London’s theatre scene is the most exciting in the world: perfectly balanced between the glossy musical theatre of Broadway and the experimentalism of Europe, it’s flavoured by the British preference for new writing and love of William Shakespeare, but there really is something for everyone. Between the showtunes of the West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector, there’s a whole thrilling world, with well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work.
This rolling list is constantly updated to share the best of what’s coming up and currently booking: these choices aren’t the be-all and end-all of great theatre in 2024, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.
They’re shows worth booking for, pronto, both to avoid sellouts but to get the cheaper tickets that initially go on sale for most shows but tend to be snapped up months before they actually open.
Want to see if these shows live up to the hype? Check out our theatre reviews.
Check out our complete guide to musicals in London.
And head over here for a guide to every show in the West End at the moment.
What is it? Elton John’s new musical is an adaptation of the classic Meryl Street-starring fashion mag satire, with US singer and actor Vanessa Williams starring as monstrous Anna Wintour-alike editor Miranda Priestley.
Why book? There are of course some very talented people involved, not least living legend Elton John. But probably you’re going because you really, really love the film and want to see it done as a musical.
What is it? Ncuti Gatwa stars as lusty young idler Algenon in the National Theatre’s first revival of the classic Oscar Wilde comedy in decades.
Why book? Gatwa is obviously the big draw – as the new and current star of Doctor Who a lot of peole want to see him on stage. But the production should be something special more generally, with the NT's formiddable resources brough to bear, a very cool director in Max Webster, and superb ensemble cast that notably includes the great Sharon D Clarke.
What is it? Eight years after it was last seen in London, the hugely beloved cult immersive experience will return for 2024.
Why book? Okay - to be clear if you’re reading this any later than September 17 you have missed the chance to book by entering the ballot to win an opportunity to do – that’s how popular it is. But do it because this one-person theatrical journey really is incredible, like being catapulted through a series of beautiful dreams for 45 minutes or so.
What is it? The hugely anticipated UK premiere of Dave Malloy’s swooning folk opera adaption of the ‘peace’ bits from Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’.
Why book? The original US production is probably the single most acclaimed American musical of the twenty-first century not to make it to London. While there are no guarantees, new Donmar boss Tim Sheader – who directs this – is a musicals wizz: it should be a match made in heaven.
What is it? Kingsley Ben-Adir and Daisy Edgar-Jones star in Tennessee Williams’s 1955 classic about a wealth plantation family disintegrating over the course of dying patriarch Big Daddy’s tense birthday.
Why go? Director Rebecca Frecknall is brilliant at finding the humanity in Williams’s plays, and her Almeida takes on his ‘Summer and Smoke’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ were all-timers. So hopes are high for this – and thast isn’t bad either.
What is it? Screen legend Sigourney Weaver will make her UK stage debut as exiled magician Prospero in ‘The Tempest’, the first Shakespeare play to be staged at the venerable Theatre Royal Drury Lane for over half a century.
Why book? Theatre nerds will be excited to see the latest from bold, divisive director Jamie Lloyd but let’s be honest here: it’s the first and almost certainly last chance to catch Weaver on a British stage that the real appeal.
What is it? Reese Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s long-running BBC comedy horror anthology ‘Inside No. 9’ may have ended on telly this new live spin-off entitled ‘Stage/Fright’ premieres in the West End in 2025.
Why book? This is a no brainer: are you a fan of ‘Inside No. 9’? If the answer is yes, you should see this (to be clear, Shearsmith and Pemberton will be starring as well as writing).
What is it? Brie Larson – Academy Award-winner and literal Captain Marvel – makes her West End debut in a new version of Sophocles’s Ancient Greek tragedy.
Why book? To see Larson in the flesh, obviously, though a decent number of theatre hipsters will clearly be lured by director Daniel Fish, whose visionary reworking of the musical ‘Oklahoma!’ was a huge hit a couple of years back.
What is it? Eline Arbo’s adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s Booker-nominated autobiography Les Années gave the Almeida a huge hit in the summer of 2024 – and now it transfers to the West End.
Why go? It’s an astonishing, occasionally gruelling journey through the twentieth century as viewed by one liberated Frenchwoman. And the cast is incredible: Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner will all return for this West End run.
It’s a pretty damn starry start to 2025 over at the Barbican, as producers Wessex Grove lure legendary German theatremaker Thomas Ostermeier back over to London – following last year’s An Enemy of the People – to craft his first original British show. And what a cast: the legend that is Cate Blanchett will star as vain, insecure middle aged actress Arkadina in a new version of Chekhov’s early masterpiece by Ostermeier and Duncan Macmillan.
Tom Burke will play her writer lover Trigorin, with Emma Corrin as the young actress Nina who becomes infaturated with him. They’ll be joined by Priyanga Burford (Polina), Zachary Hart (Medvedenko), Paul Higgins (Shamrayev), Tanya Reynolds (Masha), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Konstantin) and Jason Watkins (Sorin).
