Andrzej Lukowski

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.

The summer of 2023 starts in July, with family-friendly musicals ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Crazy for You’ rubbing up against major kids’ shows ‘Mog the Forgetful Cat’ and ‘The Smeds and the Smoos’. And if you’re in the mood for something a little more grown up, don’t worry: the great Mark Ryalnce returns in big West End drama ‘Doctor Semmelweis’ and London gets its first chance to see Belgium experimentalists Ontroerend Goed’s palindromic masterpiece ‘Are we not drawn onward to new erA’. Plus a hell of a lot more besides. To plan further ahead, check out our top shows to see this year. Also, check out our latest theatre reviews.  And if you need somewhere to stay, see the best hotels near the West End.  RECOMMENDED: Find the best West End theatre shows.

July is serving us another load of great dance shows in London. There's a fiery flamenco festival at Sadler's Wells; Carlos at 50: a ballet extravaganza celebrating the iconic Carlos Acosta's 50th birthday over at the Royal Opera House; and catch the invigorating contemporary company Joss Arnott Dance perform a brand new work at Greenwich Dance’s Summer in the Park. MORE STAGE: Dance classes in London Best theatre shows this yearBest theatre shows this monthBest comedy shows this month

Paris: the food, the fashion, the fromage, the fantasy. No matter how many times we visit the French capital, its charms never ever grow old. And we’re not alone in thinking that. Paris is a major tourist destination that attracts thousands upon thousands of enthusiastic travellers with heads filled with images of Breton jumpers, tiny dogs and posh chocolates. But how do you enjoy this gorgeous city without just succumbing to the age-old clichés? We’ve compiled a list of the 50 best attractions in Paris, from the big-name ‘must-visits’ to something a little bit more bespoke and authentically Parisian. So whether you’re looking for lesser-known museums, late-night live music or the best places for shopping, we’ve got ideas a-plenty - and they’re all as tasty as a Ladurée macaron. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best things to do in ParisRECOMMENDED: The best food tours in ParisRECOMMENDED: The best tours in Paris This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, click here.

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 (and for 2023, a lot of family theatre). 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.

After the chaos of the pandemic years, London’s theatre scene is fully reopened: a little battered around the edges still, but essentially how it was before Covid shut the theatres for 18 months: 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.

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.

So you’d like to go to the Edinburgh Fringe but you haven’t booked anywhere to stay yet – is it a practical option on a budget? The first thing to say is that for complicated-ish reasons there is currently a severe lack of short-term accommodation in Edinburgh during the Fringe, certainly compared with what there used to be, and the odds of you getting an incredible bargain on a gorgeous apartment on the Royal Mile are somewhere close to nil. However, don’t despair – here are five tips for sorting yourself out. 1. Throw (some) money at the problem Airbnb can still be your friend, insofar as it does still have properties available, you just need to accept that come July or August you’re probably looking at over £100 a night for a private room unless you’re very lucky, and vastly more for a whole place. It’s a lot! But it does the trick, it’s cheaper if you can divide the price with friends, and if you can afford it then internalising the message ‘Edinburgh is pretty expensive’ is better than looking morosely for a bargain that probably won’t come. 2. Do it like a student Part of the problem with short-term Fringe accommodation is that – long story short – a change in Scottish tenancy law a few years back meant that landlords were no longer able to put students on limited contracts with a ‘break’ for the Fringe. This doesn’t, however, affect student halls, which are by definition vacant in the summer and can usually be rented until fairly last minute, at prices that can at leas

While the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is famed for late-night boozing, interesting conceptual club nights and lairy standups, the truth of the matter is that it’s such a vast event that it offers all things to all people: including families! There’s a dedicated family section in the Fringe brochure, and the mornings at the festival in particular are bustling with shows specifically aimed at children, from theatre to stand-up. Here’s our top picks. RECOMMENDED: Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe The best theatre shows at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe The best comedy shows at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe  

What is the ‘best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe’? How does one determine such a thing? It’s a herculean and even quite existentially challenging task, that mercifully we at Time Out have never actually attempted to determine. But beloved TV channel Dave has been running an annual contest – Dave’s Joke of the Fringe – for some years now to allow the public to choose a winner from a shortlist provided to them by on-the-ground experts. It turns out Dave audiences basically like zingers, one-liners and snappy puns: there isn’t much overlap between this award and the much more progressive main comedy awards. And that’s basically fine. The award made a return in 2022 after being off for two years because of the pandemic. Will it be back for 2023? With Dave no longer sponsoring the main comedy prize, it seems questionable, though it may well be taken over by somebody else. In the meantime, here are all of the winners.  RECOMMENDED:Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023The best comedy shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023The best theatre shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2023 The best jokes and one-liners ever told at the Edinburgh Fringe 2022 – Masai Graham ‘I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop, but the female guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta.’ 2019 – Olaf Falafel ‘I keep randomly shouting out “Broccoli” and “Cauliflower” – I think I might have Florets.’ 2018 – Adam Rowe ‘Working at the job centre has to be a tense job: knowing that if you get fired, yo

