Andrzej Lukowski

There are far, far too many one-off, multi-performer comedy nights in London for us to compile a single coherent page with our favouites on, which is entirely to London’s credit. So do check individual bills of comedy clubs online for that sort of thing. But if you’re looking for an individual comedian with a full headline show then this page is here to compile the Time Out editorial team’s top choices, often with our reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Ferbruary is a relatively quiet month after the business of the Christmas season and its aftermath, but there’s still plenty of laugh to be had, from the London debut of Jordan Brookes’s batshit mental Titanic opus Fontanelle, to a last chance to see the live Taskmaster show (for now). The best comedy clubs in London. The best new theatre shows to book for in London.

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.

What is immersive theatre? A glib buzzword? A specific description of a specific type of theatre? A thrase thqat has become so diluted that it’s lost all meaning? Whether you call it immersive, interactive or site-specific, London is bursting with plays and experiences which welcome you into a real-life adventure that you can wander around and play the hero in. I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and let me tell you I have run the immersive gamut, from a show where I had to take my clothes off in a darkened shipping container, to successfully bagging tickets to the six-hour Punchdrunk odyssey there were only ever a couple of hundred tickets released, to quite a lot of theatre productions where the set goes into the audience a bit and apparently that counts as immersive. There is a lot of immersive work in London, some of which is definitely theatre, some of which definitely isn’t, some of which is borderline, some of which is but doesn’t want to say it is because some some people are just horrified of the word ‘theatre’.  This page has been around for a while now and gone through various schools of thought, but the one we’ve settled on for now is that the main list compiles every major show in London that could reasonably be described as ‘immersive theatre’, while the bottom list compiles a few of our favouite immersive shows thet you probably wouldn’t describe as theatre though it is, naturally a blurry line. Whatever the case you can mostly only really decide w

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

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.

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.

L.A. covers a mindbogglingly massive volume of land (and for that matter, ocean too). So it’s no surprise that Los Angeles packs in an enormous number of world-class attractions. If you’re a tourist looking out for things to do, you’ll have no problem finding vacation inspiration, from Hollywood tours to a day at one of the city’s best beaches. And locals might very well find ways to fall in love with the city all over again in our extensive list of the best Los Angeles attractions. RECOMMENDED:📽️ The best studio tours in Los Angeles This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, click here.

He’s undisputably the greatest playwright to have ever lived. He’s the most performed playwright in history. But which of William Shakespeare’s plays do twenty-first century Brits actually like the most? Back in 2016, we marked the celebrations around the four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death by asking the public to vote on what they thought the best of his works were.  It was an intersting one: which of the Bard’s plays would win? The endlessly staged blockbusters like A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The ‘critics’ choice’ that is Hamlet? Or maybe one of the cult, lesser-known ones – an unexpected upset from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, perhaps? Here's how the top ten actually turned out in our ultimate Shakespeare play-off. Time Out London theatre homepage. The best London theatre shows to book for in 2025.

The West End has a reputation for being expensive, and the best shows can look like they’re sold out. But have no fear: there are cheap theatre tickets to almost every show in London, that can be purchased at the last minute… if you know how to get them. Here are our tips on where to find them, how to get cheap London theatre tickets, and the best ways to get last minute tickets to sold out London theatre shows. If you’re planning a visit to London and want to combine a show with a hotel stay, check out the best hotels in the West End. If you want to know what musicals are currently or soon to run in London, take a gander at out musicals round-up.

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

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. 

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.

This review is from the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. High-concept verging on slightly terrifying, comic Jordan Brookes’s latest is show is about the not uncommon subject of getting older. Kind of. In a way. Brookes’s response to the ongoing passing of his thirties is, apparently, to get really into the story of the RMS Titanic, ‘because that’s the sort of thing that people do’. Perversely, Fontanelle takes its name from a digressionary passage in which Brookes goes off on one about his fascination with the titular soft bit of babies’ heads and how if adults still had it, it would probably get used as a really dumb suicide button. If we’re saying everything has its place here, then I think the inference is the Titanic is what Brookes has gotten into in lieu of having children of his own to focus on. But that may be overthinking it. And the show really is quite a lot about the Titanic.  Coming out wearing what turns out to be a miniature captain’s hat the actual boat, the film and most crucially the relatively obscure stage musical all feature heavily in the material. Brookes apparently made a three hour round trip to see the musical in Southampton and thought it was shit, and therefore decided he'd write his own, which we’re subjected to in increasingly larger, madder doses as the show wears on. There are things about Fontanelle that it would be unfair to spoil. But easiest to say that it’s remarkable Brookes thinks of this stuff and even more so that he has managed to actu

