Andrzej Lukowski

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.

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. 

Going to the theatre this festive season doesn't have to mean family-friendly Nutcrackers and the usual PG-rated panto dames. These festive nights out are pitched at adults: some are simply not for kids, others would scar your little ones for life if they saw them, all will help to quell the Christmas cheese overload with everything from drag and LGBTQ+ pantos, edgy comedy, (Christmas) dinner theatre to wintry circus wonderlands. And no kids allowed! RECOMMENDED: Find more Christmas shows in London 

Love them, hate them, or just accept them as a sort of immutable fact of life, it's officially Christmas song season in 2023. And although there’s been a fair amount of disposable novelty rubbish written over the years, the reality is that a lot of Christmas songs are bangers. There are plenty of keepers from the ‘40s-‘70s heyday of the Christmas record as an art form, for example, but even more cynical later generations of pop have produced plenty of gold. Festive cheer has found its way into pop, hip-hop, R&B, metal, punk, indie… you name it. So as a gift, we've rounded up the very best Christmas songs going. Ho ho ho.  RECOMMENDED:🎅 The best places to go at Christmas 🎉  The best party songs🎤  The best karaoke songs🕺  The best pop songs of all time Written by Andrzej Lukowski, Oliver Keens, James Manning, Alim Kheraj, Ed Cunningham, Liv Kelly and Ella Doyle.

It happens to all of us sometimes: you've forgotten all about that special day and need to make a plan. Stat. What’s the best solution? Flowers are a no-brainer – especially since ordering and sending flowers is as easy as opening up your laptop or picking up your phone. These options for flower deliveries in Brooklyn are just the thing for last-minute situations. Oh, and sending flowers is a good idea any time, especially if it’s paired with chocolate, delivered from the best chocolate shops in the country. For an extra treat, send your special someone a complete meal to their door from one of the best takeout and delivery services in New York City. RECOMMENDED: The best flower delivery options in NYC This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, click here.

Birthday coming up and you've forgotten until now, right? Yup, we've all been there. But you needn't worry because Los Angeles is full of fantastic online florists who offer same-day and next-day delivery for any occasion – saving you from having to explain yourself for lack of a gift. We’re not talking humdrum flowers either: from floral shops focused on classic roses, precious orchids, and bargain blooms to more one-of-a-kind offerings like tropical succulents, floral buds, and even dried bouquets, LA has last-minute flower options to suit every kind of personality. Now, you can find it all and more in our definitive guide to the best online flower delivery services in Los Angeles. Need more help? Round off the day with a booking at one of the best restaurants in the city.  This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, click here.

There's a pretty much limitless array of fun to be had in London, whatever age you are. But this city is extra good for young 'uns, whether you're after theatre shows to blow their minds, free kid-friendly museums to get them learning without realising it, or leftfield activities that they'll be raving about for weeks afterwards, or just a really, really top-notch playground. Everyone from hyperactive toddlers to cynical teens will find something to get excited about. If you’ve got a bit of cash to spend then you can enjoy a glorious day out at the world-famous likes of London Zoo or the London Aquarium. But if you’re on a budget there’s plenty to do that’s free. London is full of outdoor options, from high-concept adventure playgrounds to gorgeous open parks, as well as other family-friendly spots that are free to visit, stretching your budget further for those must-do attractions that aren’t.  RECOMMENDED: Let the kids loose on these incredible adventure playgrounds

It's Christmas, so London's dance companies are putting their twinkliest toes forward and staging a beautiful array of yuletide shows. If you want to see a festive classic like 'Swan Lake' or the immortal ‘Nutcracker’, you're in luck, because these tutu-tastic trad ballet spectaculars dominate the bill at big venues like the Coliseum and the Royal Opera House. With dazzlingly well-drilled choruses and stunningly glitzy visuals, they're the perfect intro to the wonderful world of ballet. But there's also quirkier Christmas fare at London's smaller dance venues, and they'll be added to this page as they're announced.  Read on to book tickets to a London dance show that'll inspire you to leap off the sofa and into the yuletide spirit. RECOMMENDED: Find more Christmas shows in London  See Christmas pantomimes in London.

