Andrzej Lukowski

Help make Christmas even more magical while they’re still little with one of London’s many festive theatre shows created with small people in mind. We’ve divided our list into family-friendly Christmas shows – that is to say, shows suitable for children, but not necessarily aimed at them specifically – and shows that are directly aimed at a younger audience. Please note that the great family-friendly British Christmas tradition of the pantomime is such a big thing at Christmas that we haven’t included any here – they have their own page (see link below). RECOMMENDED: The best Christmas pantomimes in London. Find more Christmas shows in London. 

Why not enjoy your dinner with a side of strange? London is home to hundreds of amazing restaurants, but sometimes everyone hankers for a talking point with their amuse bouches. We’ve rounded up entertaining eateries: oddball decor, kooky culinary concepts and – yes – cats. Our list of unusual restaurants will delight music fans, animal lovers, garlic fans and more, and you’ll find these joints in venues as various as a boat, a prison and a church crypt. This is dining with a difference.  RECOMMENDED: The best weird bars in London.

You probably don’t have to be told that there’s a lot of TV out there right now – your monthly streaming budget says it plainly enough. It seems like every few weeks, another must-see show is dropping on some brand new platform, and somehow you get roped into yet another subscription just so you don’t find yourself left out of the cultural loop. And then, inevitably, you never end up watching the new thing, because you’re already watching a half-dozen other shows you’re still trying to finish. Allow us to help you prioritise. To help you figure out how best to focus your telly time, we’re conducting an ongoing ranking of the most elite television series of 2023. Certainly some you’re well aware of, like Succession, Top Boy, The Last of Us and The Bear. Others may have slipped under your radar, such as Amazon’s surreal I’m a Virgo, Fox’s hilarious Colin From Accounts or Jury Duty on [checks notes]... something called FreeVee? All are totally binge-worthy. But binge them fast, because in 2023, the shows never stop coming, and this list is sure to grow.  RECOMMENDED:🔥 The best movies of 2023 (so far)📺 The 100 greatest ever TV shows you need to binge😂 The best comedies of 2023 (so far)🎞️ The best movies to catch at the cinema this month

In July 2023, podcasts turned 20. We know, it sounds weird, but podcasting actually technically began on July 9, 2003, so they haven't really been around all that long. And somehow, in that time, we've been blessed with endless brilliant things to listen to, and new gems are still popping up all the time. New additions to our list include Joe Pera's new sleep podcast and The Ringer's fascinating new look at pop culture's role in the Vietnam War, which has climbed to our top 10.   But wait. We've got more. Here at Time Out, we love a good poddy so much, we made our own, which aired in July this year: ‘Love Thy Neighbourhood’ is a brand-new podcast, hosted by Time Out London's editor Joe Mackertich, where London celebs walk listeners through the best spots in their area. Oh, and it always ends in a pub. You can listen to ‘Love Thy Neighbourhood’ on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the rest of the gang.  So read on for our full list of the best podcasts going right now, where we've got political podcasts that look behind the news, comedy podcasts with your favourite funny people, and plenty of those all-important investigative whodunnits to keep you up at night. Whatever you’re into, it’s all here. And if you’re looking to dig deeper into one genre, try our specialist lists on for size (you’ll find them below). Happy listening. Contributors: Anna Rahmanan, Eddy Frankel, Andy Kryza, Phil de Semlyen, Alex Plim, Dave Calhoun, Andrzej Lukowski, Alexandra Sims, Matthew Singer, Joe Macke

From huge star vehicles and massive West End musical to hip fringe shows and more, here’s the very latest London theatre reviews from the Time Out theatre team. RECOMMENDED New theatre openings in London this month. A-Z of West End shows.

After the chaos of the pandemic years, London’s theatre scene is fully reopened, and essentially back to how it was pre-Covid: the best theatre city in the world, heaving with classic musicals, bold new writing, exciting international work and the all-important fringes. 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 2023 and 2024, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows on the horizon, and the smaller, cooler ones we’re looking forward to the most as well.  They’re shows worth booking for, pronto. 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.

Whether you’re planning a trip to the iconic Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, catching a production for the Royal Shakespeare Company or seeing a spot of Shakespearean drama elsewhere in London, here’s where to watch the biggest and best plays by the Bard in London.

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.

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. From big ‘serious’ plays by legendary companies like Punchdrunk to deliciously frivolous dinner-theatre shows and plenty of points in between, the content and execution of each of these shows may very wildly – but each is guaranteed to let you step into a whole new world.

