Andrzej Lukowski

‘Half of me is trapped in the dreamworld and it means I can’t leave this house’ is pretty nuts as smalltalk over lunch from somebody you’ve just met goes. But lavish Lovecraft-inspired immersive theatre show The Key of Dreams makes no effort to hide the fact that weird things are afoot in Treowen, the isolated seventeenth century Welsh manor house in which it’s performed and set. The brainchild of one Ivan Carić – who set up the company Lemon Difficult to produce it – the show is 24 hours long, typically running from noon on a Thursday or Saturday to noon the next day. While that includes four meals (during which the plot still runs) and around ten hours off overnight (during which the plot does not run), The Key of Dreams really does immerse you. For an entire day you’re part of its world, and you can’t help but throw yourself headlong into its many swirling plot lines because, frankly, you literally have nothing else to do here. Not that it’s a show anyone is likely to randomly take a punt on. It’s £450 a ticket and you’ll need to spring a further £350 for a double or twin room unless you have alternative accommodation lined up. So £625 a head, plus travel, plus booze, basically. We can return to the question of value for money later, but the point is that nobody is doing this thing casually. Some of my fellow guests were very, very uncasual and had either come from overseas or were back for a second visit: a sizable proportion of the twenty-ish strong group was made of Ame

Oh yes it is! London panto season is back for 2025, and here’s Time Out’s complete rundown of every major pantomime in the city. London's best pantomimes at a glance: Best ‘classic’ panto: Cinderella, Hackney Empire Hippest panto: Jack and the Beanstalk, Lyric Hammersmith Best celebrity panto: Sleeping Beauty, London Palladium Christmas panto you can see on Christmas Day: Cinderella and the Matzo Ball, JW3  Best adults only panto: see our adult panto list For some Londoners the only time of year they'll visit a theatre, panto season is a bizarre, joyful, quintessentially British time to come together and watch some light-hearted spoof fairytales that revolve around men dressing up as women and/or farm animals. Within that, though, there’s huge variation, from the megascale London Palladium show with its filthy figurehead Julian Clary, to Clive Rowe’s brilliant panto purism at the Hackney Empire and JW3’s amusing Jewish spin that runs on Christmas Day itself. I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and while this page is simply intended as a round-up of London pantomimes, then it’s an *informed* round up – I have seen approximately four billion pantos over the last 15 years or so, and know what they’re all like, plus we’ll update this page with star ratings when our reviews of this year’s crop start rolling in in late November. London is a city that takes pantomime seriously, and even if the idea of seasonal frivolity fills you with dread, there’s a panto out there

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

If any city in the world were oversaturated with hotels, it’d be Paris. So a list of the ‘best hotels in Paris’ is casting a pretty wide net. The city has over 1,600 hotels in total, ranging from tiny new boutiques to grand historic hotels charging £25,000 a night – and we wanted to make sure every kind of hotel was represented on this list: the luxurious, the downright cheap, and everything in between. Whatever your vibe in the City of Light, you’ll find a hotel for you here. In this guide What is the best area to stay in Paris? + − As will surprise no one, the ‘best’ area to stay in Paris is pretty subjective across its 20 arrondissements and 80 or so neighbourhoods. But we do have some pointers. If it’s your first time in the city, you’ll probably want to be as close to the city centre as possible to tick off those major attractions, so anywhere near the 1st arrondissement – Tuileries, the Marais, St-Germain – would be a good bet. If you’re on a budget, however, you’ll find that cheaper options are usually further out in the 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th – and even on the outskirts of the city. Don’t worry, you’ll still be in on the action – this is where the locals hang out, anyway. For the full rundown, here’s our ultimate guide to where to stay in Paris. Which hotels do celebrities stay in in Paris? + − There is absolutely no reason you should book a stay based on whether or not a famous person has stayed there, but hey, it’s fun to know anyway. It’s pretty fun t

