Andrzej Lukowski

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. (Please note the list is in alphabetical order). 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

While the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is famed for late night fun and adult-rated standup, the truth of the matter is that with well over 3,000 shows annually it offers all things to all people: including families! There’s a dedicated family section in the Fringe brochure, and the mornings at the festival in particular are bustling with shows specifically aimed at children, from theatre to stand-up. Whether you’re a local looking for summer holiday activities, a visitor with kids, or you just really dig bubble-based shows, there’s something for everyone here. Here’s our top picks. RECOMMENDED: Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe The best theatre shows at the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe The best comedy shows at the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe  

For many people, musical theatre basically is theatre, and certainly there are a hell of a lot of musicals running in London at any given time, from decades-long classics like Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera to short-run fringe obscurities, plus all manner of new shows launched every year hoping for long-running glory. London's best musicals at a glance: The summer’s big hit: Jesus Christ Superstar, London Palladium/Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Best of the oldies: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre Best for families: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre The next big thing: One Day, Garrick Theatre. Funniest musical: Operation Mincemeat, Fortune Theatre Here Time Out rounds up every West End musical currently running or coming soon, plus fringe and off-West End shows that we’ve reviewed – all presented in fabulous alphabetical order. SEE ALSO: How to get cheap and last-minute theatre tickets in London.

July comedy in London receives an unexpected boost from the Greenwich Comedy Garden, which is basically the long-running Greenwich Comedy Festival with a slightly different name, staged earlier. Some massive Brit names headline. Elsewhere in London this month you can chuckle at everything from the return of US alt star Aziz Ansari to the extremely goofy Shrek-themed cabaret Swamplesque. 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.

This rolling list is constantly updated to share the best of what’s coming up and currently booking: these choices aren’t the be-all and end-all of great London theatre in 2026, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.   London's best shows to book for at a glance: Best musical: Sunday in the Park with George, Barbican Centre Best Shakespeare play: Lear, Yard Theatre. Best celebrity show: The Lives of Others, Adelphi Theatre Best blast from the past: Cats, Open Air Theatre Best batshit crazy idea: The World is Full of Married Men, Yard Theatre. London’s theatre scene is the most exciting in the world: perfectly balanced between the glossy musical theatre of Broadway and the experimentalism of Europe, it’s flavoured by the British preference for new writing and love of William Shakespeare, but there really is something for everyone. It’s also beweilderingly big: between the showtune-centric West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector – plus the Wild West of the fringe – there’s well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work. This is my attempt to make sense of all that for you. These are shows worth booking for, pronto, both to avoid sellouts but to get the cheaper tickets that initially go on sale for most shows but tend to be snapped up months before they actually open. Please note that the pric

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

What is immersive theatre? A glib buzzword? A specific description of a specific type of theatre? A phrase that has become so diluted that it’s lost all meaning? Whether you call it immersive, interactive or site-specific, London is bursting with plays and experiences which welcome you into a real-life adventure that you can wander around and play the hero in. London's best immersive shows at a glance: Best for dinner theatre: Chat Noir!, The Lost Estate Best for Trekkies: Bridge Command Best for music lovers: Mamma Mia! The Party, The O2 Best for a fancy dress adventure: Pirates of the Caribbean, Secret Cinema I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and I have run the immersive gamut, from a show where I had to take my clothes off in a darkened shipping container, to successfully bagging tickets to the six-hour Punchdrunk odyssey almost nobody saw, to a lot of theatre productions where the set goes into the audience a bit and apparently that’s immersive. This page has been around for a while now and gone through various schools of thought, but the one we’ve settled on for now is that the main list compiles every major show in London that could reasonably be described as ‘immersive theatre’, while the bottom list compiles a few of our favouite immersive shows thet you probably wouldn’t describe as theatre though it is, naturally a blurry line. Whatever the case you can mostly only really decide what most of these shows are if you go and do them… prepare to immerse