Want to know what the best theatre shows running in London right now are? Well you’ve come to the right place. This is our regularly-updated round-up of the very best stage shows, musicals plays and everything in between that you can currently see on London’s stages, from massive West End musicals that have been in place for years, to cool fringe theatre productions that’ll be around for just a few weeks. Our recommendations are all based upon reviews by our team of theatre critics. If you’re interested in preview recommendations – of what we think will be the best shows coming up will be, although we haven’t seen them yet – check out our best shows to book for and best shows coming up this month. 

It's never to early to introduce kids to the magic of theatre: there are literally shows for babies. But if your kids are a bit older than that, don’t worry: London's bursting with shows that'll delight junior audiences of all sorts. There are gentle puppet shows for toddlers. Bright and shiny, song-stuffed adventures for young kids. Smart dramas that are sure to hold teenagers rapt. And spectacular musicals that are perfect for the whole family (or just adults looking for a great night out) Our kids’ theatre page normally contains information for all the main children’s shows running in London theatres this month and next month, and is broken down into three categories. Theatre for all the family is suitable for any age, including adults without children. Theatre for older children is specifically aimed at school-age children and teenagers. Theatre for babies, pre-schoolers and younger children does what the title suggests, and also includes shows suitable for younger school-age children. See also: 99 things to do in London with kids. The best child-friendly restaurants in London. The top 9 museums in London for kids.

An ASMR meets dance sensory production, a Black Sabbath ballet, and a hip-hop show set to the music of Sting are just some of the exciting boundary-pushing dance shows coming to the capital this October. It's the beginning of cosy season, and what better way to shield from the October wind and rain than inside a heated theatre? We've rounded up some of the best opportunities to see pirouettes, pas de bourées and popping and locking below. Don't miss out! MORE STAGE: Dance classes in London Best theatre shows this yearBest theatre shows this monthBest comedy shows this month

This review is from 2021, when theatres were reopening after lockdown. ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ returns for Christmas 2023. There will probably come a time pretty soon when I’ll have to start writing theatre reviews that don’t start with words to the effect of ‘aaaaargh! [Insert name of theatre] is back! Brilliant!!’. But not today. The Little Angel is the first of London’s kids’ theatres to reopen, and to this weary parent, it feels like Islington’s puppet paradise has never been away. Aimed at ages three-to-eight, ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ reunites a whole host of familiar Angel faces: songwriter Barb Jungr; theatre boss Samantha Lane, who adapts and directs; and above all the mighty Julia Donaldson, whose percussively rhythmic picture books – often, as here, illustrated by Axel Scheffler – have provided the source material for numerous shows at this address over the years. If you’re not familiar, ‘The Smartest Giant…’ is set in a charming world in which humans, giants and talking bipedal animals all live together harmoniously. The story concerns a scruffy giant named George (Duane Gooden wearing a big giant head), who shambles around in a robe and sandals until one fateful day he sees the local clothes shop has some natty new giant clothes in stock. He gets a power makeover – but a series of encounters with unfortunate animals lead to him kindly giving away his new purchases to those less fortunate, eg he gives his tie away to a giraffe with a cold neck, so it can

Penelope Skinner’s first play in an age is a sort of breezy homage to young-woman-finds-herself-style romcoms… that abruptly commits hari-kiri about three-quarters of the way through. Kate (Lily James) is the underachieving ditz at Lilith, a nominally feminist-leaning film production company, led by Doon Mackichan’s sharklike Sue. At the outset, an apologetic Kate has arrived late to work, having only just escaped the demands of her young daughter Izzy and appallingly self-satisfied film director husband Greg (a scene-stealingly awful James Corrigan). Sue has a project for Kate: she is to head down to Cornwall immediately to hear the story of Elaine (Kristin Scott Thomas), an actress with a complicated past who essentially dropped out of society 30 years ago in the aftermath of a triumphant West End opening night. But following the recent death of her former partner, a beloved film director, she says she’s ready to share the story of what drove her out of the business, with a view to selling it as a film script. And so Kate heads to Cornwall for a few days – following some coercion from Sue and dismay from Greg, who is angling for a second child and unhappy Kate’s trip will coincide with her next ovulation. Upon arriving in Cornwall, Kate is met by Scott-Thomas’s Elaine, dressed in wellies, swimsuit, fur coat and wielding an axe. She has a cage of taxidermied birds that she seems to think are alive. Frankly, she looks nuts. Kate is baffled. And then… won over. Big time. ‘Lyon