As much as Christmas trees, turkey and a mildly overworked Santa have become staples of the festive season, so has the music that soundtracks this cheer-soaked time of year. Christmas songs don’t just endure – many end up becoming the crown jewels of an artist’s entire career. From golden oldies by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Bing Crosby, to ‘80s icons like Wham! and The Pogues, to modern favourites from Ariana Grande and Leona Lewis, these tunes have embedded themselves into our seasonal rituals. What is the best-selling Christmas song of all time? That honour still belongs to Bing Crosby’s 1942 classic ‘White Christmas’. With over 50 million sales, it’s not only the biggest Christmas record in history – it’s the best-selling song of all time, full stop. Guinness World Records first crowned it back in 1955, and it’s held onto the title ever since. What is the most-streamed Christmas song of all time? Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ may trail Crosby in pure sales (a mere 16 million), but streaming has turned it into a seasonal juggernaut. It finally hit No.1 in both the UK and US decades after its release and became the first Christmas song to pass 2 billion Spotify streams. Hot on its heels: Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ (1.83 billion) and Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ (1.27 billion). Are there any new Christmas songs for 2025? The past decade has delivered plenty of modern holiday staples, from Ariana Grande to Sabrina Carpenter to Cher. As

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

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 musical: Matilda the Musical, Cambridge Theatre Best for teens: The Hunger Games: On Stage, Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre Biggest new show for 2025: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre  Quirkiest show for tweens: Dweeb-A-Mania, Polka Theatre  Best pantomimes: see here – there are so many we have a dedicated page. 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 chil

Paris: the food, the fashion, the fromage, the fantasy. No matter how many times we visit the French capital, its charms never ever grow old. And we’re not alone in thinking that. Paris is a major tourist destination that attracts thousands upon thousands of enthusiastic travellers with heads filled with images of Breton jumpers, tiny dogs, and decadent pastries - the kind you can dip in your hot chocolate. But how do you enjoy this gorgeous city without just succumbing to the age-old clichés (as much as we do love all of them)? We’ve compiled a list of the 51 best attractions in Paris, from the big-name ‘must-see’ paris attractions to something a little bit more bespoke and treasured locally. So whether you’re looking for lesser-known museums, late-night live music, or the best places for shopping, we’ve got plenty of ideas - and they’re all as tasty as a Ladurée macaron. Time Out tip: If you want avoid taxing, RATP App and Citymapper will be essential for getting around Paris like a local.  RECOMMENDED: 🇫🇷See our full guide to the best things to do in Paris🥖Check out the best food tours in Paris📍Here's where to head for the best tours in Paris🛏 Stay in the best airbnbs in Paris🚍The best Paris bus tours This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, click here.

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

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

There’s perhaps nothing more magical than seeing a play or musical in the open air, and London is absolutely the city for it. In defiance of the weather gods, our outdoor theatre season now stretches from March to late October: we’re are just that tough. Or at least, optimistic about the weather. Substantially it revolves around a few key theatres, notably Shakespeare’s Globe – open March to October and generally boasting a cheeky outdoor Christmas production – and the delightful Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which is open late spring to the very end of summer. The former specialises in Shakespeare plays, while the latter has a musical theatre focus. Althoiugh the summer is now basically over, the open air season continues for quite a while, especially at the Globe, where the main outdor theatre remains open until the end of October, and reopens in December for this year’s Christmas show Pinocchio. Not sure what you'll need for an open-air theatre trip? Then don’t miss our guide to practical open-air theatre info.  If you’re interested in taking in some outdoor cinema this summer, head to our dedicated page.

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 for Christmas: Twelfth Night, Barbican Best celebrity cast: Othello, Theatre Royal Haymarket Best weird: The Tempest, Shakespeare’s Globe 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 (the answer is pretty much always ‘at least one’). We we tell you which of his works you can see coming up in the future. No other playwrig

Long gone are the days when a British grotto meant a quick sit on the knee of a boozy-smelling man with an obviously fake beard in the backroom of a mid-tier department store. In the age of immersive theatre, London’s grottos have spun off into all sorts of esoteric forms that now typically involve a lengthy ‘adventure’ prior to finally meeting Old Saint Nick, whose knee you are very definitely not allowed to sit on because of woke. The oddly named Wundrful World of Christmas is billed as an immersive experience rather than a grotto, and indeed in its native Australia that may be fair enough – do they even have grottos in the land of beach Christmas? But here it is basically a posh grotto, and probably London’s biggest this year, with an expensive marketing campaign and fancy location in Borough Yards. It begins with us ‘boarding’ what my notes say is a flying lift, which – as conveyed via computer generated vista we see out of its ‘windows’ – is piloted by a slightly fractious group of elves all the way to the North Pole. There we encounter… more elves, who are hanging out in a cluster of rooms so Christmassy they almost provoked a seizure when I visited in mid-November. Each has a little skit or bit of patter, and all the children involved - including my own - were delighted and entirely sold on the fact that yes, this was now the season to be jolly. Aimed at ages three to eight, there are light interactions and even a small problem-solving task – it’s hardly taxing but the