To say that William Shakespeare bestrides our culture like a colossus is to undersell him. Over 400 years since his death, the playwright is uncontested as the greatest writer of English who has ever lived. Even if you’re not a fan of sixteenth century blank verse – and if not, why not? – his influence over our culture goes far beyond that of any other writer. He invented words, phrases, plots, characters, stories that are still vividly alive today; his history plays utterly shaped our understanding of our own past as a nation. London Shakespeare plays at a glance: Best celebrity cast: Hamlet, venue TBC. Best summer fun: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s Globe Best rarity: King John, Shakespeare’s Globe. Best for Radiohead fans: Hamlet Hail to the Thief, Barbican Centre. Best grab a ticket as soon as they go onsale: Lear, Yard Theatre And unsurpisingly he is inescapable in London. The iconic Elizabethan recreation Shakespeare’s Globe theatre is his temple, with a year-round programme that’s about three-quarters his works. Although based in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company regularly visit the capital, most frequently the Barbican Centre. And Shakespeare plays can be found… almost anywhere else, from the National Theatre – where they invariably run in the huge Olivier venue – to tiny fringe productions and outdoor version that pop up everywhere come the warmer months.  This page is simple: we tell you what Shakespeare plays are on in town this month

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.

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.

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: Pride, National Theatre Best thriller: The Guilty, Donmar Warehouse Best for kids: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre Best old classic: War Horse, National Theatre  Best new play: 1536, 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.

July 2026: There's a brand new Number 1, with the exceptional Maai by Nikita in Clapham taking the top spot as our favourite new restaurant in London. Other fresh additions include Auguste and Teal in London Fields, Jackson Boxer's Vesper in Clerkenwell, All Roads in Brixton, Bar Etna in Newington Green and the nearby Golden Tooth gastropub, Maza in Mayfair, Oudh 1722 in Borough, and the sensational supper club at Haggerston cafe, Logma. 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 July 2026. London's best new restaurants at a glance: 🍝 Central: Osteria Vibrato, Soho 🍷 North: The Golden Tooth, Newington Green 🦐 South: The Victory, East Dulwich 🍝 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 hottest new openings, the tasties

This review is from 2024. The show is probably somewhat different now, although the same basic idea. We tend to think of New Yorkers as pathologically grouchy souls. But primary schooler-orientated NYC wizard Mario the Maker Magician is defined by his infectious elan. Whether he’s goofing around with the petty logic of a seven-year old or accessibly expounding on his love for Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, it’s the giddy atmosphere that the Sesame Street and David Blaine-endorsed Mario fosters in his show that makes it work as much as the actual magic. And the magic is great: a lot of sleight of hand stuff that impresses and winds up the smaller members of the audience in equal measure, plus a fair amount of out-and-out trolling of the adults. And this is the key: while never actually losing control, Mario encourages an air of borderline anarchy that’s extremely good fun (one audience member is required to look after a box and run off if Mario gets anywhere near her… which he does, a lot). His nominal USP is his homemade robots and devices (the ‘maker’ bit), and it has to be said that while these are very much part of the show – there is a very cute extended section with one little DIY droid – his act doesn’t lean on them quite as much as one might expect from the spiel. But that’s hardly an issue unless you’re an obsessive robophile: Mario himself is the main attraction. To be honest, aside from shonky kids’ party entertainers I’m not sure I can remember another child