The capital’s Thai food scene is one of the world’s finest, and way more varied than you might expect. London’s best Thai restaurants do the staples extremely well; you won’t go wanting for green curry, pad thai, tom yum and all the rest, but there are twists and turns in our Thai offerings too. Line up for spicy showstoppers, tangy Thai tapas and fiery regional fare, as well as Thai with an LA twist and Bangkok-inspired street food feasts. And this all happens everywhere from buzzy pub basements to luxury hotels and fabulous food halls. What are you waiting for?  RECOMMENDED: London’s best Chinese restaurants.

Every week, a frankly stupid amount of brilliant new restaurants, cafés and street food joints arrive in London. Which makes whittling down a shortlist of the best newbies a serious challenge. But here it is. The 15 very best new restaurants in the capital, ranked.  Go forth and eat, featuring everything from Italian-ish snacks at Forza Wine on the South Bank and Macedonian bakes at Mystic Burek in Sydenham, to sassy small plates at Lulu's in Herne Hill, west African set menus at Chishuru in Fitzrovia, big spender sushi at Sushi Kanesaka and gastropub favourites at The Waterman's Arms in Barnes. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in London.

Oh yes it is: London panto season returns for 2023, with familiar faces, familiar stories, and yet somehow holding on to a constant sense of anarchic family fun. There are plenty of punters who never set foot in a theatre throughout the rest of the year who make an exception for pantomimes, which are among the most joyful Christmas shows in London, especially if you're looking for a show to take the kids to. From the megascale London Palladium show with its filthy figurehead Julian Clary, to Clive Rowe’s brilliant panto purism at the Hackney Empire, London is a city that takes pantomime seriously. Even if the idea of seasonal frivolity fills you with dread, there’s a panto out there for you. RECOMMENDED: The best London theatre shows to see in 2023 and 2024. The best Christmas theatre shows in London.

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

This review is from 2014. 'Get Happy' returns to the Barbican for Christmas 2023. Shape-shifting stage veterans Told by an Idiot finally make a foray into children’s theatre with this madcap little gem aimed at ages four and above. Though overtly influenced by the glory days of silent slapstick, ‘Get Happy’ has no theme per se – instead, it’s a sort of surreal sketch show for kids. If there is a thread running through the show, it’s a very British take on failure: most of the skits involve the quartet of performers charmingly ballsing something up, be it Stephen Harper trying to serve Sophie Russell a restaurant meal with a huge bungee cord tied around his waist, or him engaging slick young buck Michael Ureta in a staggeringly inept dance-off. Harper’s hangdog facial expressions are priceless and it’s all handled with great charm and gusto, though the young audience I saw it with (most of whom seemed to be French, weirdly) were generally agreeably puzzled rather than actively enraptured by proceedings. But they came to life during the sprinklings of audience interaction: for a lot of these theatregoers, the bit where they were invited to jump over a sports bag clearly constituted the high point of their week – oh to be young! RECOMMENDED: More Christmas shows in London  Find more festive fun with our guide to Christmas in London

Jude Christian is an achingly cool leftfield playwright and director… and apparently a massive Christmas fan, having been a mainstay of the Lyric Hammersmith panto creative team for years. Not 2023, however, as she finds a new seasonal outlet in the form of the Polka Theatre’s Christmas show, its first under new artistic director Helen Matravers. Directed by Emma Baggott, ‘The Snow Queen’ is, of course, a fresh take on Hans Christian Andersen’s beloved story – Christian does Christian – in a zippy update for ages six-to-12 that roughly hews to the shape of the original while adding distinctly cheerier vibes.  Broken up into short chapters by Joe Boylan and Paula James’s narrating Ancient Trees, it tells the story of best friends Gerda (Rebecca Wilson) and Kai (Finlay McGuigan), who dream of becoming adults by saving the town from the clutches of the enigmatic Snow Queen (Phoebe Naughton). But their plans are knocked off course when a shard of evil troll mirror gets into Kai’s eye and he has a total emo meltdown before running away with the Queen. It’s an enjoyable show that doesn’t quite feel like it knows what it wants to be. It’s most confident when it’s being silly: the larky prologue about the Troll King and his mirror and the Python-esque sequence with singing flowers are both gems. But while it’s understandable that Christian hasn’t been 100 percent faithful to the original Victorian story – it’s very meandering, and quite religious – her version ends up defanged by a d

