Andrzej Lukowski

To say that William Shakespeare bestrides our culture like a colossus is to chronically undersell him. Over 400 years since his death, the Stratford-born playwright is virtually uncontested as the greatest writer of English who has ever lived. Even if you’re not a fan of sixteenth century blank verse – and if not, why not? – his influence over our culture goes far beyond that of any other writer. He invented words, phrases, plots, characters, stories that are still vividly alive today; his history plays utterly shaped our understanding of our own past as a nation. And unsurpisingly he is inescapable in London. The iconic Elizabethan recreation Shakespeare’s Globe theatre is his temple, with a year-round programme that’s about three-quarters his works. Although based in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company regularly visit the capital, most frequently the Barbican Centre. And Shakespeare plays can be found… almost anywhere else, from the National Theatre – where they invariably run in the huge Olivier venue – to tiny fringe productions and outdoor version that pop up everywhere come the warmer months.  This page is simple: we tell you what Shakespeare plays are on in town this month (the answer is pretty much always ‘at least one’). We we tell you which of his works you can see coming up in the future. No other playwright is staged nearly enough to get his own page. But for William Shakespeare, it’s essential.

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.

There are over a hundred theatres of all shapes and sizes throughout London, from tiny fringe venues above pubs to iconic internationally famous institutions like the National Theatre. And at the heart of it is the West End, aka Theatreland. What is a West End theatre? Unlike Broadway, where there are strict definitions based upon capacity, there is no hard and fast definition of a West End theatre. However, West End theatres are all commercial theatres – that is to say, they receive no government funding – and on the whole they are receiving houses, that is to say they don’t have in house artistic teams creating the work that they show (although often theatre owners like Andrew Lloyd Webber or Nica Burns may commission or even create the work). They are mostly based in the West End of London, although it’s not a hard and fast rule, with two major ‘West End’ theatres at Victoria. Most West End theatres are Victorian or Edwardian, although Theatre Royal Drury Land and Theatre Royal Haymarket have roots a couple of centuries before that, while @sohoplace is the newest (it opened in 2022). Capacity is similarly all over the shop: the 2,359-set London Coliseum is the biggest; the smallest is generally held to be the 350-set Arts Theatre. Many mid-size theatres like the Harold Pinter, Duke of York’s or Wyndham’s are greatly in demand for drama and serve as home to several different productions every year. Others, like the Lyceum or His Majesty’s have played host to a single musica

There are a hell of a lot of musicals running in London at any given time, from decades-long classics like ‘Les Miserables and ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ to short-run fringe obscurities, plus all manner of new shows launched every year hoping for long-running glory. Here we round up every West End musical currently running or coming soon, plus fringe and off-West End shows that we’ve reviewed – all presented in fabulous alphabetical order. SEE ALSO: How to get cheap and last-minute theatre tickets in London.

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.

If any city in the world were oversaturated with hotels, it’d be Paris. So a list of the ‘best hotels in Paris’ is casting a pretty wide net. The city has over 1,600 hotels in total, ranging from tiny new boutiques to grand historic hotels charging £25,000 a night – and we wanted to make sure every kind of hotel was represented on this list: the luxurious, the downright cheap, and everything in between. Whatever your vibe in the City of Light, you’ll find a hotel for you here.  What is the best area to stay in Paris? As will surprise no one, the ‘best’ area to stay in Paris is pretty subjective across its 20 arrondissements and 80 or so neighbourhoods. But we do have some pointers. If it’s your first time in the city, you’ll probably want to be as close to the city centre as possible to tick off those major attractions, so anywhere near the 1st arrondissement – Tuileries, the Marais, St-Germain – would be a good bet. If you’re on a budget, however, you’ll find that cheaper options are usually further out in the 15th, 18th, 19th, 20th – and even on the outskirts of the city. Don’t worry, you’ll still be in on the action – this is where the locals hang out, anyway. For the full rundown, here’s our ultimate guide to where to stay in Paris.  🏘️ Discover the best Airbnbs in Paris How we curate our hotel lists Our team of writers and travel experts review hotels all over the world – new openings, old classics and everything in between – to bring you fresh, honest recommendations,

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. Please note that the prices quoted are the ‘official’ prices when the shows go on sale – with West End shows in particular it can unfortunately be the case that if they sell well, expensive dynamic prices can be triggered. 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.

June 2025 is a typically eclectic month for London comedy: it’s fair to say that no other city on the planet can boast a dizzyingly broad festival of modern clowning and a residence for ex Daily Show host Trevor Noah running side by side. Toss in the chance to see the brilliant Kieran Hodgson’s new show two months before Edinburgh gets it and fun from Stewart Lee and Wanda Sykes, and you’ve got yourself a solid month of chuckles. 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. The best comedy clubs in London.The best new theatre shows to book for in London.

