Andrzej Lukowski

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.

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.

Hello! I'm Andrzej, the theatre editor of Time Out London, and me and my freelancers review a heck of a lot of theatre. This page is an attempt to distil the shows that are on right now into something like a best of the best based upon our actual reviews, as opposed to my predictions, which determine our longer range what to book for list. It isn’t a scientific process, and you’ll definitely see shows that got four stars above ones that got five – this is generally because the five star show is probably going to be on for years to come (hello, Hamilton) and I'm trying to draw your attention to one that’s only running for a couple more weeks. Or sometimes, we just like to shake things up a bit. It’s also deliberately light on the longer-running West End hits simply because I don’t think you need to know what I think about Les Mis before you book it (it’s fine!). So please enjoy the best shows in London, as recommended by us, having actually seen them.

London’s theatre scene is the most exciting in the world: perfectly balanced between the glossy musical theatre of Broadway and the experimentalism of Europe, it’s flavoured by the British preference for new writing and love of William Shakespeare, but there really is something for everyone. Between the showtunes of the West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector, there’s a whole thrilling world, with well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work. This rolling list is constantly updated to share the best of what’s coming up and currently booking: these choices aren’t the be-all and end-all of great theatre in 2025, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.   They’re shows worth booking for, pronto, both to avoid sellouts but to get the cheaper tickets that initially go on sale for most shows but tend to be snapped up months before they actually open. Want to see if these shows live up to the hype? Check out our theatre reviews. Check out our complete guide to musicals in London.  And head over here for a guide to every show in the West End at the moment.

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.

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 (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 of 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. Here’s where to start. RECOMMENDED: 🎥 The 50 best movies of 2024🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2023📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge

The Christmas holidays have barely ended, but the march of time is relentless and another school holiday is just around the corner: it’s February half-term.   The coldest and wettest of the half terms, it’s also one that seems to boast a uniqely large number of things for kids to do, with the mighty Imagine Children’s Festival at the Southbank Centre probably the biggest annual event in the London kids’ calendar. And even if it didn’t happen: this is London, and there’s a near-infinite number of things for youngsters to do, from enjoying the city’s many kid-friendly museums and galleries that really come into their own when school is out, to taking in one of the many, many children’s theatres that our glorious city and its surrounds have to offer. I’m Time Out’s lead kids’ writer – because I have to amuse my own children over the holidays – and here are my top suggestions for the half-term, from brand new exhibitions and plays to your last chance to see a couple of excellent attractions for younger audiences. When is February half-term this year?  This year, London’s October half-term officially falls between Monday February 17 and Friday February 21 (ie they will continuously be off Saturday February 15 to Sunday February 23).  Whether you’re after some rainy day fun, outdoor play or some budget-friendly free activities for families, London absolutely has you covered. Here’s our roundup of all the best things to do with your children this February half-term. 

Okay, okay: we know it’s not even Christmas yet. But while you’ve been stressing out about buying presents and decorating the tree, we’ve been looking ahead. Because it turns out that 2025 is going to be a bit of a vintage year for the UK, filled with new theatre openings, massive international festivals making their British debut as well as glowed up art galleries and much, much more.  From the highlands of Scotland to the English channel, we’ve rounded up all of the best new things planned for 2025 – plus any really great openings from the end of this year which you’ve probably not got round to checking out yet. We have the great outdoors, we have sport, we have dancefloors, we have booze, we even have sumo wrestling. Use this as an opportunity to get excited for the year ahead: these are Time Out’s best new things to do in the UK in 2025.  RECOMMENDED: 📍 The 25 best new things to do in the world in 2025🏖️ The most underrated city breaks in the UK🏘️ The best Airbnbs in the UK

Kids are expensive. And London is expensive. But taking your kids for a day out in this city doesn’t have to necessitate selling a kidney. With its incredible bounty of free museums, free galleries, gorgeous green spaces and pop-up events, London is one of the best cities in the whole world for free things to do. I’m Andrzej, Time Out’s theatre editor and main kids’ writer, and I have dedicated most of the last decade of my life to trying to parent on a modest budget. And London is truly the place to do it – it is genuinely incredible that our world class museums and art galleries are free. And beyond them is a world of quirkier attractions, from urban farms to gargantuan parks.  So whether you’re looking for inspiration for a budget day out or just want to find something affordable to do with the little ones while you’re in central, please enjoy our top free things to do with kids in London.   RECOMMENDED: 101 fantastic things to do in London with kids.