This short, sharp play from Polish writer Magdalena Miecznicka concerns the aftermath of an affair between wealthy English guy John (David Sturzaker), and Aga (Olivia Le Anderson), a younger Eastern European woman in a poorly paid hotel job. When Aga’s husband got wind of said affair, John abruptly cut it off, fearful that his identity would be discovered and his wife would find out. Now, sometime later, the two have met up to talk. Aga is now a single mum, and at first it appears that the agenda is for the two of them to pick over what happened and for her to express her frustration and hurt at him ending it so tersely and self-servingly. It’s ultimately a play about power imbalances, and how the affair may have the appearance of equality, but how hugely far apart in station Aga and John ultimately are in a society run by wealth.  Which sounds kind of worthy, but it all gets vastly juicier when Aga declares she is going to blackmail John into buying a flat for her and her two children.   She doesn’t play the femme fatale: she’s angry, but also makes a perfectly rational point - their affair has cost her everything, and John nothing; more to the point, John can well afford to buy her a flat. So why shouldn’t he? His essential argument is that while he could, it’s simply not done, and moreover he doesn’t have to. From Aga’s point of view, he has used her, sharing a life with her in secret but refusing to even admit the possibility of responsibility towards her.  ‘Nineteen Gard

This review is from the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe. ‘Chriskirkpatrickmas’ transfers to the Seven Dials Playhouse for Christmas. An all-female drag musical parody of ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, that follows NSYNC founder Chris Kirkpatrick as he travels back in time to his boy band glory days with the aid of the ghost of Mark Wahlberg’s Marky Mark pop persona? Only at the Fringe, riiiight? *snaps fingers*. In fact, far from being a rickety student wheeze knocked up quickly for cheap laughs, ‘Chriskirkpatrickmas’ is a ten years in the making labour of love from the crack team of US talent that performs it. The seven-strong cast is headed by songwriter Valen Shore – who dons a goatee and straggly dreads to play Chris – and lyricist, book writer and director Alison Zatta, who plays the prodigiously Boston-accented spirit of Marky Mark (who split with Wahlberg after he successfully reinvented himself as an actor, and urges Kirkpatrick to do something similar). As the show begins, it’s Christmas 2009 and four of the five members of NSYNC have gathered for their annual seasonal meetup. You can guess who’s missing: Justin Timberlake (Nicole Wyland) is off being super famous. The other three guys – that’s Lance (Riley Rose Critchlow), Joey (Elizabeth Ho) and JC (Mia-Carina Mollicone) – are pragmatic. Chris, though, insists that JT will show up; he also doggedly holds on to the fact that officially NSYNC are merely on hiatus while Justin has a go at a solo career. It wal

Kolae is the long-awaited sister restaurant to Som Saa, the cult east London Thai pop-up that broke the internet when chef owners Mark Dobbie and Andy Oliver launched a fundraiser to find a permanent site back in 2015 (aiming to raise £550k, they had to stop taking donations after hitting £700k in three days). Like Som Saa, Kolae serves Thai food and is based in an iconic London market (Borough, while Som Saa is in Spitalfields). Those headline points aside, Kolae is not Som Saa 2. The vibe is very different. In contrast to its cantina-like predecessor, the 80-cover Kolae is in a former coach house and has a sophisticated New York neighbourhood eatery air; all exposed brick and intimate seating, with bar seats and an open kitchen, stacked over three floors, with old time rock’n’roll playing at a tasteful background volume.  Red kabocha squash transcended its mortal trappings to be reborn as something velvety and chocolatey and minerally  Neither Dobbie nor Oliver are Thai, and there’s a lack of cultural appropriation-style kitsch here, just reverence for Thailand’s food. Even the name is purely prosaic: Kolae is the style of the cooking practised here, a form of southern Thai cuisine that revolves around marinating things in a coconut-based curry-style sauce and grilling. A running theme is slow cooking – many of the dishes are roasted for hours upon hours, including the signature dish, a grilled mussel skewer.  Imagine the best fudge you ever tasted was also the best shellf