It’s the largest arts festival in the world. It’s had a couple of pretty rough years. And now it’s back. With literally hundreds comedy shows to choose from, flicking through the phonebook-like Edinburgh Fringe (August 4-August 28 2023) programme can be more than a little daunting. So we’re here to help. From stand-up legends to award-winning newcomers, these are the comedy shows we’re most excited about at this year’s festival. Got some downtime between gigs? Then check out our pick of the best pubs, restaurants and afternoon tea in Edinburgh.  RECOMMENDED: Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe The best comedy shows at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe The best kids’ shows at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe

After two years largely out of action due to the pandemic, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe will finally bounce back to full strength this summer. For three weeks (August 4–August 28 2023), the Scottish capital becomes home to comedy giants, serious thespians, hilarious first-timers – and a bunch of genuine weirdos – all putting on shows left, right and centre. So where to start? Cut to the chase with our pick of tickets to fight for at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023, plus the Edinburgh International Festival which runs alongside.  RECOMMENDED: Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe10 of the best comedy shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 202211 of the best jokes and one-liners ever told at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Even in a toned-down new version, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s wildly problematic 1989 musical leaves me unsure how to rationally respond to it. Part of me thinks I should be trying to whip up a pitchfork-wielding mob to drive it out of town. Another part of me thinks… eh, it’s quite good fun if you can avoid thinking too hard about what’s actually going on.  Adapted from David Garnett’s 1955 novella, ‘Aspects of Love’ is a story of boho Brits taking a stab at sexual liberation in ’50s and ’60s France. Its first truly WTF moment comes in the middle of the first half, when young protagonist Alex (Jamie Bogoyo) literally shoots his former lover Rose (Laura Pitt-Pulford) out of jealousy over her new relationship with his uncle George (national treasure Michael Ball). Nobody seems to find this particularly amiss – perhaps because it’s only a flesh wound – and indeed George ignores Rose and gives Alex a sort of bros before hoes pep talk, encouraging him to get together with Rose, the woman he literally just shot. How can you possibly relate to these people? And that’s got nothing on the second half, wherein an older Alex inveigles his way into the now-married Rose and George’s home and spends five years essentially grooming their daughter (aka his cousin) Jenny. Crucially, this is different to the old version of the musical by Webber, Don Black and Charles Hart: originally, Alex only spends two years grooming Jenny, meaning she’s 15 at the end of the story, as opposed to 18 now. It ended

It was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and won the Pulitzer Prize. But Michael R Jackson’s ‘A Strange Loop’ still feels like a spectacularly bold piece of programming for the Barbican, which has leant into long runs of surefire hits – namely classic musical ‘Anything Goes’ and Studio Ghibli adaptation ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ – to fill its vast theatre post-pandemic. ‘A Strange Loop’ is different. It is an extremely Black, extremely queer, extremely horny, extremely New York show that is, to boot, extremely weird: a meta-musical about a theatre usher called Usher’s attempt to write a meta-musical about a theatre usher called Usher. It doesn’t feature any big names and isn’t an adaptation of famous source material. So yes, it comes with a lot of hype. But it’s a challenging, uncompromising show. A plus-sized, feminine Black man in his mid-twenties with no love life to speak of, Kyle Ramar Freeman’s Usher is tormented by his six Thoughts (Nathan Armarkwei-Laryea, Danny Bailey, Eddie Elliot, Sharlene Hector, Tendai Humphrey Sitima and Yeukayi Ushe).  They sneer at him for his failure as a Black man, his pathetic sex life, and his shitty job working as an usher on ‘The Lion King’. It’s irreverent and funny, but also very dark, as we follow Usher through an impressionistic New York City that’s like a personal hell. In a morbidly hilarious scene, his doctor chastises him for his lack of love life, suggesting that if he won’t go out and get laid then the AIDS generation died for nothing.