This review is from the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe. ‘Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz’ transfers to the Royal Court in. November 2023. Nathan Queeley-Dennis pretty much had me at the word ‘Bullring’. His debut play ‘Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz’ isn’t simply a starry-eyed paean to his (and my!) home city of Birmingham. Nor does it actually have that much to say about our iconic shopping centre, other than observing it would be a bit of a skanky place to start a date. But it does use the Second City as a sort of swoopingly romantic backdrop to his tale of a young Black Brummie’s escapades on the dating circuit.  Other cities form the backdrops to these sorts of stories all the time. But it’s rarely the case with Birmingham, a city so pathologically self-effacing that apparently a slogan under serious consideration for last year’s Commonwealth Games was ‘come if you want’. And it’s a joy to hear a giddy coming-of-age story that takes in raves in Digbeth, the seemingly millennia-old MacDonalds on the ramp leading into New Street Station, the roof of the Rotunda; a crowbarred in reminder of the fact that Birmingham has more canals than Venice… It’s perhaps also a reminder that extremely normal people come from Birmingham, because you could strip the geographical specifics away and still have a pretty buzzy coming-of-age drama about Nathaniel, a young Black man who - via a combination of society’s low expectations, and his own - has failed to really build on his promise and his fine art de

The first temporary exhibition at Young V&A is a real delight, and should appeal to grown-up Nippophiles just as much as school kids. ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ is a grab bag of the more eye-catching highlights of the past few centuries of Japanese pop culture, taking in everything from Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’ to copious Studio Ghibli appearances, to a draw-your-own manga craft corner (complete with arrows to reminds you to draw the cells from right to left). It is relatively light on information about the individual items, and in theory the eclecticism should be a bit bewildering: how exactly do a display of Transformers toys, an ornate screen covered in images of mischievous rabbits, and a truly horrifying folk model of a mermaid that looks like a trout crossed with a zombie foetus all relate to each other? Quite well actually! The mass of eye-popping artifacts is subdivided into four thoughtful zones: sky, sea, forest and city. The import of each of these areas to Japanese culture is stressed, and while there’s little editorialising beyond that, the linkages between the country’s rich folklore and head-spinning contemporary culture are made clear - we see, for instance, how Ghibli’s arboreal masterpiece ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ fits into a long tradition of stories of supernatural encounters in the deep woods, or how Sylvanian Families toys were born out of hundreds-of-years old netsuke animal sculptures. There’s no single object liable to blow your mind in and of itself, and

Produced by the Walt Disney Company, ‘Disney100: The Exhibition’ is very much a Disnified version of Disney history. You’d expect nothing different from this globetrotting exhibition, which runs at the ExCel Centre until January. It is, after all, billed as a celebration of the family-friendly megacorp in its centenary year, not a dispassionate interrogation of its cultural impact. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but get the ick during the opening sequence, in which a twinkly-eyed projection of Walt Disney himself takes centre stage in a room that’s essentially a hagiographic shrine to the company’s founder, which we’re required to stay in for a fixed amount of time (unlike the rest of the exhibition, through which we wander freely). Whether or not old Walt was a nice guy or not is a matter of some considerable debate, but this feels like indoctrination. I mean I don’t think it brainwashed my kids or anything, but it’s a weird note to start on. That out of the way, it’s a slick, fun-for-all-ages showcase for Disney’s many creations and acquisitions over the years, from cartoons to ‘Star Wars’, theme parks to theme tunes. Each room hits a decent balance between cool props – the real BB8! Cinderella’s glass slipper! – interactive touch screen displays – particularly fun in the music room – and informed written panels that gives adults something to fasten on to. There are, naturally, copious selfie opportunities. Of course, it totally ignores the spicier episodes in the company’s h

This review is from the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe. ‘Feeling Afraid…’ transfers to the Bush Theatre in 2023. Somewhat disorientating at a festival full of actual stand-up comics, Marcelo Dos Santos’s monologue ‘Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen’ is a play structured like a stand-up set, with Samuel Barnett’s neurotic gay comedian protagonist working up a routine apparently based upon his character’s real love life. It’s framed around his relationship with a nice American man, whose personal details are chopped and changed as the show wears on, but who is always extremely hench (I learned the phrase ‘cum gutters’!) and extremely affable, to the point that he somewhat freaks Barnett’s character out - all the more so when he discovers that his new boyfriend has a medical condition that stops him laughing. The meat of the show is the comedian’s suspicion – and, indeed, fear – of the stability the American offers, and his constant indulgence in largely depressing casual sex on the side. The title comes from his innate, self-loathing fatalism: he doesn’t allow himself to enjoy life because he’s already convinced the worst will happen. Maybe the self-loathing gay fuckup who is also a comedian trades in a few tropes, but the eventual problem he faces – that it infuriates him his boyfriend doesn’t laugh at any of his jokes, even though doing so might literally kill him – is a pleasingly absurdist one.  It’s funny, and it takes real skill from director Matthew Xia t

