Andrzej Lukowski

Like ’em, hate ’em or blast ’em 24 hours a day as soon as September starts, there’s no getting away from Christmas songs. And we’re not just talking about Mariah and the Pogues – Christmas songs are an exhaustive genre, from ’40s jingles to 2024 bangers.  On our list, we thought it would be best to include it all. The classics, sure, but some of the more rogue choices too. Like the ‘Eight Days of Christmas’ mash-up by Destiny’s Child, and the underrated classic ‘Dominick the Donkey, the Italian Donkey’. Whatever gets you feeling festive, you’ll find it on this list. Here are the best Christmas songs ever written.  RECOMMENDED:🎤 The best karaoke songs🕺 The best pop songs💧 The best sad songs🎅 The best places to go at Christmas

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 – Time Out theatre editor Andrzej Łukowski – plus our freelance critics. RECOMMENDED New theatre openings in London this month. A-Z of West End shows.

Hello – I'm Time Out’s theatre editor and also a parent, something that has considerable overlap in London, a city with three dedicated kids theatres and where pretty much every other theatre might play host to a child-friendly show. Listing everything would be a slightly psychotic undertaking and probably not that illuminating, as many kids’ shows are only on for a day or two. So instead this round up forcusses 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 children does what the title suggests, and also includes shows suitable for younger school-age children. See also:50 things to do i

Greetings of the season! Well, I'm actually writing this in early November. But then, how long is Christmas theatre season in London exactly? Certainly by late November it’s in full swing, 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. I’m Time Out theatre editor Andrzej Łukowski, and I have seen more pantos and Julia Donaldson adaptations than any human 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 (however misguided) 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 not necessarily aimed at them specifically – and shows that are directly aimed at a younger audience. Please note that there are so many pantomimes in London that they have their own seperate list – see link below.  RECOMMENDED: The best Christmas pantomimes in London. Find more Christmas shows in London. 

To say that William Shakespeare bestrides our culture like a colossus is to chronically undersell him. Over 400 years since his death, the Stratford-born playwright is virtually 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. 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 playwright is staged nearly enough to get his own page. But for William Shakespeare, it’s essential.

It’s officially the depths of winter, and that means spending as little time as possible outdoors and as much time as possible being warm, cosy and preferably in pyjamas. And those long, wintery nights call for one thing: some good snacks, and a really good podcast. Luckily, we’ve got them coming out of our ears.  Whether you’re a grisly true crime guy or after something more chatty, there’s a podcast out there for you. And here at Time Out, we’ve been bingeing all of them to bring you the very best (and stop you wasting precious time). For giggles, celeb sightings, world history, investigative journalism and a hell of a lot more, here are our favourite podcasts out right now, picked by our editors. Happy listening! ️‍🔥 November 2024: We’ve just added a bunch of great podcasts to this list, including the gripping ‘Wrongly Accused’ and the hilarious chatty-comedy ‘Comedy Bang! Bang!’. We update regularly with new releases, so check back for more podcast recommendations from the Time Out team.  RECOMMENDED:🎧 The best news podcasts🗞️ The best history podcasts🔪 The best true crime podcasts

Sunday lunch. There’s nothing quite like it. An elemental meal, one that Londoners take incredibly seriously. Debates about what constitutes the ‘perfect’ Sunday roast have been known to last for hours. There is no shortage of top roasts in London. We’ve rounded up the city’s best Sunday meals from a host of homely pubs and restaurants all around town. What makes a good roast? For us, it’s simple; a cosy room is a good start, maybe in a pub with an open fire. Then it comes to the plate – we need perfect roast potatoes, well-cooked lamb, beef or pork and a decent plant-based option too. A Sunday roast is more than just lunch - it’s self-care. From snug neighbourhood staples to more bijou gastropubs, posh hotels, Michelin-star spots, and even a metal bar in Camden, we’ve got something for every taste (if that taste is for comforting mounds of roast meat, lashings of gravy and carbs for days).  A lot of these places get quite busy, by the way. So you’re always advised to book ahead to avoid disappointment.  RECOMMENDED: London's 50 best pubs. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor, and her Sunday roast order is usually pork belly with extra gravy, extra roasties and a big glass of Pinot Noir. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