There’s perhaps nothing more magical than seeing a play or musical in the open air, and London is absolutely the city for it. In defiance of the weather gods, our outdoor theatre season now stretches from March to late October: we’re are just that tough. Or at least, optimistic about the weather. Substantially it revolves around a few key theatres, notably Shakespeare’s Globe – open March to October and generally boasting a cheeky outdoor Christmas production – and the delightful Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which is open late spring to the end of summer. The former specialises in Shakespeare plays, while the latter has a musical theatre focus. But there’s plenty of other stuff, especially as the summer reaches its height, from the ambitious street theatre of the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival to the musical theatre blowout of West End Live. Not sure what you'll need for an open-air theatre trip? Then don’t miss our guide to practical open-air theatre info.  If you’re interested in taking in some outdoor cinema this summer, head to our dedicated page.

L.A. covers a mind-bogglingly 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 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. Even 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.

  London is more than two thousand years old. It’s a world-class hub for history, art, culture and politics. Frankly, it’s a bit overwhelming. What is the best way to explore a city that has so damn much on offer? Where do you begin in an area that’s 1,572 square kilometres? The answer: on foot.  This is where a guided walking to tour comes into it. Street tours. Museum tours. Food tours. There are literally hundreds to choose from in the capital. So this is where I step in, tour guide-esque, with some suggestions of my own, to help you understand all that history a little better.  A great tour guide will inspire and fascinate you – before you know it, you’ll enthusiastically be sharing the stories you heard with Linda on the checkouts at your local supermarket, or Iqbal at work. The ones included here are the well-worth doing and unsung tours that deserve your attention. Yes there’s your usual Changing of the Guard and Westminster Abbey tours, but there’s also some more offbeat ones which are frankly exceptional.  Why take my word for it? I’m a tour guide myself. I have since led all sorts of walks around London, from cemetery tours, queer history walks to pub outings. I regularly guide in places like The British Museum and National Gallery and after a decade in the industry, here are some of my choices for an unforgettable experience. Need more sightseeing inspiration?🛥️ Here are London’s best boat tours💂‍♂️ Check out our list of 101 things to do in London🛏 Or stay in o

The only half-term holiday where you can reasonably expect nice weather, May half-term is a last minute practice session before the beast that is the six-week school summer holidays. Now the holiday is actually upon us, the general weather forecast would seem to be ‘rain for six days then nice on the last weekend’. So it could be worse: ‘go to the park’ or ‘day-trip to the seaside’ are viable options now when they most certainly aren’t in the mid-February or late October holidays. However, even as it drizzles there are still many, many fun things to indoors in London itself for kids of all ages. My name is Andrzej and I’m Time Out’s lead kids’ writer, and here’s my pick of the best things to do this May half-term. As ever, the idea with this list is to highlight the best new, returning or last chance to see shows; London also has plenty of evergreen fun for children of all ages, quite a lot of which you can find in out list of the 50 best things to do with kids in London. When is May half-term this year?  This year, London’s May half-term officially falls between Monday May 26 and Friday May 30 (ie children will be off continuously between Saturday May 24 and Sunday June 1). Monday May 26 is a bank holiday; some schools will have their inset day on Monday June 2. Here’s our roundup of all the best things to do with your children this May half-term. 

A theatre industry truism is that playwright Terence Rattigan – a titan of the mid-twentieth century British stage – had his career unfairly derailed by the Angry Young Men of the 1950s, and is surely due a revival soon. I’m skeptical about this, mostly because I remember people saying it for at least the last 15 years, a period in which I have seen an awful lot of Terence Rattigan plays, usually revived to great acclaim. The truth is that there was absolutely no way his work was ever again going to scale the insane success of his commercial heyday: he is the only playwright in history to have two plays notch up over 1,000 West End performances. But if his lifelong insistence on writing about posh people undoubtedly took him away from the post-War zeitgeist, he remained pretty damn popular in his later years. And this despite the fact he’d long moved away from the frothy populist comedies that gave him his mega hits, having shifted shape into something altogether more melancholic. That’s a long way of introducing the Orange Tree’s new production of his penultimate play In Praise of Love. You can see why it doesn’t get revived much: it’s a bittersweet chamber piece that feels like it is set in a very specific time and place, that involves posh people. It’s also based on the lives of actor Rex Harrison and his third wife Kay Kendall, who are considerably less well known now than they were 50 years ago.  But if you’d struggle to see it doing three years in the West End, Amelia S