A stage version of Maggie O’Farrell’s 1.5m-selling 2020 novel ‘Hamnet’ feels like it should be an effortless home run for the RSC, being a sort of origin story for William Shakespeare that smartly puts the focus on his wife Agnes (better known to us as Anne) and the tragic early death of their eponymous son. But this adaptation is a palpable miss.  I’m sure there are extremely pragmatic reasons for playwright Lolita Chakrabarti’s abandonment of the book’s non-linear structure and more experimental flourishes. But in doing so ‘Hamnet’ loses pathos and intrigue, turning it into an episodic, linear account of shamanic Stratford-upon-Avon lass Agnes (Madeleine Mantock), her romance with and marriage to overeducated local boy William (Tom Varey), and their subsequent parenthood and loss. The book has Hamnet as a character from the beginning; in Erica Whyman’s inexcusably pedestrian period production he doesn’t even turn up until the second half. It’s consequently much less sad when he dies, more of a plot point than a tearjerker. And where on the page Shakespeare is a distant figure seen only through Agnes’s eyes, that sense is never achieved here. Again, I fully appreciate why it’s difficult to replicate in a play, but the character feels overexposed here, which really drains the book’s brilliant final scene of power. The cast is solid, and Oguz Kaplangi’s electronic score is both powerfully atmospheric and a much-needed note of modernity. But considering how expansive and ambiti

‘Sunset Boulevard’ goes Mulholland Drive in Jamie Lloyd’s wonderfully weird and audacious take on the Andrew Lloyd Webber hit. The Brit super-director dramatically deploys live video and erstwhile Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger to stunningly bridge the gap between the dark comedy of Billy Wilder’s original 1950 film classic and the more earnest stylings of Webber’s 1993 hit (which has book and lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black). Let’s dive straight in with erstwhile Pussycat Doll and ‘X Factor’ judge Scherzinger. She plays Norma Desmond, a one-time silent movie star who has become a recluse in the age of talkies, but sees a chance of making a comeback when writer Joe Gillis (Tom Francis) takes refuge in her house. The casting raised eyebrows because Norma is a big, juicy, complicated role previously performed by musical theatre heavyweights, and while Scherzinger does have a stage CV, she is mainly known as a pop star and celebrity.  In the show’s ballsiest stroke, Lloyd leans into this. Scherzinger gives an unexpectedly unsettling performance as a woman hollowed out by the fading memories of her glory days, a nightie-clad wraith, a madwoman in the attic. She seems barely there when Tom unexpectedly turns up at her mansion But she springs to life in front of the cameras that relay live footage to the big screen. None of the other characters are able to see them, but in a meta move – one of many in the show – Norma is drawn to them like a moth to a flame, exaggerat

Clint Dyer and Roy Williams clearly fell in love with the world they created with 2020’s ‘Death of England’. A monologue about white racism written by two Black playwrights, in it Rafe Spall played Michael, a confused man scarred by his troubled upbringing, who ends up having an almighty falling out with his Black best friend Delroy.  ‘The Death of England’ shared universe has grown since: next we heard from Delroy (‘Death of England: Delroy’) then both men (in the film ‘Death of England: Face to Face’). Finally, it’s the turn of the women: Michael’s sister and Delroy’s girlfriend Carly, and Delroy’s mum Denise.  Do you need to have watched the previous three installments to get what’s going on in ‘Death of England: Closing Time’, allegedly the final entry in the series? No, but it wouldn’t hurt. Certainly, if you saw the original it’s nifty to see how the staging and Ultz’s set mirrors it: a big, red cross catwalk like an England flag, with little glass cases lighting up to display props that illustrate the discussion. Carly (Hayley Squires) has taken over the family flower business, and Denise (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) has been sharing the shop, selling patties – an allegory for multiculturalism if ever there was one. But unfortunately, the business has tanked and the shop is about to be taken away from them. The first half is a rambling affair, with monologue and dialogue deployed as the two offer their takes on each other and their men. I’m not sure the series actually NEE

Tanika Gupta’s ‘The Empress’ is such a quintessentially RSC play that the venerable company has now staged it twice in ten years. A decade after Emma Rice’s inaugural production (which never made it to London), here’s a revival from Pooja Ghai that dials down the quirk in favour of a more contemplative, epic take on Gupta’s near three-hour play about Indian Victorians. Mixing fact and fiction, the play’s biggest indulgence is to imagine that every single one of its lead characters caught the same boat to England in 1882 - that’s real-life figures Abdul Karim (Raj Bajaj) and Dadabhai Nairoji (Simon Rivers), plus Gupta’s fictional protagonist Rani Das (Tanya Katyal), and then for good measure a cheeky cameo from a young Gandhi (Anish Roy). It’s an ensemble piece, but the 16-year-old Rani is the de facto lead, played with a winning mix of vulnerability, liveliness and twinkling charisma by the excellent Tanya Katyal. If the spirited teen is an invented character, then her circumstances sadly aren’t. Brought over as the ayah (or nanny) to a white English family returning from the subcontinent, her mistress abruptly jilts her at the docks, having lied about keeping her on in England purely to get childcare for the voyage – something that very much did happen. You can see why Gupta made Rani up: there may not be a famous individual who led Rani’s life, but the things that happened to her, happened to real women – her journey through insalubrious daal-serving boarding houses and cre