Oh yes it is: London panto season returns for 2024, and here’s Time Out’s complete rundown of every major pantomime in the city. For some Londoners the only time of year they'll visit a theatre, for others a deliciously weird change of pace, panto season is a bizarre, joyful, quintessentially British time to come together and watch some light-hearted spoof fairytales that heavily 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, the eccentric subject matter of Charles Court Opera’s mini-pantos to JW3’s hilarious Jewish spin that runs on Christmas day. 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 for you. RECOMMENDED: The best London theatre shows to see in 2024 and 2025. The best Christmas theatre shows in London.

It’s true what they say... There’s nothing quite like a freshly cut bouquet when you want to show someone you care. Flowers are classic. They set the scene for every occasion. They’re that pat on the back for landing that new promotion, the floral mood boosters for those just-because moments, the token of love spelt out in a dozen roses (seriously, is it even dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_334076514" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-dropdown-disable-toggle-aria-param="true" data-term-id="334076514" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: #fff2cc;">Valentine’s Day without a giant bouquet of dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_334076522" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-dropdown-disable-toggle-aria-param="true" data-term-id="334076522" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: #fff2cc;">red roses?), and that wow factor at the bridal shower. They’re everything we can’t seem to say all in one beautiful hand-tied arrangement. Clever. Especially if, unlike us, you don’t have a way with words - it’s okay buddy, we’ve got you. While you can find flowers almost anywhere in LA, the kind of flowers that excite you are done by those who know flowers inside out, so we’ve scoured the streets for you and rounded up the best online dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_334076474" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-dropdown-disable-toggle-aria-param="true" data-term-id="334076474" style="box-s

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. 

Superstar director Jamie Lloyd has had an incredible run of somewhat improbable celebrity-led West End smashes, from Martin Freeman in Richard III to Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard. This gargantuan production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest – the first non musical to play at Theatre Royal Drury Lane for decades – does feel like the point where his luck runs out. By which I mean: bagging the UK stage debut of movie icon Sigourney Weaver feels like a coup on paper, but maybe not so much in practice. She’s not embarrassingly bad or anything, but the role of exiled magician Prospero simply feels beyond her – this is a giant theatre, a tricky role, and she’s not done any Shakespeare since the ’80s. She’s not a good verse speaker, delivering everything in a concerned-mom monotone that fails to hold this big, weird play together. Having her on stage constantly – usually seated in a chair, observing the action – feels like a sop to her celebrity that isn’t borne out by her ability. Setting its star aside, Lloyd’s Tempest is an awesome spectacle, in which the island to which Prospero has been exiled is represented by a hulking black hill, part industrial slag heap, part Denis Villeneuve's Dune. The entire production would seem to be set over a single night, and Jon Clark’s astonishing lighting makes the best of that: when magic occurs it looks incredible, glowing weird and bright, like the aliens arriving in Close Encounters. MVP of the whole thing is Mason Alexander Park’s bound

Islington’s hallowed Sadler’s Wells might be London’s only dedicated major dance theatre, but that’s set to change in 2025 when its 550-seat sister venue Sadler’s Wells East opens in Stratford. It’s a boon not only to dance lovers but also to London: considering the number of major theatres the city has, modern dance struggles to get much of a foothold in this city, with the big ballet companies by far the most visible aspect of the genre. A whole second Sadler’s is a serious cultural statement, more or less doubling the amount of interesting contemporary dance work appearing on London stages.   RECOMMENDED: Sadler’s Wells East has announced details of its opening season