While the RMS Titanic proved to be all too sinkable, this titanically camp musical spoof of the James Cameron film should sail on for quite some time. Or at least it will if its manifest target audience  – unsubtly shouted out to as ‘gays’ at least twice during the show – is as enthusiastic for it here as in New York, where it’s been sitting pretty off-Broadway since 2022. Devised by Tye Blue (who also directs), Marla Mindelle, and Constantine Rousouli, Titanique is basically a cabaret-style parody that marries the considerable kitsch appeal of the 1997 film with that of its true star – Quebecois singing icon Celine Dion, forever associated with the movie thanks to ubiquitous power ballad My Heart Will Go On. The show’s undoubted masterstroke is making Dion the main character. Although clearly standing on the shoulders of previous US performers, Lauren Drew is sublime as the Canadian chanteuse. Ostensibly here to tell us the story of the sinking from her perspective, Drew’s spangly whirlwind perfectly captures the real Dion’s peculiar mix of old-fashioned showbiz cheese, mad aunty dottiness and weapons-grade lung power, while less realistically painting her as a delusional (albeit affable) narcissist who genuinely believes she was on la Titanique. Early on I felt a bit iffy over whether this was entirely appropriate given Dion’s recent health problems - does it feel cruel to parody a version of her that we probably won’t see again? But ultimately it’s an affectionate, funny a

A Frank Sinatra musical is a great opportunity: a titan of the 20th century, he was a complex figure who was both emblematic of America and in many ways an outsider to it. He also had a pretty stonking songbook.  But this sauceless bio-musical manages to do the impressive job of acknowledging Sinatra’s many, uh, foibles while making him seem incredibly bland as a human being. Joel Harper-Jackson’s Frank comes across like the work experience guy in his own life, drifting through an endless stream of affairs on something like autopilot, as if he simply couldn’t see any other option other than to sleep with a stream of hot Hollywood starlets behind his wife’s back. Here’s the thing: bio-musicals are always a trade-off because they have to be approved by the subject or the subject’s estate. The route that Sinatra the Musical writer Joe DiPietro and Broadway director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall have taken is to acknowledge Frank’s philandering but just take the view that everyone was basically cool with it. Phoebe Panaretos as his first wife Nancy Sinatra does at least express some exasperation about how little he’s around for their children. But we’re never far away from somebody telling Sinatra that he’s a great dad. His mob ties are crisply raised and then shot down. He boozes and fights but there’s never any danger there. It would be excessive to describe it as gaslighting, but it does feel like the MO is to show Ol’ Blue Eyes doing a series of things that would normal

If you’re in the market for a meticulously accurate, 100 percent culturally sensitive drama about the events that led to the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand… then approach US playwright Rajiv Joseph’s play with caution. Indeed, I spent the first half hour or so of Lyndsey Turner’s UK premiere slightly distracted by imagining the probable reaction of a Serbian friend of mine.  That’s not to say Joseph hasn’t done his research. His absurdist account of the recruitment and radicalisation of Ferdinand’s would-be assassins in the name of Yugoslav nationalism is very, very obviously not how it went down exactly. But this pointedly surreal play never pretends otherwise,and it has a spine of fact, particularly in its darkly comic but relatively illuminating depiction of Dragutin Dimitrijević, the Serb nationalist paramilitary who’d led the massacre of the country’s royal family in 1903 and who is widely held to have orchestrated – or at least enabled – the murder that triggered the First World War.  Were the assassins really the gormless, ideology-free naïfs that we see in Gavrilo (Stanley Morgan), Trifko (Abraham Popoola) and Nedeljko (Chris Walley) - sweet young men with no interest in Balkan politics at all, who Marc Wootton’s bonkers Dragutin grooms into enacting his plans? All evidence says no, although at the same time there’s no question that they were disaffected teenagers, not hardened soldiers. It is also clear that they had strictly regional ambitions and the