At some point in the early ‘90s I formed a team at my primary school and filled in the application form to enter the fantasy peril-based kids TV game show Knightmare. We were not selected, or even replied to. It was devastating. But what if you could simply pay to be a participant in your favourite game show? I don’t mean that to sound grubby: Taskmaster the Live Experience does not involve you slipping Channel 4 a bung (though it’s not cheap - more on that later). But it is a lavish immersive recreation of ‘Little’ Alex Horne’s delightful absurdist game show, currently on its 18th series, having blossomed from cult beginnings on Dave to fully fledged C4 mainstay. Or rather it’s a recreation of the fun bit - the ridiculous, clever, infuriating tasks that happen in the so-called Taskmaster House, as opposed to the bit where the season’s comedian participants sit in the court of the Taskmaster, aka Greg Davies. Given that anyone willing to pay £50-£100 for a ticket to Taskmaster the Live Experience is surely going to be familiar with the source material then it can afford to avoid bogging us down in context or rules or the undue focus on the contestants. We’re here to do some Taskmaster games because we like Taskmaster and think it looks fun. The key thing is to make it funny as well. I’m not going to spoil what any of the tasks actually involve. But while somewhat ridiculous they are not necessarily particularly hilarious in and of themselves. Unlike the show, you can’t rely o

This review is from the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. ‘So much to catch up on!’ gasps Ania Magliano at the start of her latest set and yes, that’s very much how it feels.  ‘Forgive Me Father’ is the young rising star’s third Edinburgh show in three years and her great gift is that where so many comedy sets can feel thematically laboured, Magliano really does come across as a pal getting us up to speed on whatever’s been going on in her life. Last year’s ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’ was about a catastrophic haircut she got. ‘Father Forgive Me’ is kind of about moving in with her boyfriend, finding it weird, and concluding she needs her coil removed to sort her mood out. (Her father is touched on, though one suspects the show evolved after she came up with the title). As with ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’, Magliano excels at making herself both the hero and the villain of her own superficially simple but in fact exquisitely crafted stories. Teething problems when moving in with someone new are understandable. But she manages to to be both essentially relatable and to steadfastly painting herself as kind of a dick: from an opening section in which she stews over the fact her boyfriend dared to go out with somebody else for eight years, to her unreasonably snapping at him for trying to be nice to her, to say nothing of her unilateral, medically unsupported decision that her coil is the issue, she is relatable but not necessarily in a way we’re entirely proud of. Not toxic or

Located deep in the glaring white marble innards of the intimidatingly swanky Corinthia Hotel in Whitehall, Velvet certainly lives up to its name: once you’ve actually found it (you have to walk through half the hotel, a flower shop and another bar to get there) there’s more of the titular fabric draping the room than in Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge. It’s rather less scary, though: instead of backwards-talking dwarves, there’s intimate cabaret seating and a covers singer. Plus: an extensive champagne list, posh bar snacks, and the main event – a cocktail list designed by Italian booze maestro (and longtime London fixture) Salvatore Calabrese. If you like your cocktails high concept, this is the place for you – every drink is named after an ‘inspirational’ public figure (be warned, there are some tech bros included) and every one comes with some clever twist or other, be that in the cocktail itself, the bespoke vessel it’s served in, or both. Order this Okay, The Bored Child is nominally inspired by Elon Musk and costs £50. But hear me out: it’s served in a small car and actually consists of three full-sized drinks, those being increasingly filtered variants on the same sublime whisky-centric blend (the last is totally clear in colour). It is the quintessential piece of drink theatre on a menu in which every entry is deliciously heavy on the razzle dazzle. Time Out tip Open until 1am it is, by design, very much a late bar – things are really only just getting jumping around 10pm