Rory Mullarkey is one of those playwrights who theatre artistic directors clearly see something in that the rest of us haven’t. Over the last decade he’s notched up multiple Royal Court commissions and one biggie at the National Theatre without ever obviously writing anything particularly good.  That’s a bit harsh. He has boldly visual ideas and a subversive sense of humour. His plays sound great on paper and feel like they should come together into inventive, accessible, relatively mainstream work. But little he’s done has really cohered, and it’s a frustration that his messy new comedy ‘Mates in Chelsea’ marks the final piece of original programming in the Royal Court career of outgoing artistic director Vicky Featherstone.  It centres on Theodore ‘Tug’ Bungie (Laurie Kynaston), an essentially useless member of the landed gentry who lives in a bijou West London flat and spends money like water, safe in the knowledge his that his family has always been wealthy and always will be wealthy, and that his formidable mother Agrippina’s biannual visits to bollock him for his spending are purely rhetorical. Sadly (or not), it turns out the money really has run out this time, leading Tug, his long-suffering fiancée Finty (Natalie Dew) and his besotted BFF Charlton (George Fouracres) to all head up to the family’s Northumberland pile in a truly outlandish effort to stop it from being flogged off to a Russian oligarch. When it’s just taking the piss out of the idle rich, Sam Pritchard’

Having run in 2020 and 2022, ‘A Christmas Carol’ will not be returning to the Bridge in 2023. ‘Guys and Dolls’ is on instead. Yeah, the Pfizer vaccine is a miracle of science – but has anybody tried injecting people with ‘A Christmas Carol’? In the toughest year for London theatres since Oliver Cromwell shut them all down, adaptations of Charles Dickens’s beloved ghost story seem to have remained steadfastly immune to the ravages of 2020: between online and IRL productions, there are at least a half-dozen ‘Carols’ in London this year. This three-hander from the redoubtable Bridge – one of the star theatres of the year, having pulled off a 12-play rep season in the original gap between lockdowns –  doesn’t make any tenuous case for the story as a Covid-era parable.  But you bung three of the best actors around – bonafide legend Simon Russell Beale, rising star Patsy Ferran, and hotly-tipped newcomer Eben Figueiredo – put the great Nicholas Hytner on directing duties, and combine with one of the most popular stories ever written, and you’re not going to go far wrong. In a zippy lo-fi production, the trio share the story’s numerous characters, with Beale mostly rooted in place as a surly, emotionally numb Ebeneezer Scrooge. But despite the modern-ish dress and a couple of cute contemporary gags airlifted in from the rubble of pantomime season, the cast and director devised show sticks closer to the original novella than most versions: it tones down both the gothicky schtick and

Choosing the right location is half the struggle for an immersive theatre show. And the stunning art deco Hackney Town Hall is a magnificent and period-appropriate backdrop to Adam Taub’s adaptation of Orwell’s immortal totalitarian satire ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. Unfortunately, the other half of the battle is still making a great play, and here’s where Jem Wall and Richard Hahlo’s production falls down. It begins with us taking an ‘entrance exam’ for the Ministry of Truth, which takes up 20 minutes or so before Jude Akuwudike‘s O’Brien shows us surveillance footage of Declan Rodgers’s Winston and Kit Reeves’s Julia having an illicit affair – in defiance of the aggressively asexual society of this Britain, now part of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania. Seeing the events of the novel from the state perspective is an interesting idea, but we’re never meaningfully indoctrinated into the ways of Big Brother and The Party. Really we’re just watching a version of the novel edited down to three short scenes, with a little bit of immersive gimmickry thrown in. It’s far too short to convey the novel’s power, and as much as anything, the fact we immediately know The Party is onto Winston and Julia robs it of dramatic tension.  The actors are solid, and Akuwudike does a heroic job as O’Brien, both fulfilling his role in the book and handling the lion’s share of the audience interaction. But it’s all too glancing. You would never adapt ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ into a play this brief i