Nicholas Hytner’s exuberant 2019 take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream was simply too much fun to leave to the history books: what a joy it is to have it back. To bring you up to speed, it’s a show in the same lineage as the Bridge’s recent Guys and Dolls: designed by Bunnie Christie, half the audience sit in the round, while the other half stand on the floor where the fairy-filled action of Shakespeare’s comedy unfurls on mobile platforms that rise and fall around them (I stood, only cowards sit).  It is joyously queer: pretty much everyone in it gets a crack at snogging everybody else. And Hytner’s key textual intervention is swapping the bulk of fairy monarchs Oberon and Titania’s lines, meaning that it’s JJ Feild’s Oberon – not Susannah Fielding’s Titania – who has it off with Emmanuel Akwafo’s exuberant Bottom. Has much changed since last time? It doesn’t feel vastly different conceptually, though new leads Feild and Fielding put a different spin on what are very explicitly the lead roles. As is tradition they also play the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta in the bookending Athens-set sections, but there is the strong suggestion that they in fact play the same characters throughout.  Feild is harder edged and more menacing than his predecessor Oliver Chris in the Athens sections; when playing Oberon there’s a softness and vulnerability there. It’s a performance sympathetic to the production’s suggestion that the bulk of the play is Theseus’s dream, in which his cruel mach

This review is from 101 Dalmatians’ original 2022 run at the Open Air Theatre. It returns to the Hammersmith Apollo for a summer 2025 run starring Sydnie Christmas as Cruella de Vil. Adapted direct from Dodie Smith’s 1956 kids’ book – ie, absolute not a Disney production – ‘101 Dalmatians’ is a scrappy affair. It’s the first ever original musical from the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, and it boasts charming puppetry, big-name writers and a scream of a turn from Kate Fleetwood as the evil Cruella de Vil. But by the towering standards of the OAT – known for its revelatory musical revivals – it’s pretty uneven.  If you just view it as a fun kids’ show, you’d be more forgiving. In fact, I was pretty forgiving: I skipped press night and took my children the following afternoon. However, I wouldn’t say it’s really been pushed as a show for youngsters: historically the OAT’s musicals are aimed at an adult audience, the evening finish is certainly too late for my children, and the foregrounding of Fleetwood’s villainous Cruella de Vil in the publicity recalls Disney’s more adult-orientated spin-off film of last year (‘Cruella’). Anyway: my kids had fun at Timothy Sheader’s production. I mean, it starts with a protracted bottom-sniffing scene, for crying out loud, as grown-up dalmatians Pongo (Danny Collins and Ben Thompson) and Perdi (Emma Lucia and Yana Penrose) meet for the first time, give each other a good honk up the backside, fall in love and nudge their bookish, introverted

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

This musical masterpiece is fiddly in more ways than one. Written by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein, 1964’s Fiddler on the Roof is a brilliant but disarmingly complicated work, for which every production must find a balance between the lighter stuff – shtetl nostalgia and the weapons-grade quipping of its milkman protagonist Teyve – and the fact that it’s a story about the end of rural Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement, that clearly foreshadows the Holocaust.  Recent British productions have tended to play up the grit of the story, which is based on the Yiddish short stories of bona fide shtetl dweller Sholem Aleichem. However, that can have its own pitfalls when the writing is undoubtedly more funny than sad. But director Jordan Fein’s superb take – a transfer from Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – manages to find its own, brilliantly idiosyncratic balance. The tone here is, for the most part, drolly surreal, a dark clown show underpinning everything from the gags to the choreography (by Julia Cheng) to Fein’s penchant for a weird tableau. Jewish life in the village of Anatevka has a constant absurdity to it as Adam Dannheisser’s Teyve must attempt to placate his five daughters and their extremely modern ideas about love while also sucking up to the local Russian constable in the hope the pogroms will be gentler. Key to all this working is US actor Dannheisser as Teyve. Avoiding the obvious temptation to tackle the role as if he’s delivering a stand up set,