Herman Melville’s hallucinogenic magnum opus Moby-Dick is very obviously impossible to compact into 85 minutes of theatre. Quite aside from the question of getting all the story into that amount of time (you can’t) then it’s also kind of the point of Moby-Dick that form follows narrative and that it’s a sanity-testing endurance test for the reader as much as for its narrator Ishmael. Eighty-five minutes into the book, and cursed whaling vessel the Pequod hasn’t even set sail yet. Those caveats all accepted, this puppet-based show from French-Norwegian company Plexus Polaire is a remarkable spectacle, that channels some of the novel’s cracked cosmic wonder, horrified awe at nature and fascination with the depths of human obsession. Directed by Yngvild Aspeli, it breaks the gargantuan story down to a few vivid vignettes. Bona fide Bostonian actor Julian Spooner stars as Ishmael, the story’s narrator, and the only fully human performer in the show. Everyone else, from crazed Captain Ahab to doomed cabin-boy Pip is portrayed by eerie (mostly) human sized puppets. With their vacant eyes and grim, craggy faces they look like the crew of a voyage of the damned – which is of course about right. At points the fanatical Ahab – obsessed with killing the eponymous white whale – is whispered to by skull-faced figures who seem to represent his own death-obsessed insanity. White-clad musicians alternate atmospheric washes of keys and lulling wordless vocals with howls of discordant electric

Weird tragicomedy Cymbeline is one hell of a play to choose for your Shakespeare debut, and rising star director Jennifer Tang somewhat flubs it with a fussy, high-concept take that does nothing to rationalise Shakespeare’s borderline-ludicrous plot. Here, Ancient Britain is recast as a matriarchal society, with an odd, seemingly Maori-ish-but-everyone’s-wearing-trainers aesthetic, copious amounts of male-to-female gender swapping (including titular monarch Cymbeline), and every religious exclamation changed from ‘Jupiter’ to ‘Gaia’. This is not an uninteresting idea to explore, not least because there is considerable evidence that pre-Roman Britain was a matriarchal society. The trouble is that’s not the play that Shakespeare wrote, and while his writings are nothing if not malleable, it feels like Tang has imposed specificities on Cymbeline that simply don’t work with the text. The biggest problem is Nadi Kemp-Safi’s Posthumus. Here the wife – rather than husband – to Cymbeline’s daughter Innogen (Gabrielle Brooks), Posthumus gets banished by her mother-in-law and heads into exile to hang out with the all-male Romans. But it’s hard to really understand why this polite young woman agrees to a wager with Roman cad Iachimo (a deliciously smarmy Perro Niel-Mee) over whether he can bed Innogen, and furthermore it seems totally uncharacteristic for Posthumus to attempt to take out a hit on his beloved after being presented with some pretty flimsy evidence of her infidelity.  Of c

What is Bubble Planet? Having opened at the tail end of 2023, Bubble Planet is another manifestation of the popular phenomenon that I’m calling Instagrammable immersive family experiences. This one is a particularly close kin to the now defunct Balloon Museum. Where is Bubble Planet? Located in the increasingly culturally vibrant Wembley Park, I’m about 75 percent certain it’s in the same building the last Secret Cinema show was in, just a few minutes walk from the station. What happens at Bubble Planet? The theme is nominally bubbles, though this is interpreted extremely freely, from a balloon room and a ball pool, to a computer generated ocean and a VR experience, both of which do technically feature bubbles. There is a lot of descriptive text on the wall, but it’s mostly waffle rather than anything you need to pay attention to. Is it any good? God help me, I have been to a lot of these things with my children and maybe I’m developing Stockholm Syndrome but I’d say Bubble Planet is the best example in London of This Sort Of Thing: I have literally seen some of these rooms (or something very close to them) before, but not in a combination that so conspicuously maximises the fun. Unburdened by the weird artistic pretensions of the Balloon Museum or the penchant for padding out the attraction with rubbishy little rooms where not much happens a la most of the other experiences, Bubble Planet all killer no filler, if by ‘killer’ you mean ‘room full of giant balloons that keep bu