With Hollywood still regaining its footing after a 2020s it’d probably describe as a personal low, the field has been open for streaming shows to monopolise the cultural conversation. And this year it’s been well-established thoroughbreads that have been dominating our social feeds (Succession, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Bear, Industry, Bridgerton, Slow Horses), as well as some unexpected bolters (Baby Reindeer, Rivals, Fallout)/. And with a second run of Squid Game about to end the year with a big pile of bodies, the pressure to cram in eight or ten episodes’ worth of must-see TV is not relenting anytime soon. Our advice? Shake off the pressure to ‘see everything’ – it’s impossible, short of ripping a hole in the fabric of time – and find the shows that really hit your sweet spot. To help with this, we’ve taken a backwards glance over the best and most all-round enjoyable new binges, curating our definitive list 2024 favourites. And as any fan of ace Aussie comedy Colin From Accounts will tell you: it’s not always about the number of Emmys on the shelf, as the sheer joy on screen that makes something worth your precious time. That said, definitely do watch Succession too. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The best movies of 2024 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2023📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

Christmas isn’t just for kids: come the festive season, London’s LGBTQ+ fringes fill up with filthy-minded adult pantomimes that are strictly 18-plus.  We’ve gathered them together here – but also a selction of other shows running over the season of goodwill that aren’t out and out filthy, but simply aren’t aimed at family audiences. It’s a slightly complicated balance as there are of course dozens of ‘normal’ theatre shows you can see sans children every holiday season: this list ignores regular plays and musicals and focusses on cabaret-style entertainments and – for want of a better term – shows you might go on a big Christmas night out to. If you’re dicing with Santa’s naughty list this Christmas – this one’s for you! RECOMMENDED: Find more Christmas shows in London 

Hello parents and guardians! I’m Time Out’s theatre editor and more relevantly, I'm in charge of our kids coverage. As a parent of two childen myself I can confirm that London is an amazing city raise kids in if your priority is ‘keeping them occupied’. Yes, you have to put a bit of commuter time in to take advantage of it all, but there’s a virtually endless stream of stuff for children to do, from playgrounds and parks to incredible children’s theatres, free museums to slightly more expensive zoos and aquariums, and all sorts of stuff inbetween. This is a sort of 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, this list will be switched around seasonally: ice rinks, grottos and pantiomimes are great to take your children to in winter, less so in summer. Of course, there are more than 50 things for children to in London, and we’ve got plenty of ot

Afternoon tea is what makes a trip to London truly iconic – even if you already live here. You’ll find some of the best at London’s chicest hotels, restaurants, and art galleries - and we’ve worked out what makes an afternoon tea a truly memorable experience. It'’s not just perfect pastries, the most elegant of teeny tiny cakes and finger sarnies with the crusts cut off, but swish service, the option to have something boozy and bubbly and a picture-perfect, characterful room in which to enjoy it all. From The Ritz to a Caribbean restaurant in Walthamstow, the National Gallery and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, there's truly something for every cake-munching tea-drinker in this round-up of London's best afternoon tea spreads.  Expect to pay in the region of £50 to £80 for the pleasure per person, but you'll be in for a treat if you go with one of our recommendations. Remember, many of the teas have set times for seatings, so booking in advance is always a good idea. RECOMMENDED: The best hotels in London. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor and knows all about tiny little cucumber sandwiches and drinking Champagne at 3pm. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. The hottest new openings, the tastiest tips, the spiciest reviews: we’re serving it all on our London restaurants WhatsApp channel. Follow us now.

Yes, Christmas is fun for adults. But it’s mostly fun for kids, for whom the combination of rampant gift giving, implied supernatural forces and general sparkliness is pretty much actual heaven on Earth. I’m Andrzej, Time Out’s theatre editor and lead kids writer, and I can confirm that as far as my own two children are concerned, Christmas is the most magical time of year. It’s also one of the few holidays where you’re not necessarily desperately scrabbling to find things to do with your kids every day – hanging out with your family, opening presents and attempting to cook large birds tends to take up a fair chunk of the actual school holiday. But really kids’ Christmas in London starts way before the schools break up: it’s pretty much go from when the big trees go up and the iconic lights are switched on. By the end of November you can easily meet Santa, go for an ice rink and take in a pantomime, all on a single day. This list is a best of things to do with kids over the London Christmas period. There is, unabashedly, a lot of highlighting of classic activities: have you been to Christmas at Kew? Great! You should go again. But there are also a handful of entirely unfestive events because maybe come early January everyone might just want to check out a cool new exhibition. We can can only really scratch the surface here, but if you wnat to get a bit deeper we have plenty other recommendations, from ice rinks and Santa’s grottos to dazzling Christmas lights and Christmas th