Talk about an eye-catching concept. Marek Horn’s ‘Octopolis’ is set in the modified university accommodation of widowed university professor George (Jemma Redgrave), where she lived with her late husband John, and also Frances, an octopus, who is still here - albeit in Ed Madden’s production only represented by the abstract, tank-like panels of Anisha Fields’s set. George and John had devoted their lives to the study of Frances, but with him gone, George has become a recluse. But her protracted mourning period is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Henry (Ewan Miller), a younger anthropologist. He’s been given the keys: this isn’t a private home, but a university lab complex with accommodation, and Henry is a man on a mission: he wants to find out if the octopi have a concept of god.  Horn’s play is incredibly dense and wordy, as George and John bat around ideas about grief, anthropology, divinity, love and - no escaping it - cephalopods. There is some gold in his dialogue. But it’s also pretty exhausting - relentlessly emotionally intense and hyper-wordy, made wordier still by Horn’s insistence on George and John literally say the stage directions and scene descriptions, effectively narrating the play as well as performing in it. Perhaps the most dramatically fruitful concept thrown up is the idea that from an anthropological perspective, David Bowie could be said to have occupied a sort of divine role in Western culture in the aftermath of his death. It’s an interesting id

Nina Segal’s new play is a reworking of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Hedda Gabler’ that’s set behind the scenes at the making of a Norwegian film version of ‘Hedda Gabler’. Which sounds like a very on-the-nose bit of conceptualising, but in fact Jeff James’s production starts out far away from trad Ibsen, then cleverly converges.  The protagonist of the drolly-titled ‘Shooting Hedda Gabler’ is an unnamed American actress played by Antonia Thomas, who is referred to only as Hedda, a name she refutes (everyone else has a name that corresponds with a role in Ibsen’s play). A former child star and current tabloid obsession, her career back home has taken a nosedive since she ran over a press photographer - possibly deliberately - and so she’s taken a gig playing Hedda in a movie directed by auteur Henrik (Christian Rubeck). The early stages have a lot of sardonic fun with the idea of ‘genius’ European directors - Rubeck’s Henrik is manipulative and cult leader-like, with the show’s Norwegian cast and crew under his spell and hostile towards ‘Hedda’. But there’s a jocularity to both text and production that stops ‘Shooting Hedda Gabler’ ever getting as intense as it might. I’ve a hunch that concepts like chippy young actor Thea (Matilda Bailes) also serving as the film’s psychologist and intimacy coordinator are meant to come off as deadpan surreal, but instead it feels like a throwaway sitcom gag. There’s an irony that it feels like James is himself aspiring to direct in

Way back in 2015, we were solemnly informed that a musical version of ‘The Hunger Games’ was going to make its debut at a revolving theatre in Wembley Park the following year.  Reader, it’s 2023 and there is no ‘Hunger Games’ musical and there is no revolving theatre in Wembley Park. And any last fans fervently holding out for this are going to have to acknowledge it’s not in fact happening, as a new, non-musical stage adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s 2008 dystopian novel – about a future in which the populace is exploited, downtrodden, and only given the chance to better themselves via the medium of gladiatorial combat, aka the titular Games – is heading to London next autumn. Photo: The Hunger Games Fully endorsed by Collins, and adapted from both her novel and the enormo-smash Jennifer Lawrence-starring 2012 film (pictured), the stage version of ‘The Hunger Games’ will be written by top playwright Conor McPherson and helmed by West End director Matthew Dunster, who is a dab hand at casting celebrity talent. There is, uh, not a lot of information beyond that: apparently it’s coming to London in autumn 2023, but there’s no word yet on precise dates, casting, or indeed where exactly it’ll run (so potentially a revolving theatre in Wembley, though more likely to be the West End). Still, with the creative talent announced it seems considerably more likely to actually happen than the last ‘Hunger Games’ show we were promised, and caps a busy period for non-musical adaptations o