Kyoto, by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, is so indecently entertaining it almost feels like the result of a bet to choose the dullest, worthiest subject imaginable and make it as fun as humanly possible. The duo’s second play together – following 2017’s The Jungle – is about the Kyoto UN climate change conference of 1997, at which every country on the planet eventually agreed to curb its greenhouse emissions. It doesn’t make you a climate-change skeptic to think that sounds boring. But the secret is that Kyoto is actually a play about a total bastard. Don Pearlman was a real oil lobbyist whose finger prints were all over climate conferences in the ‘90s. Rather brilliantly, Murphy and Robertson have made him their protagonist: it’s not a worthy play about well-meaning people trying to stop climate change; it’s about one man and a shady oil cartel’s efforts to make sure nobody does anything about it. US actor Stephen Kunken is terrific as Pearlman, who we first meet in a scene set at George HW Bush’s inauguration. A junior official for the Reagan administration, lawyer Pearlman has vague plans to go on an extended break with his long-suffering wife Shirley (Jenna Augen), but is instead approached by a shady cabal of black-robed oil executives representing the so-called Seven Sisters, who warn him that an environmental pushback against Big Oil is brewing. Skeptical at first, Pearlman attends some sleepy late ’80s climate conferences and concludes the Sisters are right, and that h

Corteo is quintessential Cirque du Soleil, insofar as it has a clear, simple and alluring theme that it flubs totally, but has such jaw-dropping set pieces that you don’t exactly leave with dramaturgical quibbles at the front of your mind. And by ‘jaw-dropping set-pieces’ I mean there’s a bit where the audience is invited to bounce a performer of diminutive stature strapped to four large inflatable balloons around the Royal Albert Hall as if she were a human volleyball. Is that… okay? I’m going to be honest, it didn’t feel 100 percent okay to me, although one-metre tall Ukrainian performer Valentyna Paylevanyan seemed to be having fun. Nonetheless, I’m unlikely to forget it, even if I wanted to: and that’s Corteo, baby! Created and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, the show is apparently influenced by nineteenth century Italian clowning, and is possibly set at the funeral of Stephane Gentili’s Mauro the Dreamer Clown, although it is often very hard to tell. ‘Whose funeral is this?’ somebody asks at one point, during one of the brief bits that actually look like a funeral. ‘I don’t know’ replies another, which possibly looks a bit Beckettian on paper but in fact pretty much sums up how half baked the concept is. Clown funerals are a thing! Why not do something coherent with the idea? A circus show doesn’t need a story per se, but Corteo’s refusal to explore its own premise is so pathological it speaks of demand avoidance. Still, if you’re here for setpieces, Corteo delivers - t

In an era where even Andrew Lloyd Webber has concluded he needs to move with the times, West End super producer Cameron Mackintosh remains obstinately grounded in the twentieth century. That’s not to say the man’s a dinosaur: he’s the UK producer of Hamilton, for starters. But he has a core of shows that have been in his stable for decades, that he returns to semi-frequently and sometimes claims to be reinventing. Really, though, the new takes on Miss Saigon, or Mary Poppins, or Les Mis are the equivalent of giving an old trophy a good buff and polish – you might make it sparkle a bit more, but it’s the same trophy.  Mackintosh was not the first producer of Lionel Bart’s all-singing Charles Dickens smash Oliver! – he was 13 when it opened – but he did produce a 1977 revival that was totally faithful to the original 1960 incarnation, down to using the same sets. He revived it once again in the ’80s, then did a new version in 1994, which was brought back in 2008. Now we have a ‘fully reconceived’ take from two old Oliver! hands: Mackintosh and director Matthew Bourne, the choreographer on the last incarnation.  Bourne is best known for sexy gothic dance pieces, and he certainly brings his full gothic sexiness to bear here: a cumulonimbus-worth of dry ice seeps through the inky recesses of Lez Brotherston’s brooding multilevel Victorian London sets. Sweeney Todd’s barbers could plausibly be just ariound the corner. Bourne’s choreography is not very ostentatious, but there are a