This nailbitingly tense thriller is director Felix Barrett’s second ‘normal’ piece of theatre to open in London in the last year, following West End smash Paranormal Activity. If you don’t know the name, Barrett is the founder and driving force behind brooding immersive theatre legends Punchdrunk. But his straight plays aren’t so much a case of him moonlighting as a normie director as a fascinating extension of the day job. Yes, The Guilty is fairly straightforward as a text. Concerning a troubled police call centre operator, it’s writer Chloe Moss’s adaptation of the Danish film Den Skyldige and its Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Hollywood remake. You could probably have a fairly good time taking a version to the Edinburgh Fringe. But at the risk of throwing around an entirely debased term, this production is about as immersive as sitting in a seat watching a single guy onstage gets. The action is enhanced by an arsenal of disorienting light and sound tricks, some of which you might recognise from Punchdrunk shows (most notably the thunderous deployment of Massive Attack’s ‘Angel’ at the start, also recently used in Punchdrunk’s Viola’s Room). Gareth Fry, the sound designer for Viola’s Room and Complicité’s landmark The Encounter is back on board, as is much of the rest of the Paranormal Activity creative team. Subtle shifts in light and the crackly strangeness of the calls he receives take on a feverish, nocturnal quality, only growing stranger as the show wears on. The single gu

While the Science Museum remains one of London’s quintessential free days out, there’s an ever-growing list of paying bolt-ons for those who are happy to spend a little (or a lot), from the glorious hands on experiments of the WonderLab to the retro videogames mecca of Power Up to a very decent science afternoon tea featuring petri dish jellies and test tubes filled with sweets. Joining them is Smithsonian Starstruck, a galactic VR experience from America’s prestigious Smithsonian Institution, in which the 360 digital imaginings of some of space’s most stunning and surreal vistas are rooted in hard astronomy, and not the fanciful slop that creeps into several nominally educational London VR experiences I could name.  It's basically a guide to all the mad shit in our galaxy, with a reassuring-voiced American man taking us on a virtual journey around various observatories and space telescopes, and the wild celestial phenomena they can nominally see. We watch the dawn of the universe. We visit an uninhabitable planet strewn with diamonds. We stand before the event horizon of a black hole. It is all, undeniably, pretty visually stunning: from a looming gigantic sun on another world to the bizarre spectacle of light being dragged into a physics-defying gravity well, this is spectacular (albeit, to be clear, often an interpretation of what these things might look like given available data). You’ll also learn a decent amount about the phenomena depicted without feeling aggressively

This latest entry in London’s unending stream of Midsummer Night’s Dreams has plenty of ideas. But does Atri Banerjee’s production have a single coherent central idea? If it does, I couldn’t see it. And not for the trees. Naomi Dawson’s set isn’t a bucolic forest but a sort of unadorned wooden copy of the steps on which the audience sits, which later opens up to reveal a dressing area with a marginally more foresty look. The quote ‘this green plot’ is ironically printed at the top. The minor fairies also hang out there: they are styled as a hippie-ish band who play the new agey ballads specially written for this production by rising theatre polymath Maimuna Memon. Add to this a fairly standard quartet of runaway lovers, a largely timid group of Mechanicals dominated – for better or worse – by Nadeem Islam’s cacophonously exuberant Bottom, and the main fairies, who leave little impression beyond Oliver Huband’s adorably hangdog Oberon, who seems to be dressed for a night of disco dancing.  There are so many concepts flitting around that it can be hard to focus on what’s actually going on. The design recalls Jamie Lloyd’s MDF period, but Lloyd really committed to the bit in his stark, pared-back productions. Banerjee has disco fairy kings and songs that get in the way of all that: at one point it takes Jenny Rainford’s Titania about five minutes to go to sleep because there’s an entire number about it. It’s just a bit disjointed, and less of a laugh than it should be. Character

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

Sandra Oh makes a very decent UK stage debut as Alice, the misanthrope in question in Martin Crimp’s new adaptation of the classic Molière comedy. Avant-garde playwright and translator supreme Crimp has taken a few passes at The Misanthrope over the years, delivering versions in 1996, 2009, and now 2026. And it’s easy to see why. If the title character hates the modern world, then the modern world is always changing; there are always new things to get misanthropic about. A playwright in previous Crimp versions (and a jaded courtier in Molière), here Oh’s Alice is a revered novelist who grumpily shuns most of the fripperies of the modern world. ‘Misanthrope’ actually seems quite strong to describe Oh’s gruff but essentially likeable Alice, who is warm to her friends but whose interest in the bullshit that glues society together is close to zero.  As the play opens she’s berating her playwright BFF John (Paul Chahidi: bumbling, likeable) for having offered an enthusiastic greeting to a woman they passed on the stairs who it turns out he didn’t actually know; as the play progresses it becomes apparent that Alice’s dream is to live off grid and away from humanity with her troubled actor boyfriend Stefan (Tom Mison: fey, distracted). In a promising early development, Alice is approached by Esmee (Imogen Elliott: very funny), a posh girl feminist book influencer who insists on making Alice read the extremely bad first draft of her novel. Alice mercilessly dissects it, much to Esmee