This review is from 2024. ECHO returns for 2025 with a guest list that includes Daniel Kaluuya, Dominic West, James Corden, Milly Alcock, Nish Kumar and Juliet Stevenson. Nassim Soleimanpour’s global cult smash ‘White Rabbit, Red Rabbit’ was an ingenious response to the fact that the Iranian playwright was at the time unable to leave his home country. He wrote a sly subversive script designed for a different actor to perform cold every night, pointedly acting as stand ins for the writer who was physically banned from travel. It was good, but was it so good that it justified him making an entire career out of variations thereof? As with 2017’s ‘Nassim’, ‘ECHO’ – staged as part of this year’s LIFT festival – has its moments but struggles to really find a truly compelling reason for being performed by a cold reader (on press night the redoubtable Adrian Lester). What the production - directed by metatheatrical master Omar Elerian - does bring to the table is a heap more cool techy stuff than the ultra lo-fi ‘White Rabbit…’, and an awful lot more of Soleimanpour himself. Early on, our performer (Lester) is put into apparent live video contact with Soleimanpour, who merrily bumbles about his Berlin flat – where he lives with his wife, and dog Echo – chatting away inanely to his bemused star.  ‘Echo’ does two things well.  It is excellent on the nature of what it is to have a divided self as a result of emigration, as most specifically embodied by the fact Soleimanpour finds himsel

Ola Ince’s recent productions for the Globe include a gritty police procedural Othello and a modern dress Romeo and Juliet that was so progressive it made the front page of The Sun (‘Wokeo and Juliet’, the headline screamed). It’s therefore somewhat surprising that – aesthetically speaking – hers is by far the most trad take on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible I’ve ever seen: full-on period pilgrim garb from designer Amelia Jane Hankin, including a magnificent array of funny little conical hats. But after a little while adjusting to the production’s rhythms it becomes apparent that Ince has done something quite distinctive with The Crucible: she’s directed it like an episode of The Archers. By that I mean she’s tuned down the bombast and supernatural elements and essentially played it as a naturalistic drama about the eccentric, bickering inhabitants of Salem, Massachusetts.  This is carried off surprisingly smoothly, at least at first. Aside from the fact Miller wrote some genuinely funny village oddball characters (most notably the hyper litigious Giles Corey), it’s important to remember that The Crucible starts off small. As the play begins, some local girls have been reported as dancing in the woods, and one of them – Betty Parris – seems to have fallen ill. Another of them, Hannah Saxby’s Abigail Williams, has been having an affair with brooding local farmer John Procter (Gavin Drea) – they’re still affectionate when they briefly meet at the beginning, though he insists it h

Corn. Corn. Corn corn corn. Corncorncorncorncorn. Corn. Corn corn corn corn. Corn. Corn. Corn. Corn. Coooooooooooooooooooooooorn. Crn. CORN. CORN! Corn. Corn? ¡Corn! Corn. Broadway hit Shucked is a musical about corn, and very funny it is too. In part that’s simply because a story about a group of corn-loving hicks is intrinsically amusing: corn! It’s a funny word in its way, especially when said as often as it’s said in Shucked (which is a lot).  And it’s not just jokes about corn: book writer Robert Horn is an absolute ninja with a one-liner, and Shucked is near enough wall-to-wall with the things. I sort of don’t want to spoil any. But I also want to prove I didn’t just go along for the press buffet (chargrilled corn and cornbread) so here are a few gems: ‘I was playing frisbee with a goat; he’s a lot heavier than I thought’; ‘your grandma died doing what she loved – making toast in the bathtub’; ‘he was head over heels, which is just standing upright’; just multiply that sort of thing by around 200 and you’ve got a pretty good idea what the show is like. There’s a moment early on in Jack O’Brian’s production when it looks like Shucked might serve as an acerbic satire on America’s capacity for self delusion. It’s set in the town of Cob County, a corn-growing community that has apparently avoided all meaningful contact with the outside world, which sounds like a solid metaphor for American isolationism, especially when the crop fails and the townspeople react with disdainf

What is it?  For a long time, Islington’s hallowed Sadler’s Wells was London’s only dedicated major dance theatre, but that changed this year with the launch of its 550-seat sister venue Sadler’s Wells East in Stratford. The new venue is 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.   The auditorium here is relatively plain, made to ensure all focus is on the dancers.  Almost all of the seating is fully retracable and for its debut show ‘Our Mighty Groove’, the seats were taken away halfway through to put the audience on level with performers and get them dancing too.   Why go?  For its diverse programme of dance performances by troupes from all over the globe, from ballet to flamenco and hip-hop to kathak.  Don’t miss The Dance Floor at Sadler’s Wells East offers free workshops and events for anyone interested in dance and performance. Upcoming stuff includes a puppet-making workshop and a ‘get into dance’ festival, as well as regular events like lunchtime Bollywood classes and Afro-Cuban workshops every Wednesday.  When to visit Sadler’s Wells East is open from 9.30am-3.30pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 9.30am to 10pm from Th