A musical version of the quintessential ’00s fashion comedy ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ with new songs by Elton John almost sounds too good to be true. And in a way it was: after years of delays and painful development and a tryout run in Chicago last year, the general vibe re the inaugural production of John’s all-singing adaptation – which has lyrics by Shaina Taub and a script by Kate Wetherhead – is that it wasn’t really good enough yet.  Drawing boards have been gone back to, and reliable old-hand Broadway director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell has now taken the directing reins. And good news: forget Chicago, this time we get to be the pre-Broadway guinea pig, as ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ will arrive at the hulking Dominion Theatre next October following initial dates in Plymouth in the summer.  In case you’ve missed it, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is a 2003 book by Lauren Weisberger – former PA to Vogue boss Anna Wintour – that got turned into a hit film in 2006. It famously starred Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly, a tyrannical fashion editor, with Anne Hathaway playing Andy, the PA who gets sucked into the intoxicating toxicity of Miranda’s magazine. Reviews from Chicago basically said that it was tonally uncertain – did it want to be a total camp-fest or acknowledge the changed discourse on toxic bosses – and the costumes weren’t as fabulous as one might hope. But these seem like eminently fixable flaws with a new team, while last year’s ‘Tammy Faye’ musical shows that John sti

’Tis the season to get immersive in London this Christmas. Located just around the corner from the new, totally unaffiliated, immersive theatre show ‘Wishmas’, Humbug is a festive immersive drinking experience that bills itself as Santa’s favourite dive bar. Unlike ‘Wishmas’, Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland and the new ‘Kingdom of Winter’ over at the ExCel Centre, Humbug is very much an 18-plus, adults-only affair: it really is an actual bar, and the general idea is that you load up on seasonal cocktails, caterwaul along to a few carols, and maybe even hit the dancefloor. There’s a bit more to it than that, though: the centrepiece of every session in the bar is a two-hour immersive theatre adventure revolving around a stressed-out Santa hitting the bottle hard at Humbug. Punters need to team up with Santa's friends in order to coax him back to his usual jolly self and save Christmas… and if that sounds like a lot of work for a drink, our general experience of these sort of immersive drinking shows is that the theatre elements are quite unintimidating and often simply save you from having to think of small talk with whoever you’re with. Once the performance bit is wrapped up we’re promised DJs and dancing for another few hours (the complete experience is billed as four-to-five hours).  Running until the new year, Humbug is the creation of Secret Speakeasy, a new collaboration between the co-founder of Backyard Cinema and one of the executive producers of Immersive Everywhere. Ti

Although we’re a bit confused as to exactly what is going on with iconic Hammersmith arts complex Riverside Studios these days, the fact it went into administration back in March doesn’t seem to have slowed it down especially. In fact this Christmas it’ll stage its biggest production in years, as screen stars Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis return to the London stage for the first time in aeons for a revival of caustic Irish playwright David Ireland’s 2018 Edinburgh Fringe smash ‘Ulster American’. The provocative comedy about misogyny and callous English and American attitudes towards the island of Ireland will co-star ‘Derry Girls’ alumnus Louisa Harland as a Northern Irish playwright Ruth, whose big break has arrived in the form of a prestige production of one of her works starring a major Hollywood star Jay (Harrelson) and big name English director Leigh (Serkis). Unfortunately, the two men are truly horrible people. While the original Edinburgh production uncomfortably milked the men’s misogyny for laughs, this revival is helmed by top-flight director Jeremy Herrin, who should be able to steer his way through Ireland’s savage satire a little more defty. Whatever the case, it’s clearly a treat to see two major stars in such an intimate venue. From ‘Cheers’ to ‘True Detective’ the storied Harrelson has a ludicrously prestigious CV that scarcely needs an introduction. He’s done a fair amount of theatre too, although he hasn’t been seen over here since a 2005 revival of Tenne

A terrifying 20 years after the iconic film briefly looked like it would make Lindsay Lohan a global icon for the right reasons, Tina Fey’s musical adaptation of her own classic high school satire ‘Mean Girls’ is finally heading to the West End. It’s pretty much a straight-up adaptation of the film, following as it does Cady Heron, a homeschooled 16-year old who starts high school for the first time in her life aged 16. Falling in with North Shore High’s ousiders, she hatches a plan infiltrate and destroy the titular bitchy cliche dubbed the Plastics… before becoming seduced by their power and popularity. The musical ran for a couple of years on Broadway but was derailed by Covid and didn’t reopen post-pandemic. But by all accounts it was pretty darn good, with out colleagues at Time Out New York giving it a hefty four out of five (Broadway production pictured). The general feeling seems to have been that the songs – by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond and lyricist Nell Benjamin – are not quite as funny as the script, but then that's okay because the script is very very funny indeed. While the stage version may have closed in New York, a film version of the musical is due to hit screens early next, just a few months ahead of the West End premiere for ‘Mean Girls: The Musical’. A casting announcement is a long way off, but tickets will go on sale in November, with pre-sale access available if you sign up here. ‘Mean Girls’ is at the Savoy Theatre from June 2024. The best new London