A fascinating feminist hybrid of EastEnders, Samuel Beckett and Wolf Hall, Ava Pickett’s 1536 is set in some marshland on the outskirts of an Essex village in – you guessed it – 1536, the year Anne Boleyn was executed.  Not that this is a by-the-numbers Tudor drama: the story focuses on three young women – Jane (Liv Hill), Anna (Sienna Kelly) and Mariella (Tanya Reynolds) – who never come within a sniff of the royal family. They see the monarchy as an important but distant constellation: in the opening scene Hill’s innocent Jane struggles for Henry VIII’s name beyond ‘the king’. The engine of the play is Pickett’s superb dialogue and the sweary, lairy modern-language chats had by the women in the trampled bulrushes of Max Jones’s set.. Hill’s Jane is an adorable naif, Reynolds’s midwife Mariella is gawkily sarcastic. Each has their own complicated relationship with men in the village. But it’s Kelly’s Anna who is effectively the lead: beautiful and poor, she is deserted and scorned by the townsfolk, especially her wealthy lover Richard (Adam Hugill), who at the start of the play we discover is set to be married off to Jane. It begins as a funny, even goofy, drama. Three Tudor women, effing and blinding away in an Essex field, using language that would make Danny Dyer blush is inherently funny, as is the fact that each of the early scenes begins with Anna and Richard going at it hammer and tongs in the reeds. But things start to curdle: aside from various village tensions galv

There is literally nothing else on this planet as bombastic as a volcanic eruption. And yet somehow, this immersive exhibition dedicated to the destruction of the Roman town of Pompeii by the fury of Mount Vesuvius does endeavour to be ‘a bit much’.  The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition is the third show to hit London this year from the Spanish company Madrid Artes Digitales (aka MAD), who also made The Legend of the Titanic (which I didn’t see) and Tutankhamun (which I did). The first thing you notice here is the thunderously loud and doomy soundtrack, which permeates every room. Later on you’ll discover that it’s the accompanying music to an immersive film that forms the centrepiece of the show.  But you won’t get to it for at least half an hour, and there’s something very silly about the nominally sober first area – an introduction to the Roman town of Pompeii and its pre-eruption history – being soundtracked by apocalyptic strings and eruption noises. Similarly, the second room contains casts of inhabitants of Pompeii in their final poses before they were entombed in ash. I’m not saying we need to be massively respectful to 2,000-year old dead Romans, but the figures are actually very moving – and would be even more so if you could turn off the overwrought score. Undoubtedly pretty sick if you’re 10, which is surely the point While the rooms at the start are intended to be sensible, this all flies out of the window by the time we start with the immersive bit

I’m going to be honest and say that I was worried I’d not be able to take a drama about a porn addict entirely seriously. It’s an unusual subject! And certainly the early sections of Josie Rourke’s production of Sophie Chetin-Leuner’s Porn Play are happy to make relatively light of protagonist Ani’s habit. A successful English lecturer with a speciality in Milton, we first meet Ambika Mod’s Ani in the company of her soon to be ex, Liam (WIll Close). She has just won a big award for her work; he has chosen this moment to say he’s concerned about the amount of violent pornography she’s consuming. But her defence is pretty good: she doesn’t deny it at all, but instead compares wanking to having a glass of wine to unwind after a long day. She deftly flips the conversion on its head, and accuses him of exaggerating the problem out of jealousy over her award. He meekly agrees.  Rourke’s production is staged on a remarkable Yimei Zhao set: it transforms the Royal Court’s Upstairs theatre into a sort of gigantic flesh-coloured sofa with what I’m going to go ahead and say is a big hole that’s meant to be evocative of a vaginal opening as its focal point. And there’s a playful sensuality to the early stages, as the actors delve into the fleshy fabric of the set to pull out props, while there are scenes in which actor Lizzy Connolly flits around in a gauzy dress as a sort of spirit of desire (who also helps out with the scene transitions). But Ani is not okay, and over the course of Por