Like many a boomer child, Tom Hanks was smitten with the Apollo moon landings; but Tom Hanks being Tom Hanks, he never became unsmitten. The most beloved man in Hollywood has been nurturing a lunar side hustle for some time now: as well as starring in the film ‘Apollo 13’, he’s been involved in lower-key works, producing the HBO miniseries ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ and co-writing the IMAX film ‘Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D’. Staged in Kings Cross’s new, projection-based performance space Lightroom, ‘The Moonwalkers’ is essentially a documentary with bells on, a collaboration between Hanks and the venue, with a script co-written by the actor and Christopher Riley. It is, naturally, narrated by Hanks. Although it makes a point of looking forward to next year’s Artemis mission – the first manned flight to the moon since 1972 – ‘The Moonwalkers’ is a homage to both the Apollo landings and the wonder the Apollo landings instilled in the world.  Starting with JFK’s rousing ‘we choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard’ speech, it’s upbeat and America-centric, but well-judged. The main action and most spectacular visuals are projected on the room’s huge front wall, but the side walls cram in smaller details: the female mathematicians – many of them Black – who made the project possible are duly credited, which they certainly weren’t when I was young (or at the time of the landings,for that matter). There’s no contextualising talk

This review is from the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. This smart satire from Kelly Jones follows Abigail (Nicole Sawyerr), a struggling young working class playwright whose mum has just died. The cost of the funeral her mum wanted is £4,000 - which Abigail can in no way afford, not least because the Royal Court-coded theatre she was under commission for to write a play about gay termites in space (!) has decided to back out. But the theatre’s smarmy artistic director suggests they might be more receptive if she can come up with something closer to her ‘authentic’ debut play. My Mother’s Funeral isn’t so much about funerals as it is working class dignity. On the one hand, Abigail has an easy way out of her bind: allow the council to handle things. But she won’t, because she sees it as a ‘pauper’s funeral’ and because she loved her mum and they had a discussion once about what type of funeral she’d like and Abigail wants to honour that. On the other hand, there’s a ludicrously complicated way out: the theatre isn’t interested in her original ideas but is extremely excited about the prospect of her stripmining her roots for more material. In a desperate effort to extract some money out of them to pay for the funeral, she proposes to belittle herself by writing a play… about her mum’s (hypothetical) funeral, attempting to bounce the theatre into commissioning it before her 14 days to release the body from the morgue are up. The fundamentals of Jones’s play are very strong, as is Sawyerr

The Traitors has just wrapped up its blockbuster third series on BBC One, and while a fourth series and celebrity special have been confirmed, they seem unlikely to appear any time soon (they’re not shooting until this summer).  But forget about watching a new set of Traitors and Faithful relentlessly overanalysing each others’ actions: what about joining in the fun yourself? Well, if you luck out you could in fact go on the Claudia Winkleman-fronted smash: entries are now open to be a contestant in the next season – and you can find out how to enter here. Statistically, however, you’re going to have to accept that it’s not that likely you’ll get on (sorry if that’s hard to hear, but there it is). However there should be more than adequate recompense for the Traitors-loving masses this summer with the launch of The Traitors: Live Experience, a new venture from immersive theatre maestros Immersive Everywhere that will seek to channel the magic of the show into a single evening’s experience, with you as one of the contestants.  There won’t be a fancy castle and you won’t be staying overnight. But the official collab between the show and Immersive Everywhere will recreate the iconic Round Table, and include side challenges, a live host and the all important challenge of trying to unmask the traitor in your group of players. The company has produced official immersive tie-ins with Doctor Who and Peaky Blinders; this should hopefully be a doddle, especially as at its heart The Tra