A drawback to our national addiction to Shakespeare is that occasionally a production comes along that’s so good it sort of queers the pitch for a while. I’m not saying Jamie Lloyd’s superlative 2025 Much Ado About Nothing was the last word on the play, or that Chelsea Walker’s new Globe production is intentionally derivative of it. Nonetheless, as a largely upbeat, good vibes, modern dress production in which the cast cavort around in amusing animal masks, it does kind of invite comparisons in which it comes out second best, albeit not heinously so. Crucially it has a great Benedick and Beatrice, the bickering will-they-won’t-they frenemies whose chemistry forms the beating heart of the play. Ken Nwosu is an affable prankster of a Benedick, with a laidback energy – he’s altogether less martial than his soldier pals – and a tendency for silly jokes (he disrupts the wedding scene by making a stupid noise then blaming an audience member). Pippa Nixon is a genuine delight as a bonkers free-spirit Beatrice, who within her first minutes on stage has howled like a wolf at the sky and performatively snogged the nameless messenger who announces the main male characters are coming back from war.  Nwosu and Nixon are both very good, but I think crucially they’re quite different to each other. For once you sense that the reason that Beatrice and Benedick weren’t a couple from the beginning is not simply because they’re both incorrigible banter machines, but because they genuinely can’t

A Catholic upbringing has left me both terrible at lying and capable of looking guilty about more or less anything. As such I was morbidly convinced that I would get the tap on the shoulder designating me a traitor in this live recreation (you could call it immersive theatre if you wanted) of the smash BBC game show. This proved to be entirely correct and long story short I lasted four rounds until I was rumbled (though it was a close thing and involved me being inexplicably betrayed by my fellow traitor). And speaking as somebody who has barely watched the show: I had a blast. If you can swallow the cost (a little under £50 in the evening, but cheaper by day) and go in prepared to be eliminated early then The Traitors Live Experience is extremely good fun. As much as anything, this adaptation from Immersive Everywhere is extremely well organised. Clearly you can’t make a note-perfect recreation of a show that involves 25 contestants staying at a remote Scottish castle for three weeks. But what they’ve done captures a sense of it very nicely. In this much shorter format, a large number of participants book in for a given time slot and are then divided into groups of around 12. Each is spirited away to their own round table, which comes complete with its own Claudia Winkleman-substitute host. Ours was a chipper young man who did a great job of geeing things along with help from a pre-recorded Winkleman (wisely she’s only used sparingly). It’s such a rock-solid conceit that it

I feel like I have fairly normie bleeding heart European liberal views on Israel and its treatment of Palestine and as such I found leftwing Israeli performer Itai Erdal’s storytelling piece about his time in the IDF relatively uncontroversial. Perhaps relatively unremarkable, too, theatrically speaking: Anita Rochon’s production has a few nice flourishes but it feels like the text could have gone a round or two with a dramaturg to sharpen it up. But globally, the unassuming Erdal’s show has attracted controversy – he lives in Vancouver now, where the left attempted to disrupt performances on grounds that he was allegedly a Zionist; in Toronto and Germany he couldn’t get the show staged because it was deemed too explosive vis à vis him being fairly upfront about saying he thinks Israel’s response to the Hamas atrocities of October 7 2023 constitutes a genocide. The meat of the play concerns Erdal’s spell in the IDF and how, despite his principles, he went into his service with relative optimism and a belief in its self-portrayal as ‘the most humane army in the world’. Anyone expecting a smoking gun – literal or otherwise – will be relieved/disappointed; his story is less about a single road to Damascus moment and more about an unease about how the Israeli state and army control the movement and lives of Palestinians, entwined with a growing sense that the version of Israel’s history taught in schools was often selective when it came to the Palestine. While he now regrets his