After a slow start, Hannah Doran’s drama about small-time tragedy among immigrant Americans in the age of Trump finds its feet in an explosive second half.  It’s set in Cafarelli & Sons, an NYC butcher’s shop that’s been in the family of owner Paula (Jackie Clune) for decades. She’s a badass with a heart of gold and has a benign tendency to hire staff with criminal records who other employers wouldn’t touch. Business is struggling, though, and only one of staff members JD (Marcello Cruz) and Billy (Ash Hunter) will be hired permanently at the end of the summer. There’s a lot of leisurely preamble before the story kicks in - I couldn’t shake off the sense that in this debut play, Anglo-Irish writer Hannah Doran felt like she had to compensate for her distance from this world by overly setting the scene, taking too much time to introduce her five characters. There is also a distracting initial similarity to Lynn Nottage superlative Clyde’s (about ex prisoners working in a sandwich shop). Finally, though, we get down to it. JD is enthusiastic about the job and a shoo in for the role, but is deeply nervous about getting it. Billy has been bumming around the shop for years without getting taken on permanently - but he needs the money to look after his desperately ill mother. Caught between them is T (Mithra Malek), Billy’s cousin, a young woman who has served time and is now working a temporary summer role at the shop. JD takes a shine to her; Billy leans on her to help him sabota

Though it would be pushing it to say Tom Morris directs Othello as a comedy, he certainly wrings more laughs than usual out of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. To be fair I don’t think I’d appreciated the extent to which other productions must try to avoid audience giggles every time a character describes the villainous Iago –  the greatest snake in English literature – as ‘honest’. Morris just cheerily milks it, and the result is a lighter-than-usual take on the play. Not out-and-out hilarious, but with a glossiness that speaks of a desire to go easy on a West End audience.  The title role is played by David Harewood, who returns to the part 28 years after he was the first Black actor to star as the doomed Moorish general at the National Theatre. His new Othello is a precise, confident, seemingly unflappable man who shows little sign of jealousy or doubt for a long time. But his extreme rationalism proves his downfall: once Toby Jones’s Iago presents ‘proof’ of Othello’s wife Desdemona (Caitlin FitzGerald) being unfaithful, her husband simply accepts it, something that speaks as much of misogyny as insecurity or insanity.  Jones is a thoroughly entertaining Iago, who tackles Shakespeare's elegant verse with a coarse vigour that helps explain why the other characters like him so much: he comes across as plainspoken, dowe to earth, and funny.  Why does he want to destroy Othello? Being overlooked for a promotion in favour of Luke Treadway’s dashing Cassio is the initial impetus. B

This review is from January 2022. The friend who was supposed to come with me to ‘Moulin Rouge! The Musical’ dropped out because of a migraine, and honestly, hard relate: director Alex Timbers’s dementedly maximalist ‘remix’ of Baz Luhrmann’s smash 2001 film is pure sensory overload. Frequently I found myself cackling hysterically at it, on my own, for no particularly good reason, other than how *much* it all is. If you can remember any of the 2001 film’s music beyond ‘Lady Marmalade’ (here present and correct as show opener, complete with sassy, snappy choreography from Sonya Tayeh) you’ll remember that the soundtrack largely consists of medleys of other people’s songs. So we have ‘Sparkling Diamonds’, aka ‘Diamonds are Forever’ smushed into ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ or the semi-infamous ‘Elephant Love Medley’, a wilfully preposterous amalgam of the cheesiest lines from myriad famous pop tunes, a veritable one-track sex mix. You have to think that it’s essentially this that drew Timbers and music supervisor Justin Levine to ‘Moulin Rouge!’, as they’ve gone absolutely nuts with the idea, pumping the story full of pop songs old and new, fragmented and whole. Like a glittery cow jacked up with some fabulous experimental growth hormone, ‘Moulin Rouge!’ is now bulked into a veritable behemoth of millennial pop bangers. There are the ones that were in the film. There are some that were around when the film was made but weren’t included (‘Torn’; no kidding, the theme from