Playwright David Ireland has made a career out of saying the unsayable, which has in the past meant gags about rape, race and other such wearyingly ‘provocative’ transgressions. With The Fifth Step he’s taken it further yet: he’s written a play about how awesome God is. That’s a slightly glib summary. But in the programme Ireland explains how he found Jesus in 2020, and it does a lot to explain where the play’s coming from. The Fifth Step is about two men in Alcoholics Anonymous – which Ireland was a member of in the past – but the play is not really about the instition as a whole. Rather, it’s AA’s ambiguous spiritual dimension that holds the most interest to the playwright.  With a big scruffy beard and his natural Scottish accent front and centre, Jack Lowden looks and sounds a world away from his breakthrough role in Slow Horses. He plays young Glaswegian Luka, an inarticulate, twitchy mess of a man; an alcoholic who suffered a terribly abusive upbringing and is desperately lonely to boot. His very first words in the play are ‘I think I might be an incel’. He’s addressing Martin Freeman’s James, an AA old-timer who exudes a sort of seen-it-all serenity and is clearly angling for Luka to appoint him as his sponsor – something Luka duly does.  The men get on well enough so long as James remains in the driving seat. But then something odd happens: the programme really starts working for Luka. Or it starts working in unexpected ways. James – who is staunchly atheist – tries t

This cult show has been blowing the minds of audiences ever since it debuted at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, and when I caught up with it during a boisterously sold out 2024 return, the night’s ticket holders couldn’t have been more up for House of Life. The evening is hosted by the glitter-bearded ‘the RaveRend’ with backing from besuited multi-instrumentalist Trev (aka theatrical duo Sheep Soup, aka Ben Welch and Lawrence Cole). I guess the vibe is a bit like a revival church crossed with a rave but much whiter and nerdier, as the RaveRend canvases audience members for their hopes, dreams and peccadillos and crafts them into uplifting, soul-inflected electronic songs. I’m going to be absolutely honest: while it was clear that 90 percent of audience members were having the night of their life, I couldn’t shake the sense that the whole thing felt a bit more like an enjoyable bonding game to play at a corporate getaway weekend than actively brilliant theatre. I’m not saying it’s cynical, but beyond the idea to fuse the euphoria of church and the euphoria of the club I’m not sure there’s a huge amount going on here once the duo have semi-freeformed their first song. Maybe I was just a little Fringe-weary at this point and struggled to get onboard with something that people around me were clearly loving. I think maybe it comes down to the fact that if you’re in the market for a Good Night Out, House of Life is liable to hit the mark forcefully, whereas if you’re trying to overanal

What’s the vibe? The venerable but ever youthful Thorpe Park is an amusement park low on frills but heavy on thrills. The relatively compact attraction, found between Staines and Chertsey, has some cool themed sub areas – the Roswell-style alien abduction area is worth a visit even if you’re not brave enough to tackle its sole ride, The Swarm – but on the whole it’s pretty no nonsense, with little in the way of memorable multi-ride larger zones. Is it worth visiting? What Thorpe Park really has going for it is rollercoasters: a veritable arsenal of them, many UK record breakers. On the gentler end you have the bends and twists of the old school Flying Fish, a modified version of Space Station Zero, the park’s first ever rollercoaster, which originally opened in 1984. At the decidedly more thrill seeker side of the spectrum you have Stealth, which was the fastest coaster in the country until May 2024, when its crown was stolen by Thorpe Park’s newest attraction Hyperia (which is, for good measure, also the tallest rollercoaster in the UK). What’s the age range? Although relatively young children can technically ride most of the coasters (the height requirement for Hyperia is a modest 130cm), there’s no denying that Thorpe Park is aimed at a more teen/adult audience than, say, Legoland or Chessington. That said, while my primary school-aged kids wouldn’t touch the more death defying rides with a barge pole, they still had a lot of fun: the Flying Fish is genuinely a perfect sta

Ncuti Gatwa’s time on Doctor Who proved to be pretty brief. But he didn’t put his feet up in the gap between his two seasons – theatre was his first love and he got straight back on that stage last Christmas to star in the National Theatre’s hallucinogenically camp take on Oscar Wilde’s classic ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, the first the NT had staged since the ’80s. The Max Webster-directed production was a roaring great hit and now it’s set to transfer to the West End, replacing Mischief Theatre’s ‘The Comedy About Spies’ at the Noël Coward Theatre. Gatwa’s not coming along though: whether he’d have been up for it is a moot point, as he’s already busy starring in the RSC’s new West End play Born with Teeth.  However, a fine replacement has been found for the role of young ‘bachelor’ about town Algernon Montcrieff: it’s Olly Alexander, who hasn’t been in Doctor Who but did make his name as actor in ‘It’s A Sin’, another show by Russell T Davies. Wilde’s play is very much an ensemble affair and there is no news on further casting at this stage, though we dare to dream that the mighty Sharon D Clarke will return as the formidable Lady Bracknell. If you want to know a little more about what the production was like last time, then read our four-star review here. The Importance of Being Earnest is at the Noël Coward Theatre, Sep 18-Jan 10 2026.  The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025. London’s most spectacular free festival has just announced its 2025 line-up.