This review is from the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. I don't think it would take fellow Belgian Hercule Poirot to deduce that Ontroerend Goed’s brilliant new show ‘Are we not drawn onward to new erA’ is palindromic. If the title didn’t give it away, then the official description just spells it out. So trust me, it’s not a spoiler to tell you that the whole thing switches into reverse at the mid-point. In fact, it’s probably essential you’re aware of this fact lest you be left wondering what the hell the storied company is on during the first half, in which the six-strong cast destroy a tree, strew the stage with plastic bags, and assemble a creepy gold statue, all the while moving around in unnaturally jerky fashion, while speaking a series of completely indecipherable words.  What I’m not going to spoil is the nature of the reverse and how it plays out. The litter and the tree destruction will tip you off to the fact that Alexander Devriendt’s production is one of the glut of eco-plays at the Fringe this year, so clearly the play will end with the destruction somehow being unwrought. The means by which this is accomplished is obvious in retrospect, but at the time it’s startling, and brilliant.  It is a show about the idea that we have gone past the point of ecological no return, and in its second half it teases out the absurdities of believing we can start again. But it also offers a poignant, fantastical vision of just that.  And it is a remarkable technical accomplishment: par

This review is from the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe. I don't think it would take fellow Belgian Hercule Poirot to deduce that Ontroerend Goed’s brilliant new show ‘Are we not drawn onward to new erA’ is palindromic. If the title didn’t give it away, then the official description just spells it out. So trust me, it’s not a spoiler to tell you that the whole thing switches into reverse at the mid-point. In fact, it’s probably essential you’re aware of this fact lest you be left wondering what the hell the storied company is on during the first half, in which the six-strong cast destroy a tree, strew the stage with plastic bags, and assemble a creepy gold statue, all the while moving around in unnaturally jerky fashion, while speaking a series of completely indecipherable words.  What I’m not going to spoil is the nature of the reverse and how it plays out. The litter and the tree destruction will tip you off to the fact that Alexander Devriendt’s production is one of the glut of eco-plays at the Fringe this year, so clearly the play will end with the destruction somehow being unwrought. The means by which this is accomplished is obvious in retrospect, but at the time it’s startling, and brilliant.  It is a show about the idea that we have gone past the point of ecological no return, and in its second half it teases out the absurdities of believing we can start again. But it also offers a poignant, fantastical vision of just that.  And it is a remarkable technical accomplishment: par

SplitLip’s delightful spoof WW2 musical has been heading inexorably for the West End for something like five years now. It’s a fringe theatre comet that’s gathered mass and momentum via seasons at the New Diorama, Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios, and has now made impact in Theatreland – wiping out a West End dinosaur to boot, as it displaces ‘The Woman in Black’ after over 30 years at the Fortune Theatre. And it’s really hard to be anything but delighted for the company, which consists of David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Robert. All bar Hagan perform in the show, with Claire Marie Hall and Jak Malone rounding out the cast. This is very much their triumph. And though it’s been redirected for the West End by Robert Hastie, ‘Operation Mincemeat’ is at heart the same show it always was. There are no added backing dancers or bombastic reorchestrations. It’s slicker and bigger in its way, but still feels endearingly shambolic where it counts. It’s a very larky account of the World War 2 Operation Mincemeat, a ploy from British intelligence to feed the German army disinformation via a briefcase of false war plans strapped to a corpse that they hoped to pass off as a downed British pilot (yes, there was a recent film with exactly the same name, about exactly the same thing, and yes they do make a joke about this). The story centres on Charles Cholmondeley (Cumming), the socially inept MI5 operative who dreams up the plan, and Ewen Montague (Hodgson), the

‘The Pillowman’ is the great ’00s British play that got away. Martin McDonagh’s dark 2003 comedy – which starred a pre-‘Doctor Who’ David Tennant – was extravagantly praised upon its debut at the National Theatre’s smallest venue, the Cottesloe. But for whatever reason it never made it to the West End: all the more frustrating because it splashily transferred to Broadway, with Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup joining the cast. McDonagh’s subsequent colossal film success has only embellished its legend, and plans for a West End revival have long been mooted. And so now, 20 years after the National it’s here and it’s…  …quite good..? Set in a nameless totalitarian state, ‘The Pillowman’ follows the police interrogation of Katurian, an abattoir worker and prolific amateur writer of horrifying short stories. As the play wears on, it turns into an intricate, gristly Chinese box of horror, a horrible story made up of horrible stories, that serves as a consideration of the purpose of writing and the impulse to do so. McDonagh’s more frequently revived, Ireland-set earlier plays have generally stood up well. And ‘The Pillowman’ is full of brilliant bits, as the bemused Katurian is aggressively questioned by cops Tupolski and Ariel about a string of horrifying child murders that would appear to exactly replicate the writer’s (largely unpublished) stories. Despite holding her own Lily Allen seems like a perverse piece of casting But there’s something about its obvious desire to shock th