William Shakespeare wrote All’s Well That Ends Well as a comedy. But his play about a young woman who goes to psychotic lengths to secure the hand in marriage of a man who essentially hates her is such a hot moral mess by contemporary standards that directors tend to play it straight, often focusing on its misogyny and depiction of a brutally transactional society.  Director Chelsea Walker couldn’t be clearer, however – by hook or by crook she’s going to make All’s Well That Ends Well into a funny comedy, no matter how outlandish that makes the characters. In this she is aided enormously by a tremendous lead performance from Ruby Bentall as protagonist Helen. Staged on a striking set by Rosanna Vize that looks kind of like an Italian fashion house, the modern-dress production begins with Bentall ugly crying at what we initially take to be sorrow at her father’s recent death. In fact, they’re tears of self-pity over her lack of any chance with Kit Young’s caddish nobleman Bertram – she’s just too low born. But her prospects change abruptly when she cures the ailing King of France with some drugs that belonged to her physician father, leading to the monarch magnanimously saying she can marry any man she wants – no need to guess who she goes for. There’s a touch of Fleabag in how deftly Walker mines the awfulness of everyone’s situation. Bentall is superb precisely because we don’t feel sorry for her – she is a woman on a ridiculous mission to marry somebody entirely unsuited to

What is it? Visions of Nature is a new mixed reality experience at the Natural History Museum – which basically translates into meaning that you wander around the NHM’s Spirit Collection wearing a headset with a clear visor which superimposes computer generated images on what’s physically there, with an accompanying commentary that plays out via headphones.  How much does it cost? It’s £9.95 for a little under 20 minutes, which is certainly pretty pricey as a destination in and of itself, though given it’s part of a gigantic spectacular museum that is largely free, I think we can be reasonably tolerant on this score. Certainly if you’re making your third trip of the year to the Nastural History Museum, it’s a good pepper upper. It also adds a bit of pizzazz to the Spirit Gallery, aka one of those far flung bits of the museum’s Orange Zone, that few visitors ordinarily make it to. What happens? The presentation is a curious mix of the chipper and the despairing, seeking to offer us a realistic vision of global biodiversity in 100 years’ time, but in a weirdly comforting way. Our enthusiastic narrator is named Hope, which is an apt description of her general vibe, although she does kick off by telling us that come 2125, global warming has very much happened and about 10 percent of species on the planet have died out. It’s a curious mix of the chipper and the despairing We’re shown cool little visual vignettes of what might be left: beginning with a Scottish Highlands where lyn

Theatre company YESYESNONO has established itself as a force via a series of subversive Edinburgh Fringe hits that served as de facto solo vehicles for company artistic director Sam Ward. The Glorious French Revolution is quite the change of tack. Ward writes and directs but cedes the stage to a cast of five who perform his biggest and boldest show to date.  It’s also comfortably the worst that I’ve seen, with a stylish vigour, likeable cast and a couple of moments of genuine theatrical magic struggling to conceal how intellectually threadbare the whole enterprise feels. Why, for starters, the French Revolution? Initially presented as a larky, rather Horrible Histories-style lesson on la Révolution française and its build up, there’s never any real sense of who the cast are supposed to *be* within the context of the show or why a group of English people are lecturing us about French history. I could guess some reasons: revolutions are fascinating, and the French one was more romantic than the Russian one and had more appealing class and religious politics than our one. But the show never says any of this. A final scene that should have an elegantly sinister theatricality to it is ruined with a clunky ‘it could happen again’ message as Ward tries to connect events in seventeenth century France to contemporary Britain without considering literally any of the intervening political movements. There is an enjoyably sardonic lightness to its explainer-ish early stages (the Horrible

This review is from February 2024; The Merchant of Venice 1936 returns for a Christmas run. Nothing points to how obstinately alive Shakespeare is within our culture than the fact we can’t – or won’t! – simply ditch a play like ‘The Merchant of Venice’. While far less antisemitic than contemporary works like Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’ – by Elizabethan standards it was perhaps even mildly progressive – there is no other playwright whose patently problematic play about a devious Jewish moneylender would remain front and centre of the theatrical canon in 2024. Which brings us to ‘The Merchant of Venice 1936’. A passion project of its star and co-adaptor, the Jewish actor Tracy-Ann Oberman, it doesn’t so much reclaim Shakespeare’s play for the Jewish community as aggressively repurpose it. Directed by Brigid Larmour, it relocates the action to the East End of London in 1936, where Oberman’s moneylender Shylock is a proud Jewish matriarch and emigree from Eastern Europe. Around her corner of London, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists are stirring, gearing up for the infamous/ignominious march that culminated in the Battle of Cable Street. Here, many of the gentile characters are explicitly black-shirted Mosley supporters, and the ones who aren’t are happily pals with the racists. Let‘s be real here: this doesn’t entirely make sense. Oberman’s shtetl-accented Shylock is far more sympathetic than her tormentors, but Shylocks generally are these days. Her insistence on havin

