West End – helps out a little by organising Kids Week, an initiative in which every full-paying adult at a participating theatre show can get one ticket for a child for free and up to two at half price. This is, it should be pointed out, a pretty sensational deal as West End shows rarely offer any sort of specific discount for underage audiences. Therefore it’s quite easy to save literally hundreds of pounds if you’re buying nice stalls seats: the offer defines a child as aged 17 and under, so if you want to take a teenager to Cabaret with it, you absolutely can.  Photograph: Danny Kaan, Courtesy of Chicago International Puppet Theater FestivalThe Enormous Crocodile It’s also a nice money-saver even on more affordable shows pitched specifically at kids: prices for, say, The Enormous Crocodile at the Lyric Hammersmith are modest, but £20 saved is £20 saved. While tickets are inherently limited by the fact that individual performances can sell out, there is no specific limit on the number of shows you can book for over the course of the summer. Plus if you get in there quick you can take advantage of a series of special free bonus activities attached to certain performances, from a Hadestown dance workshop on August 7 to a Wicked singing and acting workshop on Aug

Japanese magical realist titan Haruki Murakami has made a career out of writing novels that would logically be impossible to adapt for stage or screen. So it’s pretty good going that the Barbican has played host to one impossible adaptation already (Kafka on the Shore, in 2015) and that its international big show this autumn will be End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland (Oct 8-11). Murakami heads will note that this will be a stage version of 1985’s magnificent Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World which – even by his standards – is pretty darn out there. How will French theatre legend Philippe Decouflé stage it? Not a clue, although the rearranged title suggests that rather than depicting The End of the World (a cyberpunk future Tokyo) and Hard-boiled Wonderland (a strange, dreamlike town full of fantastical beasts) in alternating sections, it’s likely to show one then the other. The production will be led by major Japanese screen star Tatsuya Fujiwara (pictured), best known for his lead roles in the Battle Royale and Death Note films - Fujiwara will introduce a Barbican screening of Battle Royale on October 10. The next day, excitingly, will be a rare opportunity to see Murakami himself. He’ll be in conversation with avant-garde theatre legend Simon McBurney on Oct 11, where he’ll read from his latest novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls (a sort of Hard-boiled Wonderland companion story) and introduce a screening of the 2005 adaptation of his short story T

No London summer is complete without the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival – aka GDIF – which as ever brings a spectacular array of gargantuan street theatre shows and spectacular installations to the streets of Greenwich and the Docklands for a couple of weeks in late summer.  Now we have most of the information about this year’s edition, which will run Aug 21-Sep 6 at multiple venues, with its end of the summer timing ensuring that it’ll be dark by the time the most vivid night time work is staged.  With the 2026 theme of ‘We Move’, the festival will get underway with 360 (Aug 21), a new work from French choreographer Mehdi Kerkouche that will turn General Gordon Square in Woolwich into a dance arena ‘where propulsive movement, immersive set design and electronic music collide in an expression of the aspirations and challenges of a generation on the edge of change’. Photo: Thanh Ha Bui360 There’s usually one ‘big show’ in the festival and this year that title probably goes to Efectos Especiales (Special Effects) (Greenwich Peninsula, Aug 29 and 30), a theatrical spectacle created by Argentinian filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky and choreographer Luciana Acuña that attempts to immersive the audience in a full-on action movie, complete with a rumbling truck and wild weather changes. And there's plenty more stuff besides – with more still to be announced – running the gamut from Oluwatosin Omotosho’s dance-theatre show The Aunties: The House of Masks (Beresford Square,