Lynn Nottage’s monumental 2015 drama ‘Sweat’ is one of the great twenty-first-century American plays, a working-class tragedy every bit as potent as anything written by Miller or O’Neill. Remorselessly tracking the disintegration of a proud factory town after the jobs go, its vision of a country collapsing into industrial decline and racial mistrust is harrowingly brilliant. ‘Clyde’s’ isn’t quite a sequel. But it’s certainly a companion piece, one that imagines the ‘Sweat’ world with a little hope sprinkled over it.  Those who did see Lynette Linton’s phenomenal 2018 UK premiere production at the Donmar will recognise the two plays’ shared character – Jason, played then and now by Patrick Gibson. There is no need to have seen ‘Sweat’ first, but if you did, you’ll find Jason's circumstances aren’t hugely altered. After losing his job at the steel mill in his hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania, he was jailed for assaulting one of the migrant workers used to replace him at half wages. His face still has the white supremacist tattoos he took on in order to fit in in jail, though they have served precisely the opposite purpose since his release.  Now he’s the new kid at Clyde’s. It’s a ​​Pennsylvania truck stop cafe run by Gbemisola Ikumelo’s eponymous owner, a woman whose behaviour frequently strays into almost comical malevolence, who nonetheless offers all her kitchen jobs to people who’ve served time and would struggle to find work otherwise. It’s a drama about the hopes and dr

This review is from November 2019. ‘The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse’ returns for Christmas 2023. Jon Klassen is in a class of his own when it comes to kids’ books: his wry drawing and subversive, irony-steeped yarns almost certainly have a greater appeal to parents than children. A few years back the National Theatre adapted his most famous work, ‘I Want My Hat Back’, a blackly comic picture book about a dim-witted bear exacting murderous vengeance on a rabbit who nicked his hat. And now the Unicorn takes on ’The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse’. An illustrated storybook for slightly older kids, written with Mac Barnett, it’s not as well known as Klassen’s headwear-based opus. But with a bit more meat to it storywise, it’s easier to stage without the need to bulk out with songs etcetera. Jack McNamara does the adapting and directing for this Unicorn Theatre production for ages three to seven and it’s extremely delightful stuff: the story of a hungry, guitar-playing wolf who attempts to sate her appetite by gobbling up a mouse. Rather than dying, the rodent is surprised to discover that there’s an incredibly pretentious duck living in the beast’s intestines, and after some initial friction the two strike up a friendship and resolve to live inside the wolf’s cosy innards forever. But then a pair of hunters threaten the inept wolf and her lodgers decide they’d better take matters into their own hands. It’s a delightfully bizarre, deadpan story, realised in McNamara’s production by

Audrey Niffenegger’s sci-fi romance ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ has already been a book, a film and a TV series. So you don’t need to be able to have seen the future to guess that a stage adaptation always seemed likely.  And here it is, with a book by successful US playwright Lauren Gunderson and songs by Brits Joss Stone and Dave Stewart, directed by Bill Buckhurst.  If you don’t know what it’s about, the title is nothing if not helpful. Henry (David Hunter) is a time traveller: he has an outlandish genetic disorder that makes him move through time and space – naked! – at generally unhelpful moments. And Clare (Joanna Woodward) is his long-suffering wife, who adores him but must live with a husband who constantly vanishes, and is present in her life non-chronologically. So, for instance, while she tries to live her life with the ‘current’ Henry, he inconveniently disappears on the day of her wedding; an older Henry from nine years into the future is aware this happens, and turns up to fill in. If that sounds complicated: well yes and no. The genius and slight frustration of Niffenegger’s story is that, aside from the one outrageously improbable central plot point, it’s basically a fairly straight-down-the-line romcom with a weepie twist. It doesn’t allow itself to get bogged down in hard sci-fi stuff or the implications for humanity. Henry never tries to kill Hitler. Buckhurst’s production leans into this: it’s extremely breezy and casual about the central premise, which is

Alas poor Marshmallow! The inscrutable, inept snow monster that ice mage heroine Elsa conjures to guard her palace is the highest-profile casualty of ‘Frozen’s journey from screen to stage. Michael Grandage’s musical version of Disney’s animated enormo-smash is almost identical to the film in terms of plot beats. But he dials down the wilder fantasy, steering the show – within obvious constraints – to something a little closer in tone to ‘The Snow Queen’, the Hans Christian Andersen tale that it’s based upon. It’s still a dazzling spectacle that the film’s legions of kiddie fans will love. But adults will note that it’s more serious, sadder and wiser than the film. Some New York critics didn’t seem to be entirely happy with this when it opened on Broadway in 2018, criticising it for being dour. But I liked Grandage’s more melancholy spin, which is written by the film’s screenwriter and director Jennifer Lee, with new songs (and old songs) from the film’s songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. To be clear, the talking snowman and the goofy reindeer are still in it, but it does land a bit differently.  In particular, it feels like less of an ensemble piece and more focused on the relationship between Samantha Barks’s troubled, sensitive Elsa and Stephanie McKeon’s loveable goofball sister Anna. There’s more about their lives in the royal palace where they grew up, first as best friends, and then kept separate by their over-protective parents after Elsa's growing m