A drama about cryptocurrency couldn’t be more timely: with the market surging again, Beru Tessema’s Wolves on Road opens at the Bush scarcely 24 hours after the incoming US administration announced it’s putting Elon Musk in charge of a new government department whose name is basically a convoluted crypto in-joke. Wolves on Road centres on the rather more earthbound figure of Manny (Kieran Taylor Ford), a feckless wannabe hustler living with his mum in Bow in the spring of 2021 while frittering away his energy on a series of misguided get rich quick schemes.  Speaking of which: his best friend Abdul (Hassan Najib) has got into crypto, and after a bit of cajoling persuades Manny to do likewise. He spends his last £500 on bitcoin; the next morning he discovers it’s gone up in value tenfold. The boys are hooked, and ingratiate their way into the employment of local crypto entrepreneur Devlin, an agent for cryptocurrency exchange DGX. What Daniel Bailey’s production captures really well is the energy, enthusiasm and underlying societal disaffection of the two puppyish young leads – after directing West End transfer smash Red Pitch, Bailey feels like the absolute go to guy for depicting young Black male camaraderie on stage. Tessema’s dialogue fizzes and pops a treat, but he’s as good at portraying Manny’s flaws as his charm. However, it’s lacking in incisiveness on its subject – ultimately cryptocurrency and its 2021 crash feels more like the backdrop to a story about two pals tha

Ocean Chillingworth has been the low-key force behind various interesting undercurrents in British experimental theatre over the last couple of decades. They’re probably best known as artistic director of the deliciously provocative company GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, and beyond that, the haunting pandemic-era Royal Court work Caretaker, plus a longstanding collaborator with avant-garde performance legends Forced Entertainment. Blood Show is their biggest work to date under their own name, and certainly it has a striking premise: there are allegedly 75 litres of fake blood deployed every evening (which Google tells me is about a bathtub’s worth – it didn’t seem quite that much but it’s definitely A Lot Of Blood) and ponchos are distributed to the audience in anticipation of a possible spraying. Arranged around a pristine white carpet with a pristine white armchair, are three figures, all in pristine white. One is slathered in white body paint; one is drenched in fake blood (under their white clothes). The third is a ghost, or rather it’s a person with a sheet over their head and two eyeholes (I mean it could be a ghost, they never actually take the sheet off).  Eventually the white figure and the red figure indulge in a deftly choreographed fight, which ends with the white figure overpowering and throttling the red one.  There is no time to rinse the increasingly blood-soaked room, but after a while it does repeat, albeit with certain changes. In round two the ghost starts to sing

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

This review is from 2018. The Singing Mermaid returns in 2024.  Stage adaptations of the works of prodigiously popular picture book author Julia Donaldson – she of ‘The Gruffalo’ – are common. But there’s often a problem: Donaldson’s tight, percussive verse is a treat at bedtime, but is over in a few minutes. That inevitably means stage versions are frequently padded to death with songs and schtick. Samantha Lane and Barb Jungr’s puppet adaptation from 2012, ‘The Singing Mermaid’, goes down the song route by default (the clue is in the title). But what Lane’s production loses in terms of the rhythm, it more than makes up for in visual invention, bringing the world illustrated by Lydia Monks to gloriously barmy life. Lyndie Wright’s puppets are both lovely and numerous as we’re regaled with the account of the titular fish lady, lured from her comfortable oceanic life to becoming the star attraction in the sideshow circus of disreputable huckster Sam Sly. The most virtuosic sequence is a seemingly endless series of faintly inept circus acts, all amusing, including a posh tightrope walker, a pair of nervous dogs, and a shock-haired pyromaniac. They’re all beautifully embodied by actor-puppeteers Phil Yarrow, Samantha Sutherland and Lizzie Wort, who effortlessly trade roles and multitask their way through a gentle – but never scary – parable about the ills of greed and the joys of friendship. And the spiky, funny, genre-hopping songs by cabaret artist Jungr are far from the plati

This review is from the Almeida Theatre in January 2023. A Streetcar Named Desire returns in 2025 for a short run at the Noël Coward Theatre before heading for a slightly longer NYC run. Obviously we need to talk about Paul Mescal: the post-fame stage return of the star of ‘Normal People’ and ‘Aftersun’ is the reason the Almeida’s revival of Tennessee Williams’s landmark 1947 play ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ sold its run out instantly (apparently if you queue for day-seats you have pretty good odds of success, FYI). But before that we really, really need to talk about Patsy Ferran. She’s undoubtedly a national treasure in the making – not yet a household name, but if you’ve seen her on stage, you’ll never forget her. However, the odds felt stacked against her in taking on Williams’s doomed protagonist Blanche DuBois, one of the all time great stage roles. Firstly, she is clearly cast against type. Ferran is technically just about the right age for Blanche, who we gather to be in her thirties despite her intense denial of this fact. But the role is typically played by middle-aged actresses, while Ferran still basically looks like a gawky teenager. By any conventional wisdom she should be playing delicate recluse Laura in Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’, and saving Blanche for another decade or two. More practically, Ferran was a last-minute replacement as the lead in Rebecca Frecknall’s revival, after Lydia Wilson dropped out during rehearsals due to injury. While the timefra