Now onto its fifty-seventh year of hurt, the capacity of the English men’s football team to be the focal point of ruinous national self-mythologization is well documented. As such, a play about the squad’s resurrection under Gareth Southgate feels like a potentially hubristic idea – dangerously overhyping a gifted man who still hasn’t taken home any actual silverware.  However: ‘Dear England’ is written by James Graham, a playwright who has made genuinely classic work out of such esoteric subjects as the quiz show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’, and the Labour whips office during the 1970s. Unlike the England team, his form is so impeccable that you kind of have to trust that whatever he has planned is probably going to work. And with ‘Dear England’, he’s hit the back of the net once again. Reuniting Graham with Almeida boss Rupert Goold (following last year’s musical ‘Tammy Faye’ and 2017’s Rupert Murdoch drama ‘Ink’), ‘Dear England’ essentially works because Graham and Southgate are interested in the same thing: why is the England men’s team burdened with such high expectations? And what do those expectations do to the psychology of both the team and the nation? Helpfully, Southgate’s penalty miss against Germany in Euro ‘96 is the perfect embodiment of England’s problems. Goold’s widescreen production starts off with a flashback to it, and when we first meet him, it’s come to define Southgate’s life. Maybe there’s no blame anymore, but it’s the thing he’s most famous for

The Almeida’s in-house directing wunderkind Rebecca Frecknall tackles the Bard for the first time with a galloping production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that doesn’t try and do anything too iconoclastic with the romantic tragedy, but nonetheless makes it feel fresh and thrilling. Frecknall’s most fun innovation is to mash up Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Okay, it’s mostly Shakespeare, but there’s something powerfully atmospheric and delightfully basic about the sequences where the immortal string-and-horn interplay of ‘Montagues and Capulets’ kicks in and the youthful cast burst into taut, kinetic dance sequences. Running at two hours with no interval, and with not much of a set to speak of, it’s a rare production that successfully conveys the play’s fairly wild timeline - the titular starcross’d lovers meet and marry in under 24 hours, and have taken their own lives just a couple of days later. Okay, their love lasts more than the length of a play, but Frecknall’s production really conveys the sense of their relationship as an out-of-control rollercoaster that neither is capable of leaving.  At heart, though, it’s just a darn good ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that hinges on two fine lead performances. Toheeb Jimoh is great as a smoothie Romeo, taking the piss and generally looking like he’s having a wonderful time as he drifts through Verona falling for one girl after another. If he affects worldly wisdom, then Isis Hainsworth’s loveable Juliet is al

Jack Thorne has to be one of the most versatile writers out there, a dab hand at everything from wild fantasy (‘His Dark Materials’, ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’, ‘Let the Right One In’) to gritty realism (‘Help’, ‘The End of History’). He’s no Jack of all trades, in other words. But he’s not infallible, and this historical drama never quite manages to live up to its intriguing concept. The year is 1926 and the General Strike is on, with every union in the country striking in solidarity with the nation’s 1.2 million coal miners, who are having wage reductions forced upon them. That includes the print unions: all papers in the country have ceased publication, leaving a huge information gap to be filled – and exploited.  Led by Stephen Campbell Moore’s intense John Reith, the nascent BBC had not previously been allowed to carry news broadcasts on its wireless service prior to 7pm, for fear of stepping on the print unions’ turf. However, they receive special dispensation to report throughout the day during the strike, on the proviso that a government minister (Ravin J Ganatra’s affable JCC Davidson) signs off the bulletins. Meanwhile, boozy, eccentric, baggage-laden Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill (Adrian Scarborough) has an alternative plan - the British Gazette, a state newspaper edited by… Winston Churchill. It’s a fascinating window into now little-remembered events, and Katy Rudd’s zippy production feels the most at ease while depicting the dawn of the

This review is from London, May 2023. ‘The Talent’ transfers to the Edimnburgh Fringe. A woman is sitting in a recording booth. She’s voicing an advert for some sort of breakfast product (‘oats’, we eventually discover). A pair of crackly disembodied voices – an English man and an American woman – are giving her pernickety, sometimes flat-out ludicrous direction. It’s not un-reminiscent of Matt Berry’s ‘Toast of London’ and the eponymous thesp’s weekly run-ins with twattish voiceover director Clem Fandango. Except here the woman, named Gemma (and played by Gemma Paintin) takes everything the voices throw at her with remarkable good grace.  After the oats she launches into what sounds like the dialogue for a character in a hokey space warfare game. Before long she’s blitzing through jobs – everything from underground train announcements to an automated phone scam – and burning through accents. Welsh, Scottish, American, Australian; at one point she’s asked to make her voice ‘halfway between French and German’ and she does it. She’s asked to make a soothing, wordless sound and she does it. She does it all. Bristol-based performance duo Action Hero – who have here teamed up with Canadian artist Deborah Pearson – have a history of making shows in which they absurdly push themselves to the limits, from a mock Western in which the pair (Paintin and James Stenhouse) ended up doused in ketchup, to a budget recreation of one of legendary stuntman Evel Knievel's most famous leaps. The