One of London’s first and most famous pub theatres, the King’s Head has been a mainstay of the city’s fringe since the ’70s. However, change has been afoot for some time now, with a move to a much larger, purpose-built 200-seat venue in Islington Square on the cards for several years. So many years have passed that we maaaay have got a little skeptical about it ever happening, not least because the big-name artistic directors who were meant to lead it into the new venue – Mark Ravenhill and Hannah Price – have both left, leaving the organisation looking somewhat rudderless when the old venue shut in the summer. But no, we were wrong to doubt: the new King’s Head Theatre will formally open in January 2024 with a new play called ‘Exhibitionists’, a gay romcom written by Shaun McKenna and Andrew Van Sickle, followed by Kevin Kelly’s drama about Benjamin Britten ‘Turning the Screw’.  Before that, though, it will ‘soft launch’ pre-Christmas with a tenth-anniversary run for John Brittain’s beloved drag fantasia ‘Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho’. It’s not entirely clear who is actually programming the theatre – though probably it’s the acting CEO Sofi Berenger – or if there is any plan to appoint an artistic director again in the future. But it’s a welcome rebirth for one of London’s most storied venues.  The new King’s Head Theatre is at Islington Square, 116 Upper St, London N1 1AB. ‘Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho’ will run Dec 16-20. ‘Exhibitionists’ will run Jan 5-Feb 10 2024.

Since turning 80, stage and screen legend Ian McKellen’s work-rate seems to have sped up, if anything. Few actors continue with stage work at that age, but McKellen has racked up a one-man autobiographical show, two productions of ‘Hamlet’, a Chekhov play, a hard-touring pantomime and a piece of new writing in the shape of ‘Frank and Percy’, currently running at The Other Palace in Victoria. Whether he’s going to retire or simply Attenborough it out, his next project looks pretty much unmissable, and perhaps a more fitting grand finale to one of the greatest theatre careers of all time than ‘Mother Goose’ or amiable romcom ‘Frank and Percy’. ‘The Player Kings’ will be the first new London production from the great Robert Icke since 2019, and comprises Icke’s own adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2’ – his first crack at the Bard since his transcendent Andrew Scott-starring ‘Hamlet’.  For those not in the know, the plays essentially follow Henry IV’s son Hal, as he ascends from drunken layabout to steely monarch during a tumultuous time in England’s history. Falstaff is the old, drunken knight who is Hal’s best friend and chief enabler. Funny, tragic and with an awful lot of lines, it’s generally regarded as a toss-up between Hamlet and Falstaff over which is the greatest role Shakespeare ever wrote. It would be a fool who bet against McKellen doing more Shakespeare in the future – a cheeky Prospero perhaps – but he has spoken of this as his last great stage

Sheridan Smith is an official National Treasure and an extremely talented stage actor – the recipient of two Olivier Awards. Nonetheless, she’s not known for either radically left-field work, or for her profile outside Britain. Which is why it’s extremely fascinating that her stage follow-up to this year’s playing-to-type ‘Shirley Valentine’ is to head up a new musical by left-field Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove. Featuring songs by baroque pop legend Rufus Wainwright, it’ll be an adaptation of auteur American director John Cassavetes’s seminal 1977 work ‘Opening Night’. We don’t know vastly more about it beyond that at this stage, but that’s quite a lot to be going on, to be fair. The film concerns Myrtle Gordon, an alcoholic actress haunted by the death of a fan, now struggling to get to grips with middle-aged and a play called ‘The Second Woman’, that she’s been cast as the lead in. While there’s something slightly incongruous about the idea of Van Hove and Smith working together – it’s extremely hard to imagine him watching an episode of ‘Two Pints of Lager’ – they’re simply major talents from different worlds, and it has to be said that Smith’s own well-documented struggles with drink will presumably make this something of a personal project. It still feels a bit random on paper, but there’s the sneaky suspicion that it might turn out to be something pretty special – you’ll be able to find out our opinion next year, on the opening night of ‘Opening Night’.  ‘Openi