Some big West End hitters come out in October. A by all accounts totally wild take on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ starring erstwhile Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger (pictured top) is the big headline grabber, but the month includes all sorts of blockbuster shows, from new comedy ‘Lyonesse’ featuring Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas, to the RSC’s blockbuster adaption of Maggie O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’, to Kenneth Branagh’s take on ‘King Lear’. Strap yourself in: it’s a big one. 1. Sunset Boulevard All sorts of wild stories have emerged from the first previews of Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s semi-loved 1993 musical: surreptitiously snapped footage of star Nicole Scherzinger drenched in blood, tales of her dancing the robot, mad rumours about bits of the show being performed outside the Savoy Theatre itself. Despite the enduring naffness of Webber – whose horribly dated ‘Aspects of Love’ was recently run out of town early – and pop star Scherzinger’s relative lack of musical theatre experience, it sounds like the edgy, reliably brilliant Lloyd is really onto something here. Savoy Theatre, until Jan 6. Buy tickets here.   Photo: Manuel Harlan   2. Hamnet The RSC plus Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel about Shakespeare’s wife Agnes (often called Anne) and the death of their son Hamnet was always going to be a match made in heaven: reviews of Erica Whyman’s production of Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation were ecstatic for its Stratford-upon-Avon

Update: in a seriously heavyweight piece of casting, long-term Armando Ianucci collaborator Steve Coogan will star in ‘multiple roles’in ‘Doctor Strangelove’ – presumably roughly equivalent to the ones played by Peter Sellars in the film. Tickets will go on sale September 27 2023 DrStrangelove.com, and the play is confirmed to run at the Noël Coward Theatre Oct 8 to Dec 21 2024. From The Day Today to Avenue 5 via The Thick of It, I’m Alan Partridge, The Death of Stalin and Veep, genial Scotsman Armando Iannucci is pretty much the greatest screen satirist of our age. The only reason he’s not as globally famous as he might be is that he’s rarely appeared in front of the camera since his seminal ‘90s satire The Friday Night Armistice. Despite his vocal love of opera and canny use of theatre talent – he’s pretty much the only film director to realise how good Simon Russell-Beale is – Iannucci has never actually been involved in a stage play before. But that changes next year when he co-adapts a new stage version of Stanley Kubrick’s landmark Cold War satire Dr Strangelove, which will mark the first time the Kubrick estate has allowed a stage adaptation of one of his films. It’s an intriguing prospect, though we don’t really know that much about it yet, other than that it’s supposed to hit a TBA West End theatre in autumn 2024. Will it be significantly updated? Will these be any attempt to recreate the film’s famously monochrome colour palette? Will there be a single lead actor ta

Although theatre is generally pretty good at dystopias, it’s generally not a medium that tends to give good science-fiction. Which makes the centrepiece of the Lyric Hammersmith’s 2024 season doubly intriguing. Most people will probably know ‘Minority Report’ from the smash 2002 Stephen Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise (pictured). It’s fair to say that the original 1956 novella by sci-fi godfather Philip K Dick – technically called ‘The Minority Report’ – is a bit less flying car chase-y than the movie. But it is, nonetheless, a cracking futuristic conspiracy thriller, set in a world in which crime has been all but eliminated thanks to ‘precogs’, mutants with an ability to see into the future whose reports enable the police to stop crime before they happen. But when John Anderton, the head of the police’s precrime division, finds himself fingered as a future murderer, he goes in the run to find out what the hell is happening. The adaptation is by the veteran playwright and actor David Haig, with direction from Max Webster – whose presence suggests a fairly spectacular production given he did the honours for the West End’s stunning ‘Life of Pi’. It’ll tour to the Nottingham Playhouse and Birmingham Rep in February and March before settling in for a longer run at the Lyric Hammersmith from April 19 to May 18. There it’ll form part of an exciting 2023 season that also includes the UK premiere of award-winning Australian pop musical ‘Fangirls’ (Jul 13-Aug 24), a revival of the