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

Although technically set in Birmingham, Peaky Blinders is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of London attractions. Setting aside the million barber shops shamelessly inspired by the show, the last few years have given us immersive theatre show Peaky Blinders: The Rise and an actual honest-to-god ballet in the form of Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby. And now here comes Peaky Blinders: Underworld, a new attraction that we’d probably have called ‘immersive’ two years ago but now everyone is over that word and so officially it’s an ‘experience’. Image: Peaky Blinders: Underworldconcept art of The Garrison Tavern Openings its doors next month in the railway arches under London Bridge, the focal point will be the Garrison Tavern, a ‘faithfully recreated post-WW1 pub’ in recreation of the Peaky Blinders’ hangout from the show. The Garrison is non ticketed and open to all, so while we can only stress that it’ll probably be 2026 booze prices, you can nonetheless soak up a bit of those late 1910s Brummie criminal gang vibes without needing to pay an entry fee or do anything beyond have a nice pint and listen to some live music. Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, as paying ticket holders have an entire Underworld to explore. Once admitted into the space behind the pub, you’ll experience ‘interactive gameplay’ and ‘actor-led encounters’ as you roam recreations of Garrison Lane, the Bookies, Chinatown and the Small Heath Fairground. It sounds quite a lot

Summer is here and although the London theatre season is starting to slow down a bit – August is, famously, not a busy month – we still have more exciting new shows opening in July than any other city in the country, if not the world. The highlight of July is always the London Palladium’s big musical: following last year’s blockbuster Evita, we have another Andrew Lloyd Webber classic in the spot. And there’s plenty more besides, of all shapes and sizes, from a rare revival of Sarah Kane’s greatest and most disturbing play to the return of the beloved Yard Theatre with a brace of weird indie shows that’ll melt your brain. Read on for all the month’s theatrical essentials. The best new London theatre shows opening in July 2026 Photo: Johan PerssonSam Ryder (Jesus)   1. Jesus Christ Superstar Eurovision winner Sam Ryder may or may not seem like a random choice to front the summer’s biggest musical, but he more than deserves a chance to prove himself. The show in question is a revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar – with Ryder as JC – and we basically know it’s good already because it’s a reworking of Timothy Sheader’s superb 2016 Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production. Its wackiest flourish is a rotating selection of celebrity King Herods: Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Richard Armitage, Boy George, Layton Williams and Julian Clary will be sharing the role over the summer, with a different set of performers lined up for its transfer to Theatre Royal Drury Lane in

A famous story about the two greatest British playwrights of the twentieth century is that Harold Pinter once complained to Tom Stoppard by letter that he felt the Comedy Theatre in the West End should be renamed after him while he was still alive, to which Stoppard amusingly replied by suggesting that Pinter simply change his name to Harold Comedy. Now, alas, both men have passed on, Pinter in 2008 and Stoppard last year. And just as the Comedy Theatre did indeed become the Harold Pinter Theatre, now the Duke of York’s Theatre becomes the Tom Stoppard Theatre, with the name broadly in effect now and signage to be updated over the next few weeks.  That’s good as not only is the name a fitting tribute generally to the man who wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it’s also the case that his greatest play Arcadia is currently conveniently running at the Duke of York’s (and therefore will end its run at the Tom Stoppard). Image: ATGThe Tom Stoppard Theatre (artist’s impression) Stoppard’s ’00s hit Rock ‘n’ Roll also ran at the Duke of York’s, and – like the Pinter – it’s a smaller venue that stages plays rather than musicals. It’s a good fit. The name was probably also due for change: there is longer a Duke of York after the erstwhile Prince Andrew gave the title up. While the theatre wasn’t named after Andrew (it’s had the name since 1895), the Tom Stoppard feels like an altogether more solid title in general. It marks a relativel