This review is from the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Joe Kent-Waters’s second show is exactly what I wanted it to be, which is to say that it’s basically a bigger budget remake of his first show.  In case you missed it, Kent-Waters made a huge impression at last year’s Fringe – winning the Best Newcomer award – with his creation Frankie Monroe, a hulking, gravelly-voiced, white-faced men’s club owner and self-declared ‘biggest bastard in Yorkshire’. The improbable longevity of his anachronistic Rotherham working men’s club was the result of a pact Frankie had signed with the Devil 25 years previously – and in debut show Joe-Kent Waters is Frankie Monroe: LIVE!!! the Devil came to collect, the show culminating in him being dragged to Hell, ‘by the balls’. Joe Kent-Waters is Frankie Monroe: DEAD!!! (Good Fun Time) is the direct sequel: it begins in Hell, where Frankie is essentially practising almost exactly the same schtick to the souls of the damned as he was to the men of Rotherham (who I’m sure are two very different groups of people). The jokes are different, but it’s the same character doing the same shtick in a similar way – an audience member is picked on to a remarkable extent; a puppet dog is deployed. And it’s brilliant, the best show I’ve seen at the Fringe this year. Sometimes it’s death to return to what you did last time out, but it was exactly the right decision for Kent-Waters. Most crucially, the joke is still funny. Frankie – a sort of monstrous amalgam of

There are no wild directorial flourishes or big awards-bait performances in director Michael Grandage and playwright Jack Holden’s stage adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s seminal novel of the ‘80s. The wheel is at no point reinvented. But, by Thatcher’s ghost, it does a tremendous job of cutting Hollinghurst’s period odyssey into a gripping, flab-free two-and-a-half hours of theatre. It is, above all, a great piece of storytelling.  If you’re not familiar, The Line of Beauty concerns Nick Guest (here played by Jasper Talbot), a young gay man who in 1983 moves into the ultra fancy home of his uni mate Toby Fedden’s parents as a lodger. ‘Welcome to Kensington Park Garden,’ intones Nick’s mother Rachel (Claudia Harrison), as she introduces Nick to the house she shares with her newly elected Tory MP husband Gerald (Charles Edward) and depressive daughter Catherine. The story charts his journey through the decade: adjacent to the ruling classes but not a member of them, he is further removed from the mainstream by his sexuality, which he is entirely open about, but also othered by. A relationship with Leo (Alistair Nwachukwu), a Black councillor (one assumes for Labour) is largely conducted on the down-low. Though nominally invited in, Nick is wary of bringing Leo into the circle of the Feddens for a multitude of reasons. Some are clearly self-interested: the pointedly ‘apolitical” Nick is aware Leo is unlikely to get on with his Tory benefactors. Others are more self-preservation

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

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

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

When the Royal Court recently announced that it would stage the UK debut of the hugely hyped Broadway smash John Proctor is the Villain, I’d wondered if the show’s UK lead Sadie Sink might come over with it. The answer, it would seem, is a resounding ‘no’ as the Stranger Things star has, delightfully, announced she’ll be doing a totally different play in London at the same time, starring in a new production of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet directed by Brit auteur Rob Icke. The youthful Sink will, naturally, play Juliet, one half of Western literature’s most famous doomed couple with Romeo, who’ll be played here by the even younger Noah Jupe, who is probably best known for playing Marcus, the middle child in A Quiet Place and its sequel. He makes his stage debut opposite Sink, who is more of a theatre veteran: the flame-haired actor made her own debut over a decade ago in the title role of a Broadway production of Annie. What can we expect? Although Icke is an enthusiastic rewriter of the classics, he rarely touches Shakespeare’s language, but does often impose quite radical new interpretations of the action onto the likes of Hamlet and Player Kings (his mash-up of Henry IV parts 1 and 2). His productions are always modern dress, and generally artsy but in an accessible way, and tend to be stacked with a recurrent core crew of British stage actors (though expect more fresh faces for the play’s sundry teenage characters). Though always popular, Romeo & Juliet is definitely going