Like you, I enjoyed the TV show Normal People without having any sense that I desperately wanted to see its co-stars perform in Tennessee Williams plays at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Rebecca Frecknall. But it turns out we were wrong not to desperately want that.   Two years ago Paul Mescal brought a deliciously mephistophelian edge to A Streetcar Named Desire’s antagonist Stanley Kowalski. And now Daisy Edgar-Jones is truly phenomenal as Maggie, the complicated female lead of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The first act of Tennessee Williams’s 1955 classic is more or less a monologue for Maggie, interspersed by grunts from her booze-addled husband Brick.   It’s basically an opportunity for the actress playing Maggie to show off for an hour and then have relatively little to do for the rest of the play. It has a tendency to attract screen stars wanting to prove their stage chops in one intense burst and then chill out for a bit – Scarlett Johansson was the last Big American Maggie, Sienna Miller the last Brit one.    I guess Edgar-Jones is doing the same, but she is so, so good, inhabiting Maggie with a burning, vivacious swagger, alternatively self-mocking, self-pitying, compassionate and vicious in her diatribe to Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Brick about the wretched state of their marriage. Sometimes she feels like a stand-up comedian, at others a fey spirit. ‘I’m Maggie the cat!’ she repeatedly declares, leaping on the piano or crawling on all fours, and at moments it seems like more

The original NT theatre Hadestwon cast of Reeve Carney (Orpheus), André De Shields (Hermes), Amber Gray (Persephone), Eva Noblezada (Eurydice) and Patrick Page (Hades) will reunite at the West End production Feb 11-Mar 9 2025. What a long, strange trip it’s been. Indie-folk musician Anaïs Mitchell’s musical retelling of the Orpheus story began life in the mid-’00s as a lo-fi song cycle, which she gigged around New England before scraping the money together to record it as a critically acclaimed 2010 concept album that featured the likes of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco on guest vocals as the various mythological heroes and villains. Going through the next 14 years blow-by-blow would be time-consuming, but in short thanks to what I can only describe as THEATRE MAGIC, Hadestown is now a full-blown musical directed by the visionary Rachel Chavkin, its success as a show vastly outstripping that of the record. It played the National Theatre in 2018, on its way to becoming the most unusual Broadway smash of the modern era. And it’s finally come back to us. Now in a normcore West End theatre, its otherness feels considerably more pronounced than it did at the NT. The howling voodoo brass that accompanies opener ‘Road to Hell’ is like nothing else in Theatreland. Mitchell”s original songs are still there but have mutated and outgrown the original folk palette thanks to the efforts of arrangers Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose. Rachel Hauck’s set – which barely changes

Not to boast, but I saw the original US production of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 in a big circus tent in Manhattan and can confirm it was sick. Why it didn’t make it out here I don’t know, but its long-awaited UK premiere has given incoming Donmar boss Tim Sheader one hell of an opportunity for his directorial debut here. It’s an adaptation of a relatively brief chunk of Tolstoy’s War & Peace. And despite considerable artistic license, the musical’s story is defined by the eccentric limitations that only using around 70 pages of the novel imposes. You think it’s going to be a love story about Tolstoy’s iconic characters Natasha Rostova and Pierre Bezukhov? Nuh-uh. Those who have completed the gargantuan tome will know that naive beauty Natasha and world-weary nerd Pierre do get together in the end. But only years after the events depicted here. Indeed, the duo only share a single scene in the musical, which is gorgeously freighted with potential, but nonetheless closes The Great Comet without much being resolved. Instead Malloy uses a remarkable number of devices both lyrical and musical to depict a chaotic time in the lives of two people who think they understand their places in the world, but absolutely don’t. The engine of the plot is Natasha’s move to Moscow and her seduction away from absent fiancee Andrey by the caddish Anatole. Pierre, meanwhile, bumbles about feeling sorry for himself over his shitty marriage to Anatole’s cruel sister Hélè