If you ever had any cause to doubt that Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ is the most significant work ever written in the English language, then take a look at theatre in 2023. The play itself is having a rare fallow year. But some four centuries after it was written, there are three major plays about ‘Hamlet’ running in London. Not to get all wanky about it, but ‘Hamlet’ is so enmeshed in our psyche that we can’t escape it even when we’re not actually staging it. The National Theatre has its blockbuster Jack Thorne drama ‘The Motive and the Cue’, the RSC’s smash adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’ is heading West End-wards in autumn, and in between comes performance artist Dickie Beau’s moving leftfield tribute.  ‘Re-member Me’ is a work that sneaks up on you. At first it’s a bit of arch fun, as Beau – real name Richard Boyce – lip syncs to recordings of sundry legendary British actors playing Hamlet, and sundry theatre grandees talking about playing ‘Hamlet’: the indestructible Ian McKellen and former NT boss Richard Eyre are the most prominent speakers to contribute original interviews, while John Gielgud – his voice instantly recognisable if you saw ‘The Motive and the Cue’ – is the main archive interviewee. It’s funny: Beau exaggeratedly gesturing along to McKellen’s huffing and grunting, or interpolating The Bard’s existential verse with banging pop tunes (The Village People’s ‘YMCA’ and Crystal Castles’ ‘Crimewave’). But surely enough it spools forwards to what is clearly

This review is from November 2021. ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ returns to the West End in October 2023 in a touring version with an all-new cast that includes Finty Williams as Old Mrs Hempstock. Did the unnamed protagonist of ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ really fight terrible extradimensional monsters as a 12-year-old, accompanied by his irrepressible, otherworldly friend Lettie Hempstock? Or is the much older version of him we meet at the start and end simply using the fantasy stories he loved to process a miserable, lonely, even abusive childhood? Is the ‘snip and stitch’ performed on his memory by Lettie’s unfathomably powerful ‘grandmother’ real? Or just a metaphor for repressed memories? You can read Joel Horwood’s superlative National Theatre adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 2013 fantasy novel any way you like. But when I saw it during its initial run at the Dorfman back in 2019, I was so wowed by the razzle-dazzle of Katy Rudd’s production that I didn’t really consider its status as a memory play. Maybe a monstrous entity does enter the world after the suicide of the family lodger, taking on the shape of a vituperative new tenant, Ursula, who seduces and twists the protagonist’s affable widower dad. Or maybe his dad just got a new girlfriend and started treating him abusively. But the fact of the matter is that this is a story about a lonely, mistreated boy who came into conflict with his family, and then buried memories of the period for decades. What I’m rea

Kids Week! As we never tire of pointing out, it’s much longer than a week and we’re unclear why there’s no apostrophe. But with deals like this, who cares? A long-running scheme from the Society of London Theatres (aka SOLT, which runs the West End, kind of), Kids Week essentially allows children aged 17 or under to get a free ticket to a West End show in August provided they’re accompanied by a paying adult (and a further two children can go at half price, meaning no need to drag a second parent along if you don’t want to). In part it’s obviously to try and flog seats during the slowest time of the year, but it’s also a genuinely well-intentioned initiative to get kids doing something more cultured during the summer holidays than staring slack-jawed at their phones for six weeks, and pretty much all the major shows participate. The basic deal is that you book via the official link for one of the participating shows, and boom! Free ticket. The tickets can be booked now, but for August only (again, we do not ask why it’s not called Kid’s Month), subject to availability, with some performances offering free bolt-ons like aftershow Q&As or backstage tours.  Clearly a good chunk of children aged 17 or under are pretty young, so it does skew towards shows for little ones, but there’s also plenty of stuff for teens in there too, from frightfest ‘2:22 – A Ghost Story’ to beloved musicals like ‘Wicked’ or ‘Phantom of the Opera’. The complete list of shows is: ‘Accidental Death Of An