Theatreland loves a sale – there’s no way we were going to get to Black Friday without being given opportunity to save some serious cash on West End tickets. Theatre’s big Black Friday sale runs from today until early December and features savings of up to 60 percent on a wide variety of shows. Run by London Theatre Direct – in partnership with Time Out – obvious jewels in the crown are the big West End shows and musicals that have been running for years and usually charge a pretty penny – these periodic sales are your occasional chance to get into them at a more manageable price. Big participants this time include The Devil Wears Prada, Back to the Future, Starlight Express, Six the Musical and more. It’s also great for picking up a Christmas theatre bargain: festive shows are often only on for a few weeks and are happy to get all the advance sales they can get – offers include Elf the Musical, Bluey’s Big Play and Pinocchio at the Globe. Then, finally, it’s great to pick up a ticket for one of the big shows of next year, which haven’t had time to build up buzz yet: great 2026 shows to score bargains on include Teeth ’N’ Smiles starring Self Esteem, Cirque du Soleil’s OVO and megahyped Broadway comedy Oh, Mary! The Black Friday 2025 theatre sale runs from now until Dec 8. Buy tickets here. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025 and 2026. Review: The Hunger Games: On Stage.

★★★ The big question with adapting The Hunger Games for the stage is that is it not totally nuts to adapt The Hunger Games for the stage? A substantial proportion of Suzanne Collins’s smash 2008 YA novel is set during the titular Games, which are a sort of gladiatorial reality TV contest in which heavily armed teens murder each other until there’s only one left,  Historically this sort of thing is not theatre’s strength. A cheeky duel, absolutely. But a half-hour plus nonstop combat sequence featuring 24 fighters and multiple sub-locations is… tricky. And to their credit, director Matthew Dunster and a top-notch creative team do a pretty damn good job of finding a way forward, deploying aerial work, pyro, video screens, some tightly drilled choreography, the odd song and a highly mobile, rapidly changing set from Miriam Buether to create a sequence that’s coherent and gripping, even if it’s hard to really hand on heart say this is as effective a representation as in the beloved Jennifer Lawrence film (as much as anything, without close ups it’s tricky to follow who all the minor characters are). Photo: Johan Persson But it’s solid, and I found it hard not to admire the quixotic but skilled attempt to translate something so action-packed to the stage. a hybrid of The Running Man and The Devil Wears Prada Dunster is not a subtle director, and in many ways that suits Collins’s novel. He picks out the themes of class oppression between the gaudy dandies of the Capitol and dirt

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s excellent play Stage/Fright ran at Wyndham’s Theatre earlier this year, and felt like a loving coda to Inside No. 9, the duo’s long-running comedy horror anthology series, which recently wrapped up after nine seasons.  Stage/Fright has been a long goodbye, heading out on UK tour after its West End run, but now its creators have declared they’re done with it for good – and potentially Inside No 9 as a concept – after one final run of shows. And they’re coming around soon: presumably in order to accommodate busy schedules, Stage/Fright will run for six shows only in early January at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. It’s a big venue, but considering it previously sold out a three-month West End run entirely in advance, it seems likely these tickets are going to fly. Inevitably a lot of those tickets will probably go to hardcore Inside No. 9 fans who have already see it, but if that’s not you, you should still give it a go: the play is an inventive black comedy that’s as much a celebration of theatre as it is the show itself – you don’t actually need to have seen the TV series to have a good time. Inside No. 9’s Stage/Fright is at the Eventim Apollo, Jan 2-6 2026. Tickets go on sale Nov 13 at noon from here. The best new London theatre openings to book for in 2025 and 2026. Plus: Jesus Christ Superstar returns to London with Sam Ryder in the lead role. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and tr