This review is from the Royal Court in September 2024, Giant transfers to the Harold Pinter in April 2025 with John Lithgow and Elliot Levey returning. ‘It’s complicated’, says unflappable young Kiwi housekeeper Hallie (Tessa Bonham Jones) when her boss Roald Dahl (John Lithgow) aggressively presses her for her opinions on Israel. And it really is. Set in Dahl’s Buckinghamshire home in 1983, the topicality of Mark Rosenblatt’s debut play is startling. Israel has invaded Lebanon, and world-renowned children’s author Dahl has written a review of a book about the war in which his condemnation of the civilian casualties inflicted by Israel has pitched into conflation of the country with Jewish people in general, accusing them of switching ‘rapidly from victims to barbarous murderers’. As Giant begins, the review is causing an unwelcome stir ahead of the release of his new novel The Witches. An intervention of sorts is being attempted by his fiancée Felicity Crosland (Rachel Stirling, no-nonsense) and his publisher Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey, determinedly relaxed), who has roped in holidaying US employee Jessie Stone (Romola Garai, sweet but high-strung) in order to give the impression the American office considers Dahl so important they’re flying somebody out to talk to him. The plan is to persuade him to agree to a puff piece interview with the Mail on Sunday, wherein he’ll play down his remarks, thus ensuring a smooth release for The Witches.  But in the extraordinary performan

‘It is possible to be desperately sad and have fun at the same time’ declare Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole in Sh!t Theatre’s Or What’s Left of Us, and what a mantra that proves to be.  Their first Fringe show is since the pandemic is the wilfully shambolic alt theatre duo’s ‘Nebraska’ or ‘On the Beach’ – a stripped back, folk-inflected work made in response to heartache that is, nonetheless, an essential part of their peerless back catalogue.  At several points, they reference the title – which is best read as Sh!t Theatre (Or What’s Left of Us) – in saying that this isn’t ‘true’ Sh!t Theatre, because things have changed. But when your oeuvre takes in a show about Dolly Parton and mortality (DollyWould), a show about expat culture and state-sanctioned killings in Malta (Sh!t Theatre Drink Run with Expats) and most recently one about Eva Perron and the duo’s doubt about their future (Evita Too) then their latest’s blend of folk music and grief is hardly a stretch.  Indeed, superficially it’s classic Sh!ts, featuring the duo in costume – sort of mediaeval peasant garb with occasional ‘Wicker Man’-style animal heads – and singing songs while regaling us with some recent japes they had (that inevitably take on a deeper meaning as the show wears on).  In this case, they were sad so they really got into folk: much of the show is based around their account of a visit to a legendary Yorkshire folk club, plus various spin off events from their ‘folk revival period’: going to a

The renaissance of the Catford panto under erstwhile Hackney Empire boss Susie McKenna continues apace with this energetic and spikey romp through a relatively esoteric choice of seasonal fairytale.  The setting is Lewishonia, a medieval-style kingdom in which humans and magical creatures live in harmony. It’s bordered by the distinctly Brexity realm of Westminsteria, where ‘magicals’ are banned with extreme prejudice. As the story begins, the newborn Princess Tahlia of Lewishonia has her hand pledged to Prince Gabriel of Westminsteria – but not for another 18 years, when the baby is of age. Unfortunately the evil fairy Carrabosse (Lisa Davina Phillip) wasn’t invited and, long story short, she puts a curse on Tahlia that means she has to spend her entire childhood in hiding.  What McKenna excels at is making great ensemble pantos: so many seasonal shows coast on a couple of fun characters with everyone else as wallpaper. Sleeping Beauty feels like the entire character list has been given thought and care, from the bickering trio of fairy godmothers to Ben Fox’s hapless King Eric the Undecided, Wayne Rollins’s affable audience interlocutor Denzel the Dragon, Martin Harding as Carrabosse’s Shakespeare-pedant henchman Etham, and Hamilton alumnus Roshani Abbey as the take-no-shit Tahlia. Justin Brett’s gangly Dame Nanny Nora is a solid if somewhat-subdued dame, more of a witty sidekick than an out-and-out scene stealer. There’s no denying that McKenna’s greatest foil was Clive Ro