Whether you consider yourself a theatre fan or not, Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is always a highlight of the annual London calendar, bringing together spectacular, essentially unclassifiable outdoor entertainment to the open spaces of Thames-side London. In recent years shows have included a recreation of the Northern Lights, a bevy of glowing swans, and a performance on a melting artificial iceberg. Now it’s back for 2025, and the first tranche of announcements for this year’s festival are upon on. First things first: we have dates! The festival will run in its traditional late summer slot, this year August 22 to September 6. There’s basically too much stuff to list in full, but I’ll pick out a few highlights and you can catch up with the full bill here. You can always rely on GDIF for a spectacular opener, and this year it comes from hench French parkour troupe Lézards Bleus, who will get things underway with Above and Beyond (Aug 22, pictured top), a dazzling opener in which eight performers will astound gathered crowds as they leap over the roofs of central Woolwich. Great news for families: the beloved Greenwich Fair (Aug 23 and 24) will return to central Greenwich after skipping last year. It brings family friendly games and street performance to the heart of the borough; there’s stuff on all day with highlights within the programme including all-female Belgian circus company Cie Des Chaussons Rouges’s high wire show Epiphytes in Greenwich Park. Down on

If you want to look for unifying trend in June 2025 London theatre, then it’s very much about classic shows being brought back: last year’s Fiddler on the Roof, 2019’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2011’s London Road and most remarkably still, a sort of (it’s complicated) reprise for the original 2000 production of Sarah Kane’s posthumous masterpiece 4.48 Psychosis. On the other hand, there’s more to the month than old stuff and for many the real treat will be a first chance to see a couple of big shiny American shows: David Adjmi’s wildly acclaimed Fleetwood Mac (sort of) drama Stereophonic, and the latest massive Disney musical Hercules, which makes its English language premiere at Theatre Royal Drury Lane this month. The best London theatre openings in June 2025  Photo: Scarlet Page 1. Stereophonic US playwright David Adjmi’s drama – with songs by erstwhile Arcade Fire man Will Butler – comes to the West End as the most Tony-nominated play of all time. It’s still pretty bold of producer Sonia Friedman to plonk a three-hour play with no famous people in it directly into the West End, although the subject matter should serve as enticement: Stereophonic is a fictionalised account of the legendarily fraught recording sessions for Fleetwood Mac’s landmark album Rumours.  Duke of York’s Theatre, now until Sep 20. Buy tickets here. Image: Guy J Sanders 2. 4.48 Psychosis To state this straight away, 4.48 Psychosis is totally sold out already: the only day you’re getting in is on

We’ve known for a while that Rupert Goold – the man who transformed the Almeida from chintzy backwater to London’s most important theatre – would be stepping down to take over at the Old Vic, and that he’d be taking his chief lieutenant director Rebecca Frecknall with him. What we’ve had no idea of is a timeframe. Until today (May 28). The bad news is that Goold is definitely off, and that he’ll direct his final production for the theatre early next year, with Frecknall bowing out in the summer.  The good news is that if you’ve enjoyed the last 12 years of his programming then there’s still quite a lot more to come: today’s final announcement takes us right up to the end of next year, encompassing ten productions. Although we will presumably find out who Goold’s successor is fairly soon, there’s clearly no rush: their first show seems unlikely to run any sooner than January 2027. It’s almost too big to call ‘a season’, but this final tranche of shows looks pretty mouthwatering, combining the sense of zeitgeist and event that’s always dominated Goold’s programming from the off with the embrace of writers and directors of colour that was learned on the way after some initial criticism of his Almeida as a white boys’ club. Photograph: Peter Moulton / Shutterstock.com Without further ado, then! The first show to be announced is a smaller one: 81 (Life) (Aug 21-23) is a community theatre show by playwright Rhianna Illube and 81 people from the Islington community. It’s billed as