So-called ‘immersive’ exhibitions have become big business in London in recent time, with shows dedicated to Tutankhamun, the Titanic and Pompeii all playing in 2025, the vaunted ‘immersion’ achieved via a mix of factors ranging from interactive sets to films to VR sections. Now here comes a brand new immersive exhibition for north London, and while all the above mentioned shows were essentially tricked out historical exhibitions, this one’s a little different. As you might expect, the Mundo Pixar Experience is based around the films of the pioneering kids’ animation studio Pixar, and rather than a dry affair made up of stills and concept sketches, it’s basically a journey through a series of 14 rooms, one for each ‘universe’ in the Pixar filmography.  So we shrink down to toy size in Andy’s Room from Toy Story, explore the Monster, Inc Scare Floor, race into Flo’s Café from Cars to meet Lightning McQueen, visit the Headquarters of Riley’s emotions from Inside Out 2, and journey from Coco’s Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead. We’re promised each are will have immaculate vibes via beautiful design, exquisite ambient sound, and intriguingly ‘specially crafted scents’ to ensure each area smells just so (!). The show has played Brazil, Mexico, Belgium and Spain on a world tour on which it’s won praise for the beauty of its its sets and generally being an all round great photo opportunity, even if there has been some grumbles that there isn’t necessarily a huge amount to d

This is not a good time to be an Andrew Lloyd Webber hater, with the musical theatre legend on track to be almost as popular as he was in the ’80s. Jamie Lloyd’s Rachel Zegler-starring Evita revival was the year’s most talked about show, a first ever UK revival of Cats was announced to much anticipation; over in New York Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard revival took the Tonys by storm and critics were wowed by hipster off-Broadway Cats revival The Jellicle Ball. He’s even buried the hatchet with his old writing partner Tim Rice long enough for the duo to pen some new songs for this year’s Birmingham Rep Christmas show. And today it’s been announced that another of his classics will follow Evita into the Palladium, running throughout next summer. It’s not just any revival of 1971’s Jesus Christ Superstar, but rather a fresh outing for current Donmar boss Tim Sheader’s excellent 2016 Open Air Theatre production, which transferred to the Barbican three years later. Bombastic and grungy with a very cool set by Tom Scutt it will be a treat to see it again on an even larger stage (though worth saying Lloyd’s Evita also came from the Open Air Theatre and he completely changed it for the Palladium - Sheader may do the same). If you’re unfamiliar, the musical – by Webber and Rice – is essentially a surprisingly fun rock concert adaptation of the story of the Last Supper and Crucifixion. The lead role is in a very literal sense Jesus Christ and playing him will be musician, social media person

Avenue Q was one of the classic ’00s musicals, a subversive comedy that mixed gritty realism – or a parody of it – with adorable Sesame Street-style puppets. The brainchild of Jeff Marx and Book of Mormon co-writer Robert Lopez , it was one of the defining musicals of its time, running for five years here and a walloping 16 years on and off-Broadway, all told.  And now it’s coming back, with the original Broadway puppets crossing over for a limited but fairly lengthy 2026 revival that will be helmed by the show’s original director Jason Moore, with a few new UK tweaks.  For those unfamiliar – and it’s been 15 year since it wrapped up its original West End run – the musical centres on Princeton, a young puppet who has just graduated with a BA in English and must now attempt to find a job in a far-flung ‘outer outer borough’ of New York. He eventually settles upon the rundown, eccentric Avenue Q, where his new friends include Kate Monster, Lucy the Slut and the Bad Idea Bears, plus the former child actor Gary Coleman, who now begrudgingly works as the superintendent in Princeton’s building. Classic songs include ‘Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist’ and ‘What Do You Do with a BA in English?’. It’s silly, rude, funny and there’s not really been anything else like it in the years since it closed. Whether it’s dated is to be seen, but a limited return is a welcome thing and if you’re in the market for an outrageous comedy musical that isn’t The Book of Mormon again, this could be right

A musical adaptation of hit 2014 Britflick Pride has been in the world for a while – which is not surprising, as its director Matthew Warchus – the outgoing Old Vic boss – is a heavyweight director of stage musicals, notably Matilda and Lord of the Rings.  A fictionalised account of real life events, the 1984-set film follows a group of lesbian and gay activists who realise that the reason the police have stopped harassing them is because they’ve instead set their sights on the striking miners. They therefore decide to raise money in solidarity with the strike, overcoming the initial bemusement – and in some case homophobia – of the miners to get in motion a sequence of events that would end with rights for gays and lesbians being adopted to the Labour Party programme.  The musical adaptation will be directed by Warchus and written by the film’s screenwriter Stephen Beresford, who’ll handle lyrics as well as the script, while the music comes from Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde – the latter two are best known for work with hip-hop dance company ZooNation, which suggests the songs could go down a non-showtune route. There’s no work on casting yet, though there are lots of good roles, including the lead one of gay rights activist Mark Ashton, founder of LGSM (aka Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners). Substantially set in Wales, the musical will officially preview at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, before transferring to the National Theatre’s small Dorfman The