In a year in which an unprecedented number of major theatre jobs have gone up for grabs – from the Royal Court to the Open Air Theatre – the biggest theatre job of them all (as in, probably in the world) is now up for grabs as Rufus Norris has said he will be stepping down from the National Theatre in 2025, with a successor hopefully chosen by the end of this year. Typically modest and low-key, Norris talked through the next year of NT programming at the theatre’s annual press conference before he dropped his big announcement. Highlights include Tim Price’s new play ‘Nye’, which will star Michael Sheen as Nye Bevan, the fiery founder of the NHS, a new stage version of Dickens’s ‘Out Mutual Friend’ called ‘London Tide’ that will feature songs by PJ Harvey, a new production of Shakespeare’s ‘Coriolanus’ starring David Oyelowo as the Roman general, and ‘Infinite Life’, a new play from the brilliant cult US writer Annie Baker. Photo: Philip Vile It was widely expected that Norris would announce he was stepping down as ten years is a pretty standard amount of time for the job if done well – only the NT’s second artistic director Peter Hall did the role for significantly longer. Although he probably won’t be remembered as quite a significant figure as his predecessor Nicholas Hytner, that’s largely because unlike Hytner he didn’t have to turn around an ailing institution – although he did point to steering the NT through the ravages of the pandemic as probably his most significan

‘Diana: The Musical’ has very much been a thing for a few years now, and indeed you’re possibly aware of its ill-starred original US run (pictured). Famously, David ‘the keyboardist from Bon Jovi’ Bryan and Joe DiPietro’s musical about the life and cult of Diana Spencer began Broadway previews in March 2020, got immediately nerfed by the pandemic, got turned into a Netflix version that was roundly panned, reopened on Broadway, got panned again, then closed. And good news – it’s finally coming to the London stage! In fact, it’s not the Broadway version: we’re actually getting a brand new concert production, due to play for one night only at the Hammersmith Apollo. But in fairness to ‘Diana’, it has its defenders, most of whom agree that it’s deliberately daft camp and not actually an earnest tribute (whether or not you think it’s taking the piss affects how lines like the infamous ‘better than a Guinness, better than a wank’ land). Anyway, you can judge for yourself this December. A single show is obviously not quite a West End run, but you can’t blame the producers for being cautious this time, and it’s got some genuine talent in it. Musical theatre royalty Kerry Ellis will star as the older Diana, with Maiya Quansah-Breed as her youthful 19-year-old incarnation. Most delightfully, Denish Welch – actor, soap star, TV personality and mum to that guy who dated Taylor Swift – will co-star as the Queen in the show, which will be directed by RSC regular Owen Horsley. Expect a fun

For a variety of reasons, the West End tends to be a little slower over the summer months: Londoners leave town, everybody gets unduly excited about the prospect of doing stuff outdoors, there’s a certain nervous as to the robustness of theatre air-con, and after a June rush there’s a dearth of major new openings until things get busy again in September.  That’s great news for bargain-conscious types, because there are savings galore to be had at even the biggest West End shows, as evidenced by TodayTix’s Summer Theatre Sale, in partnership with us, Time Out. In short, between May 29 and June 11 you’ll be able to buy reduced-priced tickets for 29 of London’s hottest shows for a limited window of summer performances only, typically starting at £25 for a decent seat. There are offers on everything from this year’s red-hot Bridge Theatre revival of ‘Guys & Dolls’ to more established West End classics like ‘The Book of Mormon’ or, indeed, ‘The Mousetrap’. The offers vary considerably and with more popular shows may apply to weeknights only. But basically if you’ve a hankering to go to the theatre this summer and are prepared to be reasonably flexible with the date, there are some tremendous deals to be had. For the full list of participating shows and to book tickets for them, go here.  The best new London shows to book for in 2023. You can now see Penny Mordaunt’s very heavy sword at the Tower of London.

Over the last few days there has been considerable excitement in the Right-wing press over the fact that the upcoming play ‘Tambo & Bones’ at Theatre Royal Stratford East is having a ‘Black Out’ performance on July 5 – that is to say a one-off performance aimed at a Black or Black-identifying crowd. Why is TRSE doing this? And why has it got The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, GB News et al suddenly circling like indignant vultures? For starters, the fact that there’s a designated name for the event tells us that this is not a new phenomenon. Black Out performances were pioneered on Broadway by the playwright Jeremy O Harris, and have been kicking around in London for a little while – notably at the Almeida Theatre, but there is, for instance, another one coming up at the Lyric Hammersmith’s ‘School Girls’ on June 19 that seems to have attracted almost no ire, despite the fact it’s happening before the ‘Tambo & Bones’ one and is exactly the same concept. What is the point of Black Out nights? Put simply, they take place at plays by Black playwrights that are telling Black stories. However, theatres in the US and UK tend to be very white spaces. Crudely speaking, the Black Out nights are a drive to get Black audiences to the theatre, a concerted attempt to put these specific plays in front of the community the playwright was addressing when they wrote the play, and simply to experiment with a different audience dynamic. Two important points. Non-Black audiences aren’t actuall