All good things come to those who wait, and boy have we been waiting a long time for Soho Theatre Walthamstow. The sister venue to central London’s beloved Soho Theatre has been in the works since before the pandemic, but finally we know when it’ll be upon us: that is it say – May 2, when it’ll reopen with a run for LA clown genius Natalie Palamides’s superb new show Weer. Formerly the Walthamstow Granada cinema – beloved by Alfred Hitchcock – in its 1930s zenith it was a huge draw, with its single screen having a capacity just shy of 2,700, many times more than any single screen in the UK today. It continued as a cinema until 2003, and has been in an awkward limbo for much of the last two decades: an evangelical church purchased it with the intention of turning it into a religious building, but a local campaign saw those plans off (planning permission was denied); it spent five years as eccentric Antic pub Mirth, Marvel and Maud (yes, that was its name) before Waltham Forest purchased the building in 2019 to facilitate the new Soho Theatre venue. The big question in the years since it was announced is what precisely will the programming be like? Though dating back to 1969, the original Soho Theatre has found a twenty-first century niche as a comedy venue first and foremost, with a side-helping of leftfield cabaret and theatre. Its warren-like series of studios and penchant for late night programming give it a sort of permanent festival vibe, with many hip comedians bedding i

One of the great things about living in London is that if you hear of an incredible US theatre show that you’d love to cross the pond to catch but can’t justify the expense then no worries – it’ll inevitably end up here at some point. And transferring faster than most is David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, which last year racked up the most Tony Award nominations for any play in history. Written in collaboration with songwriter Will Butler – previously of Arcade Fire – the drama is about the tense 1976 recording sessions for the new album by a Anglo-American rock band riven by personal conflict and damaged relationships, but on the cusp of making a truly monumental record.  In other words Stereophonic is a fictionalised account of the making of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and by all accounts it’s wonderful: Time Out New York gave it five stars twice as it worked its way up from the small Playwrights Horizons to the bigger John Golden Theatre on Broadway. TO New York theatre editor Adam Feldman described it as ‘a richly satisfying multitrack production’. Having won five of its 12 Tony nominations Stereophonic closes on Broadway this weekend after a limited engagement, and next it’s coming for us. Three of the original cast members – Andrew R Butler, Eli Gelb and Chris Stack – are confirmed for the Daniel Aukin-directed production. Going straight into the West End, Stereophonic may not hit peak hype over here until the reviews are out – you’re advised to skim the US notices and book in ea

If you were around Scotland last summer you may have been lucky enough to catch the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it inaugural run for Northern Irish playwright David Ireland’s The Fifth Step, which embarked on a two-week tour of Dundee, Glasgow and the Edinburgh International Festival, where it opened to warm notices. It was a pretty fleeting return to the stage for its star, the Scottish actor Jack Lowden, who first made his name in the wildly acclaimed Scottish play Black Watch, and has gone on to wider success on screen, most notably his lead role in Apple TV’s hugely acclaimed Slow Horses. Two weeks trotting around Scotland is, after all, a pretty low key way to mark his post-Slow Horses stage return, but it turns out the 2024 run was just a warm up – this spring The Fifth Step transfers to the West End. And while Lowden reprises the role of Luka, a newcomer to Alcoholics Anonymous, there’s a major piece of recasting as fellow big name Martin Freeman takes on the part of Luka’s newly-appointed mentor James, who has secrets that may imperil both of their recoveries. The caustic Ireland’s second major London show after 2023’s Woody Harrelson-starring Ulster American, expect extreme provocation from the 90-minute show, which is directed by Finn den Hertog. The Fifth Step is at @sohoplace, May 10-Jul 26. Click here to book tickets. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025. Rosamund Pike, Clive Owen and more star in the National Theatre’s summer season.

This Easter to early summer you’ll be able to take a step back 3,000 years into the past with the exhibition Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition. We’re promised ‘cutting-edge technology with rich historical narratives’ from the exhibition, which has been touring the globe for some time – apparently 1.8m people have seen it – and now makes its UK debut for 14 weeks only from March 28. Using splashy projections and computer technology, the exhibit will be divided over six galleries, each of which will bring the maximum amount of razzle dazzle to bear on the time of the Pharaohs. Made in consultation with the History Channel and endorsed by the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, you’ll be able to experience such thrills as an immersive movie about the discovery of the tomb, a VR experience taking you ‘into the Egyptian afterlife’ and an AR walk through the Valley of Kings.  Photo: Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition Clearly the whole thing is somewhat lurid – which is exactly why it looks like great fun for families, whose younger members might chafe at the prospect of examining some thousands of years old statuettes for the afternoon (there are in fact some of those) but are bang up for hanging out with a slew of animal-headed deities.  The show will run at ImmerseLDN, a new venue within the sprawling ExCel Centre in the Docklands that will also play host to a new immersive Elvis show later this year.  Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition is at ImmerseLDN, Mar 28-Jun 29. T