It’s a huge November for London theatre, largely because the National Theatre has brought its A-game by opening three of the most exciting shows of the year within a couple of weeks of each other. It’s also the month in which the first Christmas shows of 2023 get underway, notably all the major pantos. Throw in a jaunty comedy at the Royal Court, an exciting Ibsen revival, and a bonkers-looking new immersive dining show, and you’ve got a thrilling-looking November. Photo: Ahron R Foster 1. Infinite Life The National Theatre has an almost absurdly brilliant November roster of new productions, and let’s just cut to the chase and say we fully expect the three latest NT shows to be the three best shows of the month. Top of the pops is ‘Infinite Life’, a new play from Annie Baker, whose previous run of NT productions – ‘The Flick’, ‘John’ and ‘The Antipodes’ – has strongly suggested she may be the best playwright in the world. ‘Infinite Life’ concerns a group of older women idly confronting mortality, and reviews from New York – from where this production directly transfers – have been ecstatic.National Theatre, Nov 22-Jan 13 2024. Photo: Marc BrennerChrissie Bhima in rehearsal 2. The Witches It’s been years since the National Theatre produced a truly great new musical, but this certainly looks promising. Top Brit playwright Lucy Kirkwood and cult US composer Dave Malloy have joined forces to tackle Roald Dahl’s classic kids’ novel about a young boy and his grandma who uncover

この1年で最も高く評価された画期的な新作エンターテインメントの一つが、ニューヨークとマンチェスターで大成功を収めた後、ついにロンドンに舞台を移すことになった。その作品とは、ミックスドリアリティーのパイオニアであるティン・ドラムと、日本の作曲家、故・坂本龍一がコラボレーションした「KAGAMI」だ。 実際どんなものであるかを説明するのは難しいが、一言で表すのであれば、この作品は「The Roundhouse」で行われるヘッドセットを装着して楽しむバーチャルコンサート。幻想的で哀愁漂う視覚的演出とともに、複合現実の空間によみがえる坂本のパフォーマンスを鑑賞するというものだ。 Photo: Marissa Alper レビューでは「別世界のような、不思議な感動を覚える体験」「悲しみに心を打たれる瞑想（めいそう）」などと評されている。KAGAMIのロンドンでの上演は2023年12月29日（金）から1月21日（日）まで上演される。チケット予約はこちらから。 関連記事 『Massively acclaimed AR show ‘Kagami’ is coming to the Roundhouse this winter（原文）』 『坂本龍一の最初で最後の長編コンサート映画「Opus」が新宿で上映決定』 『坂本龍一の生前最後のシアターピース「TIME」がついに新国立劇場で日本初上演』 『坂本龍一が生前から準備していた図書構想「坂本図書」がオープン』 『坂本龍一が音響監修した映画館を体験、デートにもぴったりな贅沢空間』 『インタビュー：坂本龍一』 東京の最新情報をタイムアウト東京のメールマガジンでチェックしよう。登録はこちら  

As Black Friday continues its relentless journey from niche American thing to annual pan-global inevitability, we can at least reap the rewards by more or less expecting with a monetary value to go on sale come late November. And good news, theatre fans! There’s a big West End Black Friday sale on this month, running from November 8 to November 27. On sale in a nifty mix of long-runners like ‘Book of Mormon’ and ‘Frozen’, more recent smashes like ‘Guys & Dolls’ at the Bridge and ‘The Little Big Things’ at @sohoplace, and upcoming Christmas stuff like Matthew Bourne’s ‘Edward Scissorhands’ ballet and immersive experiences ‘Humbug’ and ‘Velvet Pines’.  Not every West End show in London in participating, but it’s a great, diverse selection, with something or other on offer for any theatre lover, and a fine source of Christmas present options to boot. The complete list of shows is: ‘Guys & Dolls’, ‘A Very Very Bad Cinderella’, ‘Giselle’, ‘This Might Not Be It’, ‘Dreaming and Drowning’, ‘Shifters’, ‘The Cord’, ‘Bronco Billy’, ‘Crazy for You’, ‘Flowers for Mrs Harris’, ‘Frozen’, ‘Old Friends’, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, ‘The Interview’, ‘The Magic Flute’, ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’, ‘The Time Machine’, ‘Finding Santa’, ‘Afterglow’, ‘Sister Act’, ‘Book of Mormon’, ‘Nachtland’, ‘Kim’s Convenience’, ‘Aladdin’, ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’, ‘Humbug’, ‘Leaves of Glass’, ‘Edward Scissorhands’, ‘The Nutcracker’, ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’, ‘Wishmas’, ‘Sleeping Beauty Takes a Prick’, ‘L