Update: tickets are now on sale – buy them here. Considering some of the wildly uncool big bucks choices he’s made on screen, erstwhile Doctor Who Matt Smith has been oddly cagey about just cashing his fame in order to do a big West End play. In 2013 he did the musical ‘American Psycho’ at the tiny Almeida Theatre; in 2016 he did the very weird Royal Court play ‘Unreachable’; ‘Lungs’, from 2019, played at the massive Old Vic, but only for a couple of weeks. Finally, though, he’ll be returning to the West End proper for the first time in over 15 years with ‘An Enemy of the People’. Moderate theatre nerds will be aware that it’s a very famous play by Henrik Ibsen about Doctor Stockmann, a scientist who discovers that the supposed healing waters of his hometown’s baths are contaminated, setting him on a catastrophic collision course with pretty much everyone he knows and loves. Hardcore theatre nerds will be delighted to discover that this is the English-language premiere of a legendary production by Thomas Ostermeier, artistic director of Germany’s renowned Schaubühne Berlin – they may even have seen it, as it’s previously toured to the Barbican.  Whatever the case, Smith should bring a totally different energy to Ostermeier’s setpiece climax, in which the actor playing Stockmann – ie Smith – opens up the ethical debate to the actual audience. Whether it’ll rattle along as intended, turn into an episode of ‘Question Time’, or get bogged down in blushing Doctor Who fans is TBC,

The Lightroom in King’s Cross is shaping up to be London’s most intriguing new venue, picking up on the current trend for projection-based exhibitions and immersive experiences, but actually doing it to a high technical standard (not just a projector set up in a manky old warehouse). Following on from the highly successful David Hockney exhibition ‘Bigger & Closer’ – possibly the first ever projection-based exhibition that the actual artist was involved with – here comes something completely different, from an arguably even bigger name. Tom Hanks, it turns out, is a massive space nut, whose imagination was captured as a child by the Apollo landings. When he’s not being generally avuncular and beloved, he’s dabbled in work about the moon: he produced the HBO miniseries ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ and co-wrote the IMAX film ‘Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D’. And here’s his latest lunar endeavour. ‘The Moonwalkers’ is an epic immersive experience that will combine original NASA footage of the Apollo landings and photos from Andy Saunders’s stunning photobook ‘Apollo Remastered’ with an original score from Anne Nikitin. Plus, of course, lots of Hanks. He will narrate a script by him and co-writer Christopher Riley telling the story of man’s expeditions to the moon and looking into its future. It will also feature interviews between Hanks and the astronauts of the upcoming Artemis expedition, which is intended to take man back to the moon for the first time in 50 y

In the 1980s, Andrew Lloyd Webber was so popular that he could write a musical about basically anything – no matter how ridiculous – and it would instantly be a smash. Most famously there was ‘Cats’, the almost plot-free show about some cats hanging out in a rubbish heap. And second most famously there was ‘Starlight Express’, a show which would not be inaccurate to summarise as being about some rollerskating trains. First opening in 1984, the original West End ‘Starlight Express’ steamed on for 18 years, although that’s got nothing on the production running in Bochum, a relatively obscure German city that has – for whatever reason – played host to a production of ‘Starlight Express’ (pictured) continuously since 1988 in a purpose-built theatre. Although the musical might seem to have had its day – it is heavily rooted in the roller skating revival of the 1970s, and is also about talking trains – Webber himself has kept an eye on this German edition, in 2018 implementing revisions that supposed made it ‘the definitive version’ (this included renaming a British train ‘Brexit’, fact fans). Image: Troubadour Theatre Clearly it’s been on Lloyd Webber’s mind, then. He’s talked recently about how his next musical might be an immersive one, and while people had thought he might have been referring to a new work, it seems he was talking about the resurrection of ‘Starlight Express’. He is describing the production as ‘the world’s first truly immersive musical’ (which at the very le

Okay, Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick were never going to bring their smash Broadway comedy ‘Plaza Suite’ to the West End out of the simple goodness of their hearts. They are glamorous celebrities who undoubtedly deserve some compensation for setting up shop in London during January and February. They probably need paying at Broadway rates, which are about three times higher than what the West End pays. Nonetheless, eyebrows have been more than raised at the show’s top price tickets, which will set you back a walloping £395. The main point in mitigation is that this does come with a load of extra stuff: three glasses of champagne, a dessert board, an ice cream and a programme (it’s also only available at the weekend, with a slightly less fancy £350 package replacing it in the week). Contrast this to 2021’s hit revival of Mike Bartett’s ‘Cock’, which charged £450 a ticket with no bonus booze – although it’s worth saying ‘Cock’ prices were slashed in response to the outcry and it’s not clear if anyone paid the top rate, meaning ‘Plaza Suite’ may be the record holder in terms of what people have actually paid.  Still, what if you just want to see the play? There is no option not to buy those seats without the package, but there do seem to be just eight of them per show, with the majority of stall tickets going for a still pretty hefty £300 (in fact £95 for three glasses of champagne and some snacks is… not horrible in a West End theatre). There are