There are many things to enjoy about immersive theatre company The Lost Estate’s dinner theatre Dickens adaptation The Great Christmas Feast. There’s also quite a bit to fault – to a large extent logistical problems that may or may not be ironed out later in the run. At its core this is a one man plus musicans take on A Christmas Carol that pays homage to Dickens’s own famed solo performances: stiffed by the feeble Victorian copyright laws, he devoted much of his later years – and health – to spectacularly entertaining one-man readings of his work. The Taylor Swift of his day, maybe.  In The Great Christmas Feast we’re cast as a specially invited audience, who Dickens (Alex Phelps) has brought over to his gaff for dinner and his solo performance of A Christmas Carol. Phelps’s full pelt, unselfconscious performance is good fun, and is occasionally nudged into something really quite sublime by the accompanying violinists and percussionists.  Stefan Rees’s music brings an elegant, sonorous majesty to proceedings that easily compensates for the lack of the usual phantasmagorical special effects. Sat at restaurant-style tables that circle the small raised central performance space, everyone had a good view and there’s a genuine sense of intimacy between audience and performer. The problems come with the food service – the modern British-styled cuisine is pleasant, but it takes a very long time to be served to some parts of the room, and the show really loses momentum between the s

This review is from the Almeida Theatre in August 2024; The Years transfers to the Harold Pinter Theatre in January 2025 with the same cast. What is living if not a sort of time travel? Annie Ernaux’s Booker-nominated book ‘Les Années’ is an artful autobiography that traces her journey from childhood in postwar France to old age in the post-9/11 era.  Elegantly adapted by Eline Arbo – the new boss of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, aka Ivo van Hove’s replacement – English-language stage version ‘The Years’ is a 60-odd year journey through France, the West, women’s liberation and more. But what I really took from it was Ernaux’s vivid wonderment at the fact she existed at all these points in history – life as time travel. In the book this is enabled by the use of the third person, with Ernaux almost offering a historical study of herself, rather than fulfilling the role of a narrator who exists mostly in the present peering back into her past. It’s as much a story about the times she lived through as her speciifc experience. Arbo’s adaptation retains this and bucks cliches about ‘memoir plays’ by having the story’s protagonist diffused into a five-strong collective of black and white-clad women. Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner embody Ernaux throughout her life, with a loose correlation between the age of the actor leading a given scene and Ernaux’s age at the time.  It is a superb ensemble – the performers are charismatic, f

This review is from 2021. The current cast is headed by Ben Joyce (Marty) and Cory English (Doc).  This long-gestating musical version of ‘Back to the Future’ – it has literally taken longer to bring to the stage than all three films took to make – is so desperate to please that the producers would doubtless offer a free trip back in time with every ticket purchase if the laws of physics allowed. It is extra as hell, every scene drenched in song, dance, wild fantasy asides, fourth-wall-breaking irony and other assorted shtick. You might say that, yes, that’s indeed what musicals are like. But John Rando’s production of a script by the film’s co-creator Bob Gale is so constantly, clangingly OTT that it begins to feel a bit like ‘Back to the Future’ karaoke: it hits every note, but it does so at a preposterous velocity that often drowns out the actual storytelling.  As with the film, it opens with irrepressible teen hero Marty McFly visiting his friend ‘Doc’ Brown’s empty lab, where he rocks out on an inadvisably over-amped ukulele. Then he goes and auditions for a talent contest, hangs out with his girlfriend Jennifer, talks to a crazy lady from the clock tower preservation society, hangs out with his loser family… and takes a trip 30 years into the past in the Doc’s time-travelling DeLorean car, where he becomes embroiled in a complicated love triangle with his mum and dad. It is, in other words, the same as the film, with only a few minor plot changes (the whole thing about

London’s most prestigious new writing theatre the Royal Court hasn’t really had a big hit in years. Or it hadn’t until new artistic director David Byrne got off to a rollicking start in his very first season with Mark Rosenblatt’s smash Roald Dahl drama Giant. Sold out for months, the play – which stars US heavyweight John Lithgow as the problematic children’s author – has been the hottest ticket of the autumn.  Hopes of a transfer have been high, but have rather hinged on whether Lithgow – who is 79, not shy of work offers, and lives in America – would be willing to return for an extended run. Well great news: he’s in, as Giant transfers to the West End’s Harold Pinter Theatre next spring for a three-and-a-bit-month stint. Elliot Levey will also reprise his role as Dahl’s publisher Tom Maschler, who attempts to stage an intervention one tense afternoon at Dahl’s rambling country home, in an effort to deal with the fallout from an antisemitic book review his star author has written. The Royal Court run of Nicholas Hytner’s production featured an extremely high powered cast that included Rachael Stirling and Romola Garai - it might be a bit much to hope the entire gang gets back together (though don’t rule it out). But so long as Lithgow is on board as the charming, vicious, contrarian Dahl, we’re all in for a treat.  Giant will run at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Apr 26-Aug 2 2025. For more information go to gianttheplay.com Read our four-star review of its Royal Court run. The