One of the highest profile theatrical casualties of the pandemic was a lavish revival of the classic Broadway musical ‘Hello, Dolly!’, starring quadruple Olivier-winning living legend Imelda Staunton. She’s presumably been too busy starring as the late Queen Elizabeth in the last two seasons of ‘The Crown’ to commit to a big West End run, but finally we’re good to go, with a limited summer season booked into the magnificent London Palladium.  Photo: Johan Persson Directed by former Royal Court boss Dominic Cooke – who also did the honours for the National Theatre’s magnificent Staunton-starring ‘Follies’ (pictured above) – Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart’s 1964 classic follows the escapades of Dolly Levi, a widowed Manhattan socialite whose incessant meddling in the love lives of others results in her getting caught in a romantic entanglement of her own.  Staunton will star as Dolly, with a grade-A supporting cast of Andy Nyman, Jenna Russell, Tyrone Huntley and Harry Hepple. While the Palladium is massive, shows tend not to extend there because it’s always booked for something else, so expect this limited season to actually be properly limited. An on sale date is TBA, but don’t miss out on your chance to see the feel-good hit of next summer. ‘Hello, Dolly!’ is at the London Palladium, Jul 6-Sep 14 2024. Sign up for ticketing updates HERE. The best new London theatre shows opening in 2023 and 2024. Immersive dining legends Gingerline are returning to London.

The exact whereabouts of immersive dining pioneers Gingerline has been something of a mystery for the last several years: they launched an online show during the pandemic called ‘Franny Haddock’s Cook A Long Experience’, and then we’ve heard literally nothing since apart from the odd sly tweet suggesting the company is still active. In fact it seems they’ve been active in China and South Korea this whole time, taking some of their old shows to East Asia and just not making a big deal of it back home. But in 2024, the company is returning to London – where it was founded in 2010 – with a show that they’re absolutely not going to tell us about. Well, they have told us at bit: it’s going to be an updated version of an old show. The general idea, though, it is that you won’t know which one when you book, other than that you’ll get five courses and the usual lavish sets and themes. Previous shows have been set everywhere from a faux gameshow to a journey through a series of alien planets, so the possibilities are pretty wide open. Ticket purchasers will have the option to look at the menu nearer the time, or if they’re of a particularly nervous disposition, get spoilers on whatr the show is show. But the general idea is to go into it blind and devour whatever weird and wonderful food plus concepts the company can throw at you. Details beyond that are pretty scant – including exact dates and venue – but the first 40 performances will go on sale November 14, starting at £99 a head.

Exciting news: one of the most acclaimed and groundbreaking new shows of the last year is finally doing the decent thing and transferring to London after going down a storm in New York and at the Manchester International Festival. Slightly more challenging news: it’s quite hard to actually describe what it is. But let’s give it a damn good go.  ‘Kagami’ is a collaboration between mixed reality pioneers Tin Drum and the late Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, famous for a career that ran from influential electronic pioneers the Yellow Magic Orchestra on through his hugely acclaimed soundtrack work that took in the likes of ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’ and ‘The Revenant’. Photo: Marissa Alper In a nutshell, the show will see you put on a headset and watch a virtual concert at the Roundhouse, a recorded Sakamoto augmented by dazzling, elegiac visuals. Reviews have described it as an ‘otherworldly, strangely moving’ experience and ‘an affecting meditation on grief’. That’s the idea: best get a look for yourself when it moves into the Roundhouse at the end of December. ‘Kagami’ is at the Roundhouse Dec 29-Jan 21. Book tickets here. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2023 and 2024. Immersive theatre shows in London.

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

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