This long, hot summer is only just getting started. However, end it will – and we have proof in the form of an exclusive announcement for one of London’s most prestigious winter theatre seasons.  Between October and March the outdoor theatre at Shakespeare’s Globe shuts and the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse opens for four shows of intimate, candlelit work. The programming has changed quite a lot over the years – it used to have a no-Shakespeare policy, which was obviously nuts – but under artistic director Michelle Terry it’s largely settled down to a four-show season comprising two Shakespeare plays, one classic play by somebody else, and one new play. That’s exactly what we’re getting this year, with the season kicking off with one of Shakespeare’s most beloved history plays, the always timely story of democracy under attack Julius Caesar (Nov 6-Feb 14 2027). It’ll be directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, who made his name at the Young Vic with a series of marvellously provocative takes on classic works including a version of Measure for Measure that had a set entirely made of sex dolls. Previous announced, veteran Brit playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Animals Come to the Table (Dec 11-Jan 24 2027) was originally submitted anonymously in shorter form for the Globe’s anonymous Burnt at the Stake festival in 2022. Now we get the full version of this surreal drama in which animals put humanity on trial. Photo: Johan PerssonPaul Ready and Michelle Terry Another all time class

Studio Ghibli fans have been spectacularly well served by London theatre in recent years: the RSC’s adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro has been an enormous hit and is running in the West End until early next year, while a couple of years back we spent a summer in the very pleasant company of an Anglo-Japanese production of the renowned Japanese animation studio’s later hit Spirited Away. Whereas Totoro will leave town having surely been seen by everyone who could possibly want to have seen it (or at the very least, they’ve got no excuse not to), Spirited Away only had a limited run at the London Coliseum in 2024, and not to put too fine a point on it but the affordable tickets all went really quickly, meaning that by the time the reviews came out it was not cheap, to say the least. Photograph: Johan Persson‘Spirited Away’ at the London Coliseum in 2024 But now, a second chance to see it, albeit not for a little while. Starting this December, John Caird’s production will embark upon a massive global tour taking in Taipei, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Toronto, before finishing up with us again at the Coliseum. However, it should be pointed out that due to the show’s prodigious popularity it’s set to be a very long tour and Spirited Away won’t arrive in London until the spring of 2028, with exact dates TBA. Yes, it’s a bit of a wait. But it is pretty much a once in a lifetime show, so we’re very lucky to get it twice. Spirited Away will be at the London Coliseum in spring 2028, dates

A decade ago you couldn’t move in London for celebrity-fronted productions of Hamlet, with the likes of Michael Sheen, Rory Kinnear, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott and Paapa Essiedu all taking a crack at Shakespeare’s greatest play in the space of a few short years. Of late, they’ve thinned out a bit, and the ones we’ve had lately, have had relatively lowkey leads: see the National Theatre’s production last year, or the RSC’s Hamlet Hail to the Thief in which Radiohead’s name is in bigger lights than any of the cast. Anyway, that all ends in 2027 as star of Happy Valley, McMafia and the new season of House of the Dragon James Norton has a go at the ennui-engulfed Danish prince. It’s something of a holder announcement: the production won’t run until 2027, and we don’t know the exact dates or even which theatre it will happen in. We certainly have no idea who Norton’s co-stars will be. However, we do know the most significant piece of information, which is that it’s being directed by the revered German director Thomas Ostermeier, boss of the revered Schaubühne theatre in Berlin. Europhile theatre nerds will possibly be aware that Ostermeier’s provocative, highly physical, highly edited Schaubühne take on Hamlet is one of the theatre’s most successful shows, having been in the repertoire there since the late ’00s (and has toured to the Barbican in the past). This is emphatically not that production, and while the younger Ostermeier made some quite, uh, ‘iconoclastic’ comment