A true London theatre icon, the Old Vic’s joyful Jack Thorne-penned stage version of ‘A Christmas Carol’ has run every Christmas since 2017 – it even managed to run in 2020 as a series of streaming-only performances. It usually had a solidly big-name celebrity playing the role of grumpy miser Ebeneezer Scrooge, though this year’s casting is TBA. However, there’s an open call for four young actors to rotate the role of Tiny Tim, the disabled boy who melts Scrooge’s icy heart (well, him plus the existential terror instilled in Scrooge by the series of ghosts that visit him). The part is open to children aged nine-plus and under four foot six. As Tiny Tim is a disabled role, only disabled applicants will be seen, though there is no specific condition being looked for. There’s a whole thing on the Old Vic website about how to enter your sprog, but the main things to bear in mind are that they’ll need to be available for audition workshops that run from summer to early autumn (deadline is August 30) and that they'll need to be available from October 2 to January 6 for the play itself.  Good luck, parents, guardians and stage-minded children! To enter your child for the role of Tiny Tim, go here.  ‘A Christmas Carol’ will run at the Old Vic Nov 11-Jan 6. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2023. The Horniman Museum is getting a £10m revamp.

One of Britain’s most acclaimed actors, Ruth Wilson is best known for the hit TV shows ‘Luther’, ‘The Affair’ and ‘His Dark Materials’. But she’s also a heavyweight, double Olivier-winning stage performer, most recently seen in London in Ivo van Hove’s searing ‘Hedda Gabler’ and divisive ‘The Human Voice’. This week she takes on what is clearly the greatest challenge of her career to date, by performing ‘The Second Woman’, a stupendously challenging performance piece by Australian artists Nat Randall and Anna Breckon that started life in Sydney in 2016 and has subsequently been staged in North America, Taiwan, and now our very own Young Vic in a LIFT co-production. Lasting a gargantuan 24 hours, with only the briefest of breaks, it consists of the same scene repeated 100 times, with Wilson playing the female role in every single one of them, opposite a series of amateur male performers who she will have never met before.  In advance of this mammoth feat, we caught up with her to ask: what the hell? How on earth was this pitched to you? ‘The pitch was: 24 hours on stage, one scene, 100 actors – or 100 male participants, non-actors. And I instantly said yes. They knew: Ruth will do this. I thought: this sounds mad, I’ll never get offered anything like this again. I am always looking for slightly off-the-wall experiences and challenges for myself as well as the audience and I just grabbed at it.’ What exactly happens in it? ‘The scene is based on a John Cassavetes film called “O

We’ve not seen a whole lot of Brian Cox on stage since the veteran actor’s career was given a late turbo-boost after he took on the immortal role of the appalling Logan Roy in Netflix’s wildly acclaimed ‘Succession’.  But with ‘Succession’ now wrapped up, he’s still clearly got something to prove as a stage actor: next spring he’ll take on arguably the greatest stage role in the American canon as another, very different, monstrous father in Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’. Cox plays James Tyrone, a successful but embittered stage actor who has given his entire career over to a single part, and now feels he never got his due. O’Neill’s epic semi-autobiographical play was only published posthumously, when it netted him the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and it has rarely been far from our stages since, with recent London productions providing a platform for David Suchet and Jeremy Irons.  It might well be the last major stage role the 76-year-old Cox takes on – it’s the sort of monolithic part that great actors bow out with, content they’ve proved that they still have ‘it’.  Jeremy Herrin will direct a cast rounded out by Patricia Clarkson as matriarch Mary Tyrone, alongside Alex Lawther as Edmund, Daryl McCormack as James Jr and Louisa Harland as Cathleen. ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ is at Wyndham’s Theatre, Mar 19-Jun 8 2024. Tickets go on sale 10am on May 11.  The best London theatre shows to book for in 2023. Succession: you can now stay in Alexander