You know how it is: you wait a few months for the next big London theatre sale to come along and then two arrive at once.  To mark that most sacred of consumer festivals Black Friday, there are two major pre-Christmas theatre sales running in London, which is great news for YOU, the theatre loving public.  We wouldn’t presume to say one sale is better than the other, and in essence the difference between the sales seems to be that they have discounts for different shows, so let’s just break it down for you.  The TodayTix sale features exclusive prices for MJ the Musical, The Book of Mormon, Les Miserablès, Guys and Dolls, The Mousetrap, The Play That Goes Wrong, and some pretty cool upcoming work including yet-to-open shows at the National Theatre and Royal Court. And then there’s the London Theatre Direct sale, which in essence takes in the other big West End shows: we’re talking Phantom of the Opera, Hamilton, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Tina, Matilda, Moulin Rouge, The Devil Wears Prada, Magic Mike, Stranger Things, Mrs Doubtfire, Oliver!, Hadestown, Doctor Strangelove, plus more. For whatever reason there is a bit of crossover - they both have offers on Starlight Express and The Lehman Trilogy – but in general imagine there is one colossal London theatre sale of such potency that it had to be divided in two, is the basic idea. It’s difficult to make a general summary of dozens of offers, but if it’s in the sale you can clearly expect to save some money – the long-r

★★★★  The headline names for this brand new musical are its songwriters: Jake Shears from The Scissor Sisters and some guy called Elton John. But though they’ve whipped up a batch of very decent songs – that aspire to sound like ’70s Elton John, and largely succeed – it feels like ‘Tammy Faye’ is very much the creation of playwright James Graham, who wrote the script.  Long the undisputed king of British political theatre, ‘Tammy Faye’ is extremely recognisable as his work, and is perhaps best seen as a sort of irreverent negative to his most recent West End hit ‘Best of Enemies’. Where that delved forensically into the psychosis of America’s revolutionary ’60s, ‘Tammy Faye’ examines the resurgent evangelical scene of the country’s ’70s with the same gleefully geeky eye for detail, albeit with an altogether camper tone. Photo by Marc Brenner It centres on Katie Brayben’s eponymous heroine, a larger-than-life real figure whose big heart and LGBT friendliness marked her out as very different to the fire and brimstone ultraconservatives that constituted her peers, as most disconcertingly embodied here by Zubin Varla’s joyless, controlling Jerry Falwell. What ‘Anchorman’ is to ‘70s news anchors, ‘Tammy Faye’ is to ‘70s evangelicals. In Rupert Goold’s light, nimble production we first meet Brayben’s Tammy at the end of her life, just as she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. The story then bounds back in time to meet her and her boy scout-like husband Jim Bakker (Andrew Rannells)

When top Brit playwright Mike Bartlett isn’t uncannily predicting the future of the monarchy (King Charles III) or the US presidency (The 47th) or adapting the myth of Medea into a smash telly drama (Doctor Foster) he can often be found writing about sex: his last West End show was a splashy revival of his sardonic bisexuality drama Cock. Next year he’ll reunite with Cock director James Macdonald to explore another area of human sexuality with his new play Unicorn, in which the wonderful Nicola Walker will star opposite Stephen Mangan as Polly and Nick, a happily married couple who decide to add a little sparkle into their lives in the form of Erin Doherty’s Kate. Fact fans will be delighted to note that this is Walker and Mangan’s second fictional marriage following hit TV drama The Split, which is also scheduled to return for a special in 2025. With Unicorn billed as ‘explicit, funny and provocative’, Bartlett is a master of taking vaguely awkward topics and spinning acerbic, sideways looks gold out of them – it should hopefully prove an early highlight of 2025. It’ll run at the Garrick Theatre, replacing musical Why Am I Single?, which will close on January 19. Unicorn is at the Garrick Theatre, Feb 4-Apr 26 2025. Buy tickets here.  The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2024 and 2025. Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran return to the West End next year with another round for A Streetcar Named Desire. Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out London newsletter fo