It’s a stunning cast, but don’t go expecting a trad production from provocateur Ostermeier – his interpretation of the play is liable to be as much a talking point as anything Blanchett does, no matter how spectacular.
What is it? Clearly eager to make up for the years of his life he gave over to Succession, Brian Cox swifty follows up his 2024 starring role in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night with a reprisal and West End transfer for his 2023 turn in Oliver Cotton’s new play The Score. Set in 1747, it stars Cox as Johann Sebastian Bach, who has been lured to the Prussian court by the capricious Frederick II.
Why go? Cox is the draw here – a heavyweight actor whose fame has found new heights thanks to a certain TV show.
What is it? MCU veterans Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell will share the stage nightly for the second half of Jamie Lloyd’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane season of Shakespeare, playing bickering lovers Benedick and Beatrice.
Why go? As ever with Lloyd, you come for the huge name celebrities, you stay for avant-garde razzle dazzle of his direction.
What is it? ‘Bridgerton’ hearthrob Jonathan Bailey stars as Shakespeare’s doomed, dithering monarch in the first show at the Bridge since it gave itself over to ‘Guys & Dolls’ for two years.
Why go? Bailey is a fantastic actor, but director Nicholas Hytner is the real guarantee of quality – his Shakespeare productions never miss, including the brilliant immersive ones at the Bridge (whether ‘Richard’ is immersive is TBC).
What is it? Surely the most successful British playwright of our time, James Graham scored a hit in his near hometown of Nottingham early in 2024 with ‘Punch’, a shocking true tale of violence and redemption that transfers to the Young Vic.
Why book? The sensational Nottingham reviews of course, but you’re probably interested in the story of how a promising young paramedic was killed by a single punch – and how his bereaved parents helped his attacker turn his life around.
What is it? The big Broadway adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novella about the dark side of the American Dream transfers to the London Palladium for a limited summer season.
Why book? It’s very rare for a Broadway smash to cover over here so quickly and it’s only playing a limited summer season. By all accounts it’s a stunning spectacle, if not the most profound articulation of the book.
What is it? After debuting last year in New York, Stephen Sondheim’s final musical transfers to the National Theatre. It’s a darkly comic adaptation of two films by Luis Buñuel: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel.
Why book? There’s no deny that part of the appeal is to be part of a little piece of history – the first UK audience to the last musical by Stephen Sondheim. But also it’s crucial to point out that he was the single greatest composer of musicals who has ever lived, and while he didn’t totally finish Here We Are to his liking, reviews from New York were warm.
If it’s still a little early to get a clear handle on David Byrne’s programming at the Royal Court – because new plays take years from comissioning to programing – then he’s certainly brought in a few big names you doubt would have found a berth under his predecessor Vicky Featherstone. If the headline grabber in his first year was Nicholas Hytner directing a very starry, Nicholas Hytner-style cast in the excellent Giant, then the biggie from years two is clearly Robert Icke. Although as leftfield aesthetically as many Court alumni, the fact his career has largely been based around revivals of classics has mean new writing powerhouse the Royal Court has technically been off linits to him.
However, as writer-director, Icke’s updated versions of the classics has pretty much been new plays in their own rights – he just happens to have not technically made one without some basis in a pre-existing work of drama. His Court debut Manhunt will see him do exactly that however: it’s an original drama based upon the life and death of Raoul Moat, the Newcastle man who went on the run after murdering his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend in 2010, culminating a manhunt with morbid and unexpected consequences.
Icke spoke a little about the show in his recent interview with us, which is about the most that has been said about it publicly, but expect a bit of money to be thrown behind it as it’s a co-production between the Court and West End super-producer Sonia Friedman. Icke pretty much always gets great casts, too, though that doesn’t necessarily mean celebrities.
What is it? Fourteen years on from its original NT premiere, Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork’s verbatim musical about the Suffolk community haunted by the so-called Ipswich Strangler returns as part of its director Rufus Norris’s final season running the theatre.
Why go? London Road has to be seen – and heard – to be believed, as nothing even remotely like it has come along before or since. An ultimately deeply unsettling exploration of the nature of community via choral song, it’s beautiful and disturbing in equal measure, and almost certainly not what you are expecting.
What is it? Disney’s new stage musical, an adaptation of its Greek myth-themed 1997 film, with Luke Brady starring as the muscular demigod.
Why go? The original film is obscure-ish by Disney standards, but much loved by those who know. And while it might seem like a slightly random choice of adaptation, word from Germany – where this production debuted – is very good.
What it it? Twenty-five years on, the entire original team of cast and creatives of Sarah Kane’s final play 4.48 Psychosis reunite to restage one the mostly bleakly powerful plays in British theatre history.
Why go? The play is a strange and haunting masterpiece and there’s undeniably a bragging rights element to bagging tickets to a show where demand will vastly outstrip supply. But there is definitely the hope that hugely talented director James Macdonald will find some new magic here and perhaps banish the shadow of Kane’s suicide, which hung heavy over the original production.
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