If there are two things David Tennant is famous for that aren’t ‘being a time travelling space alien’, it’s playing villains and taking on big Shakespeare roles. Curiously, though, he’s never played one of Shakespeare’s many juicy villains… until now. This December the Scottish actor will take on The Scottish Play in Max Webster’s Donmar Warehouse production of the Bard’s gory, supernatural-tinged revenge tragedy ‘Macbeth’. Although a stage regular – last seen in the West End’s excellent ‘Good’ – Tennant is another major coup for the tiny Donmar, which has a serious track record with big-name Shakespeare productions, with Tom Hiddleston’s ‘Coriolanus’ and Kit Harington’s ‘Henry V’ – also directed by Webster – both relatively recent. Tickets to ‘Macbeth’ are liable to sell out very quickly indeed for the ten-week run, though you have to think the odds are high that it’ll be filmed for NT Live. There’s no word on other casting, though the role of Lady Macbeth typically attracts a high-profile actor as well (for instance, Saoirse Ronan did it at the Almeida in 2021).  It comes in a busy year for the play, with the Globe also staging a production (with casting TBC) and the recent announcement that Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma will star in a touring version that will play a warehouse in London (TBC, but obviously not the Donmar Warehouse) early next year. Kenneth Branagh’s imminent ‘King Lear’ means this is going to be an excellent year for seeing middle-aged celebrity men doing

The highs and lows of Jamie Oliver’s restaurant empire are difficult to really stay abreast of – at one point his various franchises seemed to account for 50 percent of all eateries in the country, but his restaurant group collapsed in 2019.  Now, however, Jamie’s back! The erstwhile Naked Chef has announced plans to open a new restaurant in the iconic Theatre Royal Drury Lane towards the end of the year. The venerable building – which dates back to 1812, though there’s been a theatre on the site since 1674 – has recently had a fancy makeover that’s added a multitude of drinking and dining options under the umbrella title The Lane. Oliver’s as-yet-untitled new restaurant will be the final part of the £60m redevelopment, and while there’s no name yet, we’re told it will specialise in seasonal dishes and we can expect him to work with suppliers from the breadth of his 30-year-career.  Quoth Oliver: ‘Losing my restaurants was one of the hardest times of my life. But being a positive part of the restaurant industry is very close to my heart. [The new restaurant will be] about celebrating Britain’s rich and diverse food scene in what I hope will be an iconic, trusted restaurant in a very special place. This opportunity truly means the world to me.’ Find out more information about current venues at The Lane here. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2023. All the best new London restaurant openings in May.

Johnny Flynn is almost certainly the only buzzy ’00s indie folk musician to have successfully reinvented himself as an in-demand screen actor and heavyweight theatre leading man. He’s not done a play since he starred opposite Kit Harington in 2018’s West End hit ‘True West’, but now he returns with the biggest role of his career: as superstar Richard Burton in Jack Thorne’s Sam Mendes-directed National Theatre play ‘The Motive and the Cue’, which details the fraught rehearsals for Welsh acting titan Burton’s starring role in a 1964 Broadway direction of ‘Hamlet’. Mark Gatiss stars as Burton’s director and idol John Gielgud, with Tuppence Middleton as his even more famous wife, Elizabeth Taylor. Tell us about the Richard Burton who you’re playing, Richard Burton in 1964. ‘He’s at a crossroads. He’s the working-class son of a miner and has become the most famous actor in the world through sheer talent and is married to the most famous woman in the world. When he met Liz Taylor on the set of “Cleopatra” the word “paparazzi” was created after the Italian press started following them around. They were excommunicated by the Vatican. They were front-page news every day. But he thinks of himself as a classical actor, he wants to be seen in the lineage of John Gielgud. He’s been in some really creaky films recently and he wants the public to see him how he sees himself, which is as a good classical actor. He wants to do “Hamlet” and he chooses Gielgud – who was the Hamlet of his gener

Can former Shakespearean prodigy Kenneth Branagh really be old enough to play King Lear? The answer is ‘yes, absolutely’ - Sir Ken is somehow now 62 years old, with a career that’s taken in everything from playing the Russian bad guy in Christopher Nolan’s impenetrable ‘Tenet’ to helming the seven times Oscar-nominated black and white autobiographical opus ‘Belfast’. Shakespeare will always be his lodestar, though, and having not actually done any since he played Leontes in ‘The Winter’s Tale’ back in 2015, it’s high time he went back to the Bard. ‘Lear’ is, of course, the summit of theatre for any self-respecting older actor. It’s the wild, elemental tragedy of the eponymous elderly monarch who divides his kingdom up between his three fractious daughters then loses his mind in a storm while they have a big barney. It’s a bit more poetic than that, though. Branagh will both star and direct the play, which runs for 50 performances only at Wyndham’s Theatre this autumn. Beyond that, that’s all we know about the show, other than the fact it’ll transfer to New York’s The Shed in 2024. As a director Branagh is mercurial but generally pretty accessible, if not necessarily trad… which is fine, really, as London’s had a lot of pretty arty Lears lately. It remains to be seen whether the reassuringly smiling photo of Branagh accompanying the launch of the show is indicative of the fact he’ll be playing the monarch as more likeable than usual, or if it’s simply a nice photo of Sir Ken.