He’s the man of the moment thanks to his role in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 – but next year Paul Mescal will return to a very different previous hit, as the Almeida Theatre’s superb production of A Streetcar Named Desire arrives back in the West End for just three weeks ahead of a transfer to New York. The revival of Rebecca Frecknall’s award-winning, instant sell-out production will see Mescal reunited with his co-stars Dwayne Walcott, Anjana Vasan and – most notably – the mighty Patsy Ferran, whose extraordinary performance as damaged heroine Blanche DuBois was for many the highlight of the massively acclaimed show. Tickets will go in an instant and here’s how you can get them: on Thursday November 14, DMT+ members can buy at 10am. Almeida Supporters and ATG+ members can buy at noon, and anyone who signs up here for priority booking can cop them at 2pm. The remaining tickets will go on general sale Friday 15, but good luck with that. Godspeed! A Streetcar Named Desire is at the Noël Coward Theatre, Feb 3-22 2025. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2024 and 2025. The Almeida has announced its new season. 

In the latest surprise twist in the ongoing evolution of the Westfield shopping centre, a brand new London theatre will open at the Shepherd’s Bush branch next October. That’s not a pop up or any other temporary novelty: the Capital Theatre is a 620-seat permanent venue with an intimate design and a flexible state-of-the-art auditorium that means no audience member should be more than nine rows from the stage. Photo: Dominion Theatre It also looks like relatively serious programming: it’ll open with the musical version of Dirty Dancing, which has been doing the rounds for years but is, nonetheless, a proper, full-length musical – presumably the logic from producers is that there’s an audience out there who wants to combine a London shopping trip with a classic musical, or simply that west London can handle a big commercial theatre. Quite what the future holds for the Capital Theatre will be interesting: will we get actual new work, or relatively safe programming or tried and tested hits of yesterday? There is no indication yes as to what will run after Dirty Dancing, which is booking until the unimaginably distant date of March 2026. Whatever the case, a new theatre for London is always good news. Dirty Dancing is at the Capital Theatre, Oct 23 2025 to Mar 1 2026. Tickets go on sale Nov 8 from here. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2024 and 2025. The National Theatre’s Michael Sheen starring Nye will stream for free. Get the latest and greatest from the Big

The National Theatre’s free streams of classic theatre shows did a lot to keep us sane during lockdown, and while these days you mostly have to pay to access its archive – via its NT at Home streaming platform – it seems to have settled into an annual tradition of giving us one big free play a year, which is nice. Following 2023’s Othello, this year’s big autumn free streamer as part of the Bloomberg sponsored Take Your Seats initiative is Nye, which is playwright Tim Price’s often hallucinatory and weird but thoroughly stirring biographical drama about fiery founder of the NHS Aneurin Bevan, aka history’s most beloved Welshman – played by the redoubtable Michael Sheen – aka the present day’s most beloved Welshman. After a hugely successful run earlier this year, Nye will return to the NT next summer as part of director Rufus Norris’s final season at the theatre, but if you simply can’t wait then worry not: it’ll be streaming for free on the NT’s YouTube channel from 7pm Thursday November 7 to Monday November 11 at 10am.  The play was professionally recorded in front of a live audience for cinema release as part of the NT Live programme, so expect top notch production values and a general good time. Nye will be available to stream for free from here from 7pm Nov 7 to 10 Nov 11. It will also return to the National Theatre Jul 3-Aug 16 2025. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2024 and 2025. Rufus Norris has announced his final season at the National Theatre. Get

Okay, many of us may be a little grumpy with America today, but remember we’re only disappointed with it because we love it – not least for its extraordinary way with musicals. Oftentimes transfers from Broadway to the West End can take years – but in something of a surprise one of the biggest hits of the last season will be heading our way next summer, in the form of Jason Howland, Nathan Tysen and Kait Kerrigan’s adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age masterpiece The Great Gatsby. Hailed by Time Out New York for its ravishing visuals, the musical is a fairly faithful adaptation of Fitzgerald’s oft-adapted novella about Nick Carraway, a bond salesman who becomes such into the glittering orbit of the enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby, who is in love with Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan. Rather than launch a full scale West End run, the production will take on the limited spring/summer slot at the huge London Coliseum (which is an opera house the rest of the year), though presumably if the demand is there it could always transfer to another theatre. It’s possible the lightning fast transatlantic transfer is to head off the second major Gatsby musical currently in the works – Florence Welch’s Gatsby: An American Myth is due to arrive on Broadway sometime soon, and presumably over here too (a slightly awks situation that has arisen due to the copyright on the book expiring in 2021).  As one of the most popular books of all time, there’s surely enough for both takes – and if you