Actor David Harewood has history with Shakespeare’s tragedy of race and jealousy Othello: as a much younger man, way back in 1997, he became the first Black actor ever to play the doomed Moorish general at the National Theatre. And now he’s doing it again: this autumn Harewood will reprise the role in a new production by War Horse director Tom Morris that will cast Toby Jone as his nemesis Iago and US actor Caitlin FitzGerald as his wife Desdemona. There will also be music from indie icon and prolific theatre composer PJ Harvey. Quoth Harewood: ‘It’s very exciting to be tackling this monumental part once again. Last time around I was very conscious of breaking through a particular glass ceiling and I probably felt the weight of that. No concerns this time and I’m looking forward to starting afresh.’ Othello has been in the news thanks to the Americans: the play is relatively rarely done Stateside and this year has seen a big Broadway revival starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal that attracted lots of attention but tepid notices, exacerbated by general irritation at the $3,000-plus cost of the top tickets Morris’s production won’t attract a tenth of the hype, but there are good odds it’ll be considerably better: Harewood scored great notices first time out and has remained a fine stage and screen actor, last seen in the West End in James Graham’s excellent Best of Enemies. Morris is an excellent director who London has seen little of in the decade he spent running th

John Le Carré’s 1963 book The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is quite probably the greatest spy novel of all time and certainly one of the greatest works of English literature to come out of the Cold War. A critically acclaimed but film adaptation starring Richard Burton came out in 1965, and a new TV miniseries has allegedly been in the works for years, but it’s never really had a truly iconic adaptation a la Le Carré’s borderline ubiquitous Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Maybe its first adaptation as a play could be the one. Written by veteran playwright David Eldridge and directed by heavyweight former Headlong boss Jeremy Herrin, this inaugural stage version of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold scored great notices at the prestigious Chichester Festival Theatre last year and now it’s heading our way.  It stars Irish actor Rory Keenan as hardbitten Cold War spy Alec Leamas – on the cusp of returning from the field after the elimination of his East German network of agents, he’s pushed by spymaster George Smiley into just one more job. But as he stages a defection to the other side, matter become hugely complicated when he falls for idealistic librarian Liz Gold. Agnes O’Casey and John Ramm return as Liz and Smiley. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is at @sohoplace, Nov 17-Feb 21 2026. The best new London theatre openings to book for in 2025. The Young Vic has announced Nadia Fall’s inaugural season.

From the people who brought you London Theatre Week – which is actually a month long, and happens twice a year – here comes the Summer Theatre Sale, which is, by most definitions, running in late spring.  But who cares when you once again have an opportunity to take the sting out of the cost of West End tickets? As with all these sales (which Time Out is a partner on), the basic deal is very simple: many if not quite all of the West End productions in London participate. Some, established shows like Book of Mormon and Matilda are offering a few quid off, which is obviously totally worth it. Others, you can get some pretty stonking savings: there’s 43 percent off prices for Tina – The Tina Turner Musical, which has recently announced that it’ll be calling it a day in September. You can get a walloping 75 percent off for the last few weeks of Ryan Calais Cameron’s excellent new thriller Retrograde. And if it is undeniably taking place before most definitions of summer, it is a very good sale for actually getting your summer in order and snapping up tickets for what will hopefully be extremely popular shows before the reviews come out and ticket sales go nuts: highly recommended shows with big savings now that probably won’t soon include wildly acclaimed US drama Stereophonic – a fictionalised account of the making of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – the return of the Bridge Theatre’s excellent immersive A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and another chance to see acclaimed Bob Dylan musical

It’s been a long time since we had a proper season announcement from the Young Vic: its previous artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah announced his departure – ands a year’s worth of programming – in February 2024. But his successor Nadia Fall has been beavering away behind the scenes, and finally has her first season ready to go. And a very decent season it is, focussing on the Young Vic’s historical bread and butter of big name classic plays with interesting directors.  Photo: Isha ShahYoung Vic artistic director Nadia Fall Fall will kick things off herself in September by directing the first Joe Orton production London has seen in an age, tackling the 1964 classic Entertaining Mr Sloane (Sep 15-Nov 8), a dark comedy about a lodger who infiltrates a brother and sister’s family home, to the deep misgivings of their father. Not seen in London since 2009, this production will star Tamzin Outhwaite and Daniel Cerqueira as middle-aged siblings Kath and Ed. The big show over Christmas will be the UK premiere of US playwright Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Dec 2-Jan 31 2026), which previously ran on Broadway in a production starring Robin Williams. Set in a chaotic post-Saddam Iraq, surrealist director Omar Elerian’s production will star David Threlfall as a fast-talking tiger wondering what the hell he is doing in the chaos of Baghdad – the production will also star Arinzé Kene, Ammar Haj Ahmad and Hala Omran. Into next year and Jordan Fein – director of the rece