Although the general details of Rufus Norris’s final four plays as artistic director of the National Theatre were announced last year, it’s finally time for the end. Literally: not only are these his last bits of programming before being succeeded by Indhu Rubasingham later this year, but his final play will be End, by David Eldridge, a cool conceptual flourish but also an entirely legitimate conclusion to Eldridge’s trilogy of Norris-era relationship dramas that began with 2017’s smash Beginning and continued with 2022’s Middle. It’s a slightly eccentric ‘season’, stretching from July to the end of the year, but with no shows in the NT’s biggest venue the Olivier, only one in the medium Lyttelton, and three going into the smaller Dorfman – presumably the fact the Dorfman is currently closed for urgent upgrades has had an impact on the shape of Norris’s final programming, and presumably we can expect Rubasingham’s first Olivier and Lyttelton shows this autumn. Anyway: that Lyttelton show is the much anticipated Inter Alia (Jul 10-Sep 13), which will see Susie Miller and Justin Martin – writer and director of the Jodie Comer-starring smash Prima Facie – reunite for a drama about a female high court judge trying to live a normal life out of the spotlight. Big name Rosamund Pike will make her NT debut as judge Jessica Parks. Photo: National Theatre It’ll run at the same time as the first of the Dorfman plays. The Estate (Jul 9-Aug 23) by first time playwright Shaan Sahota is a

UPDATE: You Me Bum Bum Train will now run until April 2025 – you can register to enter the ticket lottery for the new dates here, up until the end of February 1 – good luck! The last time I saw Morgan Lloyd and Kate Bond – creators and curators of the immersive phenomenon that is ‘You Me Bum Bum Train’ – it was to conduct an exclusive interview announcing the iconic show’s return after four long years. Unfortunately this was March 2020, and the ‘YMBBT’ comeback ended up being scuppered by the pandemic before it was even publicly announced. ‘It was heartbreaking and it was almost the end,’ recalls Lloyd over email, in another exclusive interview announcing the iconic show’s return after eight long years. In the end, it was not the end. And indeed while the scrapped 2020 version had been intended as a slightly different take on the show, this is old school, classic ‘Bum Bum Train’. ‘There were two main drivers for bringing the show back,’ says Lloyd. ‘One, a few pieces of creative thathave been haunting us. There was one idea that wouldn’t leave us alone (because it was special) and it felt like it was our responsibility to make it happen. And two, really valuing and mourning the loss of the unique community who come together to manifest the show.’ What is ‘You Me Bum Bum Train’? The basic idea is fairly easy to explain: it’s an immersive theatre show for one audience member at a time, and each of these so-called ‘passengers’ goes through a series of different rooms, each of wh

Somewhere between a theatre, a cinema and an art gallery, the Lightroom in King’s Cross has proven to be one of the more interesting venues to have opened in London in recent years. While its first show – David Hockney’s Bigger & Closer – suggested it might end up as a posh version of one of those iffy pop-up immersive Van Gogh shows, subsequent work has been dominated by blockbuster immersive documentaries on the moon landings and Vogue magazine, with a big family friendly dinosaur show coming up this summer. But before that: Coldplay!  The prolific indie pop titans have been hinting at a visual project entitled A Film for the Future since 2019, and it’s finally due to arrive on January 22 with a special immersive run of 360 screenings at the Lightroom.  In essence, last summer the Chris Martin-led band gave over 150 artists short clips of their then unreleased new album Moon Music, with their only direction being to create a visual response to whatever they heard. The film is essentially all the art combined with a playback of the whole album, as overseen by Ben Mor, who directed the video for the band’s 2016 Beyoncé collab Hymn for the Weekend. Mor has described it as ‘a kaleidoscopic patchwork quilt’ and clearly on one level the whole thing sounds kind of nuts. But there is little denying that it’s going to be outrageously visually stimulating, especially blown up to a gargantuan scale with the Lightroom’s weapons grade projectors and sound system (a 360° screening basicl