This review is from the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. Cyrano transfers to the Park Theatre for Christmas 2024. This mischievous and somewhat maddening meta adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic verse play has gone down a storm in creator and star Virginia Gay‘s native Australia, and now it’s come o’erseas for a stint at the Fringe followed by one at London’s Park Theatre. The best and most frustrating thing about ‘Cyrano’ is how luckily funny it is when Gay turns her mind to it. Away from the named characters, Tessa Wong, David Tarkenter and Tanvi Virmani are highly amusing as a trio of unnamed minor actors vocally confused about what they’re doing in this play. Bemused by the whole situation they bicker furiously and offer shambolic, often amusingly counterproductive advice to the leads.  In it, ‘Cyrano’ is repurposed as a queer love triangle, with both Gay’s female title character and Brandon Grace’s pretty but dumb-as-rocks Yan vying for the hand of Jessica Whitehurst’s feisty Roxanne. Gay doesn’t wear any prosthesis, but Cyrano’s nose is clearly meant to be big: the other characters discuss it in amusingly mortified tones. Whether it’s more meant to be an allegory for the barrier her sexuality presents to Roxanne I wasn’t entirely clear, but let’s say that’s the case but also an excuse for a few good nose gags. Directed by Clare Watson, Gay’s show is at its best when it’s being spikily subversive, but too often it opts for mawkish sentimentality. Ultimately much of Gay’s innova

Lillian Hellman’s 1939 play The Little Foxes is a bleak study in moral ambivalence and lethally suppressed ambition. Not performed in this country in almost a quarter century, I’d wondered if the passage of time might have made its scheming Southerner protagonist Regina more sympathetic. After careful consideration: maybe. A bit. Spoiler alert, but by the end Regina has torn apart pretty much everyone in her life in an effort to secure the property and power denied to her as a woman by living in the Deep South in the year 1900. Hellman was clearly not unsympathetic on this point, but at the same time Regina was most famously embodied by Bette Davis in the 1941 film as a femme fatale-slash-psychopath-slash-walking allegory for the pernicious effects of capitalism (the author being an actual commie). In Lyndsey Turner’s elegant revival, Anne-Marie Duff is certainly not in any way camp or hammy. Rather, she is icy-cold and laser focused, an apex predator battling her way through a harsh, dangerous capitalist jungle. Her prey is her two brothers – Mark Bonnar’s cruel schemer Ben and Steffan Rhodri’s hapless bully Oscar – and her embittered, wheelchair-bound husband Horace (John Light). Like a lion attacking a herd of buffalo, her success is far from guaranteed and dumb luck aids her machinations to take control of a family cotton mill as much as her killer instinct. But succeed she does, with a cold eyed grimness that’s both satisfying and horrifying.  In a tremendous performance

Last seen in London almost 18 years ago, it’s easy to forget what a phenomenon The Producers was at the time - easily the most hyped musical of the century until the emergence of Hamilton.  Adapted from his own relatively obscure 1967 film, Brooks’s story of two unscrupulous Broadway producers who stage an appallingly bad-taste play about Hitler was the defining show of the noughties. Times have moved on, though: The Producers is less revered than it was in its day, and it’s certainly hard to imagine it returning to its gigantic former home of Theatre Royal Drury Lane.  But that’s beside the point. It’s a coup for the tiny Menier to have scored the first London revival of the show. The run is completely sold out, so it’s a hit, even if the goalposts have shifted a bit (a single show at Drury Lane has higher capacity than a whole week of performances at the Menier). Patrick Marber has never directed a musical before, but his diverse career has prepped him well for this production, with his roots in comedy with The Day Today et al all the way up to his latterday engagement with his Judaism via Leopoldstadt and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. His is a much tougher, grimier take on The Producers than the polished original production – the shabbiness of mid-twentieth century New York is virtually an extra character, and in a career-best tun, Andy Nyman’s unscrupulous protagonist Max Bialystock looks positively Dickensian in his stained waistcoat, grubby jacket an