After the maelstrom of celebrity-led openings that was October, November is a very low-key month for London theatre, with a quiet first couple of weeks picking up as they give way to the beginnings of the Christmas season and the first pantos of the year. Which is no problem – there are still dozens of openings, and the slight decrease in massive shows means we can recommend a few of the month’s quirkier offerings.   Photo: National Theatre     1. The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde’s most famous play has gone untouched by London’s major subsidised theatres for decades – not because The Importance of Being Earnest is viewed as a terrible play, but because it looms so large over British culture that the very act of staging it feels like a cliche. And, of course, there’s inevitably a new commercial production every few years. But suddenly, this feels right: with current Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatawa leading the cast, crack support from the likes of Sharon D Clarke as the formidable Lady Bracknell, innovative director Max Webster at the helm and a retina-searingly pink, ultra-knowing aesthetic in the promo pictures, the NT’s big Christmas revival just looks massively fun and like it’ll find a fresh angle on Wilde’s society romp. National Theatre, Nov 21-Jan 25 2025.     2. The Devil Wears Prada An Elton John-penned musical adaptation of the acerbic millennial fashion mag comedy sounds like a dream come true. In fact the first incarnation of The Devil Wears Prada had a

Update: Elvis Evolution will now run from May 2025 with the venue now confirmed as the ExCel Centre, with tickets going on sale from Friday October 25 from here.  Had Elvis Presley not died young then he might well still be with us: it would have been the King of Rock and Roll’s eighty-ninth birthday this year – youthful for somebody who revolutionised the world back in the ’50s and died in 1977.  The decades since his death have seen the legend of the man almost as busy as Presley himself ever was: in the last couple of years alone he’s been the subject of two major films – 2022’s Elvis and Sophia Coppola’s Priscilla. There have also been numerous ‘live’ experiences over the years, most notably the long-running Elvis: The Concert, an ongoing concert tour that began in 1997 and had Presley’s ’70s backing band playing live to recorded footage of the King.  However, as Elvis’s sidemen grow older, technology gets more advanced, and other dead or disbanded musicians rack up critical acclaim for brand-new concert presentation, it seems inevitable that the time is right for the Elvis industry to enter a new, immersive era.  Elvis Evolution is a new show from Layered Reality, the company best known for its long-running London immersive theatre hits The War of the Worlds and The Gunpowder Plot. Made with the full permission of the Elvis Presley estate, it’s due to launch in London later this year and expand to Tokyo, Berlin and, of course, Las Vegas. The exact nature of the experienc

The general consensus is that David ‘not the Talking Heads guy’ Byrne pretty much smashed it with this year’s inaugural season at the helm of the Royal Court, with the influential new writing theatre currently riding high with Mark Rosenblatt’s Road Dahl drama Giant, its biggest hit in years. The consensus was also that the season was, in the best way, probably a bit thrown together, being a mix of fringe transfers and big last minute favours rather than shows that had been specially commissioned for the Court and had time to work through the somewhat lengthy process of writing and staging an entirely new show.  But with a new season just announced that covers Christmas and first half of next year, we’re getting a better look at Byrne’s programming and while many of the projects clearly pre-originate him, the vibe very much seems to be something for everyone, a mix of leftfield and commercial projects, nods to the Court’s history and shows that would have slotted in nicely at his previous theatre the New Diorama. Let’s start with the headlines. Sarah Kane’s final play, 4.48 Psychosis is now regarded as one of the greatest in the theatre’s history, a borderline unstageable avant-garde performance poem-slash-suicide note that was first staged at the theatre by James Macdonald in 2000, 18 months after Kane’s death. And now it’s back for its twenty-fifth anniversary, with Macdonald and the entire original cast reuniting for a new take on the play that’s a co-production with the R

First announced last year, Shoreditch’s new Museum of Shakespeare is proceeding right on time – it has been announced today the building has now been finished, and opening is scheduled for next year. ICYMI, development on a new urban quarter now dubbed The Stage was briefly set back when the ruins of what are believed to have been William Shakespeare’s original, pre-Globe playhouse The Curtain were unearthed. Development on The Stage was reconfigured by the architect Perkins & Will to include the Museum, which is a collaboration with experiential stalwarts Bompass & Parr that will offer visitors an immersive ‘day in the life’ of Shakes in 1598. While this will presumably be relatively high tech, the foundations of the original theatre will be on permanent display under a glass stage that you will get to perform upon. Photo: Timothy Soar We’re a year or so away from the Museum of Shakespeare actually being ready to open its doors to the public and consequently the images released so far are quite light on ‘fun’ stuff, plus it’s important to remember that it’s going to be relatively small and also essentially part of an office development. Nonetheless, if you must keep bunging up new skyscrapers in Shoreditch, then absolutely do put a cool immersive museum in them.  Photo: Timothy Soar The Museum of Shakespeare opens in 2025. For more background, click here. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Ou