No other word to describe it: November 2025 is a blockbuster month for London theatre, with the two biggest shows of the year opening within it in the form of the musical adaptation of Paddington, and Conor McPherson’s stage adaptation of The Hunger Games. It’s such famous source material that there’s little more to be said beyond ‘if they’re not good, heads will roll’, so let’s move swiftly on to point out that in addition to that there are stonking big celebrity-heavy takes on Arthur Miller and Shakespeare coming to the West End. And if you can see past the massive shows – well looky here, pantomime season gets underway in the second half of the month: oh yes it does! The best new London theatre openings in November 2025 Photo: Oliver Rosser 1. All My Sons Ivo van Hove’s stupendous 2014 production of A View from the Bridge could reasonably be argued to be the greatest ever staging of Arthur Miller’s landmark play. Which certainly sets the bar high for his second stab at Miller on these shores, and we should probably manage expectations somewhat here. However, the omens are pretty damn good: All My Sons is an all-timer, and there’s a wonderful cast including Hayley Squires, Paapa Essiedu, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and American superstar Bryan Cranston as Joe Keller, the upright American businessman with questions about his past. Wyndham’s Theatre, Nov 14-Mar 7 2026. Buy tickets here. Photo: Isha Shah 2. Paddington the Musical Really big British musicals are few and far bet

For months it’s been the biggest theatre mystery in London. When the ‘full’ cast to the hugely anticipated new Paddington musical was announced several months ago, there was one very conspicuous omission: the eponymous bear himself.  Speculation abounded, from ‘a puppet’ to ‘something to do with Ben Whishaw’ to who knows what else (a very well trained live bear?), but with the show now having started its previews, all has been revealed. Paddington will in fact be played by two people: the diminutive Arti Shah will don a costume to play his body, and James Hameed is credited as the ‘off-stage performer’ and will do both his voice and – as we understand it – remotely control his facial expressions. Photo: Johan Persson It’s an intriguing mix of the very modern and the very old school – a remotely controlled all-singing lead in a musical is surely not something that’s been done much before, but at the same time it is also a small lady in a bear costume. The stills do make Paddington simply look like a large toy bear frozen in a variety of poses, but that’s kind of the point really, and early word of mouth on Paddington the Musical actually suggests it’s pretty damn spectacular, like having the marmalade-loving bear in the room with you. The show is in previews until the very end of the month – you’ll have to wait until November 30 for our review – but things are clearly going pretty well as the show has also just extended its booking period until next October. Paddington the M

The Royal Court Theatre today announces a pretty damn spectacular seventieth birthday season, that mixes its traditional new writing with a couple of extremely tasty revivals from its back catalogue. The really, really big news is the return of Tilda Swinton to the British stage after literally decades away, as she reprises her role in German playwright Manfred Karge’s Man to Man (Sep 5-Oct 24 2026). Set between the wars, the one-woman show concerns Ella Gericke, a German woman who adopts her late husband’s identity in order to hold on to his decently-paying job as a crane operator. Tilda Swinton was just 27 when it debuted at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre in 1987 (it transferred to the Court the following year), and her extraordinary, gender-bending performance cued her up cult big screen career. Following on from this year’s superb Court revival of the original production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, this is another case of getting the old gang back together – director Stephen Unwin will take the helm for what is literally a reprisal of the original production. Photo: Royal Court TheatreGary Oldman, Krapp’s Last Tape The other big celebrity name is Gary Oldman, who has been absent from the stage for even longer than Swinton – a whopping 37 years. Or he was until earlier in 2025, when he performed, directed and starred in Beckett’s high concept elegy Krapp’s Last Tape at Theatre Royal York. That gets a transfer to the Court (May 8-30 2026), which would be a good get unde

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