Unquestionably the British musical hit of the last decade, Six has been a remarkable homegrown success story, a short, sassy, electro-pop inflected burst of attitude by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss that sees the six wives of Henry VIII face off against each other in an extremely entertaining diva-off. Since debuting at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 in its original student production incarnation, it has gone on to remarkable things, taking the West End by storm, then Broadway – it’s incredible to think that our former monarch’s deranged love life is still sparking this level of discourse. And now it’s going global, or at least it could do: a feature film of Six wouldn’t really make sense as it doesn’t really have a plot (it would still basically be a concert), but coming to cinemas from Easter is a specially filmed performance, recorded at the Vaudeville Theatre. Filmed last year, it marks a special reunion for the six original West End queens – that’s Jarnéia Richard-Noel (Catherine of Aragon), Millie O'Connell (Anne Boleyn), Natalie Paris (Jane Seymour), Alexia McIntosh (Anna of Cleves), Aimie Atkinson (Katherine Howard) and Maiya Quansah-Breed (Catherine Parr). Distributed by Universal Pictures, it will hit cinemas from April 6 – if it’s anything like the average filmed theatre release you can expect it to keep popping up on screens every now and then for the next several months or even years rather than simply receiving a single push. Six the Musical hits cinemas from Apr 6, a

After the pandemic derailed her 2020 plans to star in classic musical Hello, Dolly! we had to wait a full four years for stage and screen legend and all round national treasure Imelda Staunton to finally bring it to the West End. But with her role as the elder incarnation of Elizabeth II in The Crown now fully wrapped up and no longer consuming her time, Staunton is returning to the London well under a year after Hello, Dolly! closed, to reunite with its director Dominic Cooke for a revival of the George Bernard Shaw classic Mrs Warren’s Profession. And this time she’s brought family. Staunton’s actor daughter Bessie Carter has been carving out a name for herself mostly on screen, with her most notable role probably that of Prudence in Bridgerton. This year she flexes her West End muscles for the first time, as the real life mother and daughter star as fictional mother and daughter the Warrens in Shaw’s great drama about the generational clash between the very ‘modern’ Vivie, determined to carve out an unconventional career for herself as a lawyer, and her mother Kitty, who believes in profiting from the old, patriarchal order. Photo: Andrew JamesBessie Carter It’s the third show Cooke has directed Staunton in – after Hello, Dolly! and the National Theatre’s sublime Follies – but the first non-musical. Whatever the case, it should be a treat: Staunton is one of those performers so good that pretty much everything she touches turns to gold. Mrs Warren’s Profession is at the

January is probably the weirdest month in the London theatre calendar. On the face of it, it’s pretty damn quiet, with only August having fewer openings. But in fact most of the big celebrity-tastic December openings are still running for a month or two – it’s actually a pretty busy month for theatre if you scratch the surface – you may even catch the tail end of the pantomime season if you hurry. An intriguing trend for 2025 is that the month’s two biggest new openings – Titanique and Oliver! – did in fact quietly run over Christmas in preview form, but are only opening for review this month when there’s less competition for column inches. They’re the big news in a month that also includes start of year mainstays Cirque du Soleil and MimeLondon, plus a smattering of fun, fringier fare. Photo: Mark Senior 1. Titanique Ever wanted to see the story of the Titanic from the perspective of Celine Dion, who was definitely there? Well if so you’re in luck, with the UK premiere of this deliciously ridiculous, nuclear-grade camp cabaret musical, which has been a smash on Broadway and now comes to lighten up our January gloom. The premise is exactly as described, with a jukebox songbook that mixes up the greatest hits of la Dion with a handful of other pop smashes in the same ballpark. Criterion Theatre, booking to Mar 2. Buy tickets here. Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage 2. MimeLondon 2025 Although it’s a relative shadow of its days as the larger London International Mime Festiv

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. Buy tickets here. 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 p