Finally opening to press a year after its original 2023 run was gutted by company illness and cancelled performances, Simon Armitage’s adaptation of the classic Brothers Grimm story is a real treat, albeit far from a sickly sweet one. Written in droll rhyming verse (what else?), the Poet Laureate’s version of Hansel and Gretel is bookended by narration from a seen-it-all confectionary vendor (Jenni Maitland), whose grungy modern dress sets the tone for a show that’s definitely not set in medieval Germany. There are no specifics on where it is set, but resourceful siblings Hansel (Ned Costello), Gretel (Yasemin Özdemir) and their parents would appear to be living in some wartorn county, or perhaps a refugee camp – you can clearly see a resonance with the Balkans, or Gaza, or dozens of other places, but Armitage is deliberate to avoiding heavy handed parallels.  It’s a set up that offers a more morally nuanced backdrop than usual to the age old question of ‘why did Hansel and Gretel’s parents leave them in the woods?’, and also provides a very different take on the Witch, here entertainingly played by Beverly Rudd as a blustery Manc. It turns out that despite the kids’ fears, she’s actually ’only’ a child trafficker profiteering off the war, with no intention of eating Hansel or Gretel (she just wants to sell them off into slavery).  She does still live in a house made of giant sweets, so don’t worry that Armitage has given everything a gritty backstory. Indeed, Nick Bagnall’s

After seeing 150 or so shows in 2024, I’m done for the year, and resigned to approximately two-and-a-half barren weeks of not seeing any theatre. But then – 2025! If you want a really comprehensive list of all the major shows coming up, then do check out our rolling bookings guide, but here are the six theatre shows from 2025 that I am personally the most excited about. Photo: Empire Street Productions Elektra  Yes, it’s exciting having an Avenger in the West End in the form of Captain Marvel herself Brie Larson (and let’s not forget she’s an Oscar winner too). Celebrities are awesome and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. But I am going to have to give the hipster reason for wanting to see this new production of Ancient Greek tragedy Elektra: it’s helmed by US director Daniel Fish, whose deconstruction of the musical Oklahoma! was one of the best Broadway imports of the last few years. I have no idea what he’s going to do with Sophocles’s millennia-old yarn, but I doubt it’ll be the standard cosy star vehicle. Duke of York’s Theatre, Jan 24-Apr 12 2025. Photograph: Steven CheeCate Blanchett The Seagull By the same token I could now go off on one about how the big appeal of this major production of the Chekhov classic is the opportunity to see legendary German director Thomas Ostermeier’s first original British show. Oh, the cast? Yeah it’s a great cast – Emma Corrin, Tanya Reynolds, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tom Burke… love all those guys. Oh, you mean the person playing vain

Has the excitement of Christmas started to dwindle? Is all you’re left with a pile of torn-up wrapping paper and a handful of blue Quality Streets? Well that’s okay: it’s sales time. And whaddya know, the London theatre world has one of its own, the cunningly named Boxing Day Theatre Sale – partnered with Time Out – which is offering tickets at exceptional prices until January 5. Which makes you the winner, basically. So brighten up these gloomy months ahead and catch some world-class West End theatre for a whole lot less, with tickets available for shows including Stranger Things: The First Shadow, The Tempest (starring Sigourney Weaver), and some of the last performances of the five-star immersive spectacular Guys & Dolls.  If you want to keep that Christmas vibe alive and see something in the next few days, then there are great deals to be had on festive shows like Horrible Christmas at Ally Pally or the Hackney Empire’s pantomime Dick Whittington & His Cat. Or you may want to look further ahead: grab an early bargain on the 101 Dalmatians musical or see Dirty Dancing when it opens at the brant new Capital Theatre in the autumn. Or, more generally, see a show at a nice price: there are more than 60 productions taking part in this promo, so if you want to see shows like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Dr Strangelove, Cirque du Soleil and Mrs Doubtfire for as little as £13, this is your chance. You might want to be speedy though, as tickets do tend to run out pretty quic

Picking out clear trends running through the hundreds of theatre shows staged in London in any given year is an act of madness – there are too many productions, too many theatres, with too many different priorities to really be able to look at the sum total of everything and say ‘ah ha - behold the zeitgeist!’.  That said, 2024 was a good year for Serious Drama in London, and despite the domination of Wicked at the cinema, it felt like a less good year for musicals on stage after last year’s landmark revivals of Sunset Boulevard and Guys & Dolls.  There were certainly big commercial hits for musical theatre: MJ, The Devil Wears Prada and the Starlight Express revival had varying reviews but good box office. It was a joy to have Hadestown back in London, and there were cool off-West End revivals for The Producers and Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.  But there was no single, zeitgeisty song-and-dance show and instead this felt like a good year for big name directors – Benedict Andrews, Katie Mitchell, Sam Mendes, two from Robert Icke, two from Jamie Lloyd –  and serious stage actors: Lesley Manville, John Lithgow, Laura Donnelly. The Europeanisation of the London stage continued slowly but surely, with major shows from Thomas Ostermeier, Ivo van Hove and Eline Arbo’s incandescent The Years was a deliciously out of the blue smash for the Almeida. Shakespeare always has a good year in London, but 2024 was a particularly one for him. Certainly if there was a symbolic m