The London Transport Museum in Covent Garden has been delighting Londoners since 1980. Its embrace of young audiences – it offers free tickets for children and has a banging soft play – alongside hardcore transport nerds meaning it’s always booming (and that’s before we get onto the cool tours of London’s abandoned underground spaces it runs). Last year the LTM welcomed 450,000 visitors: a record. To celebrate its imminent fiftieth birthday in 2030, the London Transport Museum is set to undergo a dramatic ‘once-in-a-generation’ revamp. Upgrades will be significant but not too disruptive, and the museum will not be closing as a result. The most visibly significant difference is that there will be a new entrance directly onto the Covent Garden Piazza – if you’ve never been to the LTM and didn’t realise it was smack bang in the middle of Covent Garden then you will now. Image: De Matos RyanLondon Transport Museum 2030 (artist’s impression) LTM will also be gaining approximately 500 square metres of space to expand its galleries and learning experiences, with a goal of an overall 20 percent increase in visitors. There’s some other stuff happening that will probably be a but less visible, most notably some major environmental upgrades that include low carbon heating and other sustainability improvements. The London Transport Museum is open daily. The best things to do with kids in London during the school summer holidays 2026. One of London’s most famous abandoned tube stations

A Frank Sinatra musical is a great opportunity: a titan of the 20th century, he was a complex figure who was both emblematic of America and in many ways an outsider to it. He also had a pretty stonking songbook.  But this sauceless bio-musical manages to do the impressive job of acknowledging Sinatra’s many, uh, foibles while making him seem incredibly bland as a human being. Joel Harper-Jackson’s Frank comes across like the work experience guy in his own life, drifting through an endless stream of affairs on something like autopilot, as if he simply couldn’t see any other option other than to sleep with a stream of hot Hollywood starlets behind his wife’s back. Photo: Brinkhoff-MoegenburgJoel Harper-Jackson (Frank Sinatra) and Ana Villafañe (Ava Gardner) Here’s the thing: bio-musicals are always a trade-off because they have to be approved by the subject or the subject’s estate. The route that Sinatra the Musical writer Joe DiPietro and Broadway director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall have taken is to acknowledge Frank’s philandering but just take the view that everyone was basically cool with it. Phoebe Panaretos as his first wife Nancy Sinatra does at least express some exasperation about how little he’s around for their children. But we’re never far away from somebody telling Sinatra that he’s a great dad. His mob ties are crisply raised and then shot down. He boozes and fights but there’s never any danger there. It would be excessive to describe it as gaslighting, bu

A warm sunny hello to you all! London is hot again and it doesn’t look like it’ll be cooling down any time soon. The prospect of sitting in a poorly air conditioned West End theatre is … less appealing than it might be. Fortunately London’s outdoor theatre is in full swing just in time for the first heatwave of the year, and it’ll be on for plenty longer too, running all summer and right up to the Globe’s ever bold late October close.  London’s two ‘main’ open air theatres are now in full swing and on good form, but beyond the work we’ve reviewed so far, here are my top al fresco theatre tips for the summer ahead. The 8 best open air theatre shows to see in London The big one: Cats returns Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of TS Eliot’s whimsical book of cat poems was famously one of the most successful musicals of all time, the original production running for decades in the West End and beyond. While it infamously spawned a film adaptation that we absolutely do not talk about, there has only even been one stage version in the UK. Until this summer, that is: in quite the coup, the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has bagged the first ever British revival of Cats. Expect something new and exciting with neither the overt ’80s vibe of the OG or the CGI bumholes of the film we don’t talk about. Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Jul 25-Sep 19. Buy tickets here. Photo: Danny KaanThe Phantom of the Opera at West End Live The Glastonbury of musical theatre is back: West End Live  Altho

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