It’s been some time since a really big West End musical has closed on us, but alas: Tina – The Tina Turner Musical has just announced that it’ll be ending its run this September after seven years at the Aldwych Theatre. That’s no mean feat – a handful of behemoths like Les Mis have enjoyed decades-long runs, but with its mix of massive pop hits and gripping true story, the autobiographical Tina has enjoyed a lifespan far greater than the average musical, and it must stand as one of the more successful jukebox shows in history, beaten only by Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You, Buddy and Jersey Boys. It certainly feels like it opened in a different world – legendary rock singer Turner was still with us on its press night, where she made one of her final public appearances. Now it’s due to be off, but it leaves in good order, with a final four months left to go before it departs London as the longest running show to ever play the 1,200-seat Aldwych. On the plus side, where one door closes another opens and we’re liable to see something new at the theatre shortly thereafter. There is no word yet on what it’ll be and the the usual theatre rumour mills are largely stumped: historically the Aldwych tends to to play host to musicals, though a play could easily plug the gap temporarily; there are a lot of Broadway hits sloshing around that could easily move in, or a new show like A Knight’s Tale, currently having out of town tryouts in Manchester. Tina announcing its departure strongly sug

One of the more pleasant surprises of the year has been that Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition you see advertised everywhere. Yeah, it’s kind of basic, but in a really high tech way, with all sorts of fun VR and immersive film bits and bobs that certainly offer a good two hours of distraction for younger audiences. And now we’re getting a sister exhibition. Admittedly the story of the Titanic may be less appealing to tween audiences, but adults obsessed with the doomed ship should be in heaven with the lavish The Legend of the Titanic: The Immersive Exhibition, which comes to Canada Water events space Dock X this summer. Photo: Set Vexy Although it will presumably lack the balls-tripping weirdness of the many sections of Tutankhamun devoted to the Egyptian afterlife, there will be plenty of immersion to get immersed in: we’re promised an augmented reality recreation of Southampton harbour, actual recreations of first and third class cabins, historical artefacts (original and replicas), a VR tribute to the ship’s famously determined orchestra, an immersive film charting the ship’s voyage and a ‘5D metaverse featuring interactive elements and 5D sensory experiences, including simulated smells and a realistic reconstruction of the different classes and areas of the ship’. There’s also a child-friendly activity room and Café de Parisien, a replica of the on-board cafe serving food and drink. The Legend of the Titanic: The Immersive Exhibition is at Dock X from Jul 25, ticke

Cynthia Erivo got her big break on the London stage, though probably not when she expected to. In 2014 the then-unknown Brit was cast in the lead role of the massive West End folly I Can’t Sing!, a parody of The X-Factor that turned up years too late for the zeitgeist and duly died a death at the gargantuan London Palladium. But unbenownst to her, she’d already made it: the previous year she’d got great reviews in the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory’s production of the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s classic novel The Colour Purple. It never went to the West End. But it did go to Broadway, and after that Erivo’s reputation was duly made, Hollywood came calling, and she’s not acted on a British stage since. That will change next year, though, when she makes the mother of all returns in not one role but 26 in a high tech one-woman stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If that rings a bell, then it’ll be because last year Sarah Snook took the West End by storm in the conceptually similar The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Dracula isn’t a rip-off: it’s by the same Australian creative team from Sydney Theatre, headed by director-adaptor Kip Williams (who has in fact made a trilogy of Victorian horror adaptations with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde currently unseen outside Oz). Paying moody homage to classic horror movies – so a very different look to the very fabulous Dorian Gray – it scored great reviews domestically and should be a proper showcase for Erivo, who’ll take

The blurb for this major new musical describes the 2004 Adam Sandler flick it’s adapted from as ‘one of the most popular romcoms of all time’, which is conceivably pushing it, but certainly there are plenty of millennials who will look back fondly on the Hawaii-set comedy about a womanising marine veterinarian who falls for an art teacher who shows no memory of him the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that, etcetera. It’s coming to The Other Palace in Victoria, which is very much off-West End rather than West End, but that looks like something of a treat for us: the musical comes with a powerhouse US creative team at its helm, most notably director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw, whose UK hits include Mean Girls and a little show called The Book of Mormon, strongly suggesting this run is a de facto Broadway tryout. The songs and book are by David Rossmer and Steve Rosen, whose work hasn’t been seen over here, but they have strong comedy pedigree – the show is shaping up to be more com than rom. Exactly how close to the spirit of the original film it’ll be remains to be see: 2004 was a long time ago, and there are aspects of the movie that have potentially dated, notably the running gag about Henry’s ambiguously gendered assistant Alexa. Plus his crew includes a penguin and a walrus, although these all seem like fun challenges rather than insurmountable obstacles.  It’s a Brit cast, with Josh St. Clair (who starred in the recent UK tour of Ghost) as Henry and in