When Back to the Future director and regular Tom Hanks collaborator Robert Zemeckis released the 2004 animated Christmas film The Polar Express, it was to a world somewhat suspicious of the film’s humongous $170m price tag and its bold attempts to make fully CGI human characters. The passage of time has been kind, though, with subsequent festive re-releases of the Hank-starring seasonal film pushing it into profit, and later generations simply not getting hung up on the question of whether the eyes looked perfect or not. Long story short, 20 years on the film is so beloved that this year a special Polar Express steam train will be running from the most Christmassy place in London: Euston station. It’s essentially an officially licensed immersive experience based on the film – a bit like a posh version of one of those Santa steam trains you can ride in various Kentish valleys at this time of year.  As your train pulls out for a trundle around the Network Rail area (Euston is the start and end point), you can enjoy various skits and scenes based on the film, with songs, characters, hot chocolate, a cookie and a visit from Santa. The show is sold out for 2024, although that bodes well for it returning next year. In the meantime, The Polar Express film is back in London cinemas for the holiday season. The Polar Express Train Ride departs Euston on select dates until Dec 23. Read our review of the classic original film. The 21 best Christmas movies to watch for kids.

After spending the first 70 or so years of his life being aggressively uncool, something seemed to have snapped in Andrew Lloyd Webber with the failure of his 2021 musical Cinderella and the 2023 revival of his Aspects of Love, which was all but run out of town by a pitchfork wielding mob. Hip director Jamie Lloyd had already made a well-received 2019 production of Evita for the Open Air Theatre. But the rapturous reception afforded to Lloyd’s 2023 revival of Sunset Boulevard – currently sitting pretty on Broadway – clearly persuaded Webber to go all in with the tattooed experimentalist. Lloyd has been announced as the director of Webber’s next musical, entitled The Illusionist. And now he’ll be bringing Evita to the West End, where it’ll run at the massive London Palladium next summer. Despite its extremely questionable relationship with historic fact, Evita is widely regarded as Webber’s greatest musical, certainly the best of his collaborations with his most famous collaborator Tim Rice. Taking a somewhat romanticised take on the story of Argentine politician Eva Peron, Evita combines Webber and Rice’s most memorable character with some of their greatest songs – notably ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’, ‘Another Suitcase in Another Hall’ and ‘You Must Love Me’ (famously all hits for Madonna, who did a film version in 1996). Lloyd’s 2019 production was well-received – including four stars from Time Out – but relatively low key by his standards, with no huge celebrity names in i

Made from reclaimed materials and erected as essentially a pop-up during the Olympic-era regeneration of east London, the Yard Theatre was too cool and weird to make an immediate massive splash when it opened in 2011. Time Out was one of the few mainstream publications to regularly visit the theatre in its early days, when its combination of eccentric left-field programming and location deep in the heart of Hackney Wick meant it was rather a hidden gem. That has slowly changed over the years, with the Jay Miller-run theatre establishing itself properly, giving early gigs to the likes of Michaela Coel, Emma D’Arcy, Ncuti Gatwa and the director Alexander Zeldin. It’s always remained left-field, but time, wisdom and Arts Council funding has moved the offering on from the sort of short, mad art experiments of the yearly days. At the same time, the fact a lot of people now live in the neighbourhood now has given it a second life as a nightclub after theatre hours, with upcoming nights including Knickerbocker’s queer dance party NYE edition and the nostalgic nightcore rave Pixelate.  Long story short, however, it’s been stated since the beginning that the Yard was not going to last forever. Next year it’s being torn down following a final production, as Miller directs Tennessee Williams’s great early masterpiece The Glass Menagerie. Image: Takero Shimazaki architects And that will be it… well, kind of. The Yard has assembled a £6.4m fund for its next phase, as it’s scheduled to b

It’s been 17 years since Ewan McGregor starred on the British stage – his turn as the villainous Iago in Michael Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse production of Othello came two years after he’d popped his musical theatre cherry in Grandage’s Guys & Dolls. Then the Scottish actor seemed to be learning, trying out new things after the blockbuster success (but mixed reviews) of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Now he is the master – or rather, he is The Master Builder, as he reunites with Grandage for a new version of Ibsen’s play about a formidable architect whose world is infiltrated by a young woman who says he made a pass at her when she was a young teenager. He denies it, but takes her into his service; her motives are profoundly oblique.  This will not exactly be Ibsen’s play, which like much of his work – notably Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House – is kind of a harbinger of feminist literature, but doesn’t fit the mould perfectly. Rather it’s called My Master Builder and it’s by budding US playwright Lila Raicek, who isn’t especially well known but is starting to make serious waves in the US.  McGregor will star as Henry Solness, an American architect whose fancy July 4 party in the Hamptons is interrupted by the arrival of Mathilde, a former student ‘with whom he previously shared an intimate connection’. Quoth McGregor: ‘It’s such a thrill be returning to the stage – and to work with Michael again, an actor’s director with whom I have had some of my happiest working experiences.

Black Friday is upon us, and London has been blessed with not one but two massive pre-Christmas theatre sales, from TodayTix and London Theatre Direct, which is great news for YOU, the theatre loving public.  We wouldn’t presume to say one sale is better than the other: we’re just happy somebody is out here savinbg you money. But in fact 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-running The Book of Mormon starts at just £25,

December is upon us, and while London’s stages are positively groaning with pantomimes and family-friendly Christmas shows, you can read about those elsewhere. That’s because, quite aside from all the festive fun, Christmas is the season when London fires out prestige dramas like a machine gun – you can’t move for classy celebrity vehicles and enticing new musicals at this time of year. This then, is not a Christmas theatre list, but rather a list of (hopefully) mind-blowing theatre that you happen to be able to see this Christmas - which is, in many ways, the greatest gift of all. Photo: Johan Perssonin rehearsals 1. Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 Living in London, you can be spoiled into complacency over the belief that basically every major theatre production ever will just end up here anyway. And to be fair, you’d usually be correct. However, Dave Malloy’s dreamy folk opera musical adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace is the great one that got away, a slow-burning phenomenon that advanced to Broadway via a glorious whimsical stint being performed in a tent in the middle of Manhattan. It looks like we’ll never get that show: but that’s all the higher to raise the bar for new Donmar boss Timothy Sheader, a formidable director of musicals who makes his debut as director at his own theatre with the hugely anticipated Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. Donmar Warehouse, Dec 7-Feb 8 2025. Photo: Danny Kasiyre 2. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof The Almeida’s in-ho

The Traitors is, of course, the betrayal based reality TV show-slash-gameshow that has gripped the nation via its two Claudia Winkleman-presented series. It’s gripped many nations, in fact: based upon a Dutch original called De Verraders, the format has spread throughout the world, with around 30 incarnations made or in the works, and we Brits have happily gorged on the various English language incarnations while feverishly counting down the days until a third season. None of those countries has an actual live version of The Traitors, however, but that’s just what London is due to get next year with The Traitors: Live Experience. Aside from the fact the Brits are nuts for the show, London has made a huge success of the long-running The Crystal Maze Live Experience, and the The Tomb Raider Live Experience was a huge amount of fun. It also comes hot on the heels of the live version of Taskmaster, another quirky gameshow that’s successfully transitioned into a public version. What can we expect? By all accounts it’ll be pretty damn authentic, with a recreation of the show’s round table, a blindfolded traitors selection process, and tasks that approximate those of the show. There will also be a live host: presumably not Winkleman, but she’s lent a quote of endorsement to the launch press release, which suggests that maybe she’ll be present in pre-recorded form. You can now play ‘Traitors’ in the flesh (if you dare). Of course, it won’t be a series and it sounds like your experien

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

★★★★  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)