Andrzej Lukowski

Afternoon tea. Yes, it's twee, but there is something quite fun about working your way through what's essentially dessert tapas, especially when you’re at one of London’s top hotels or restaurants. We've rounded up London's best afternoon teas in a city renowned for putting on some of the world’s best spreads – with tiny cakes, little finger sarnies and pots of perfect tea the name of the delicious game. Expect to pay in the region of £50 to £80 for the pleasure per person, but you'll be in for a treat and a half. Many of the teas have set times for seatings, so booking in advance is always recommended. RECOMMENDED: The best hotels in London. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. The hottest new openings, the tastiest tips, the spiciest reviews: we’re serving it all on our London restaurants WhatsApp channel. Follow us now.

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

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.

Is it even possible to determine the ‘best joke of the Edinburgh Fringe’? It’s no easy task, that’s for sure – but it’s a challenge that TV channel Dave has been taking on year on year. Its annual competition, Dave’s Funniest Joke of the Fringe, crowns a winner from a competition shortlist drawn up by a panel of comedy critics, before members of the public are asked to pick their three favourite jokes.  Last year, Lorna Rose Treen took home the prize with her gag about an unfaithful zookeeper, which was ranked one of the best by 44 percent of those surveyed. She’s the first female comedian to win the award since Zoe Lyons scooped up the very first one in 2008. Treen said she was ‘blooming chuffed’ with the result: ‘A huge thank you for awarding my stupid joke with this title!’ 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. The award made a return in 2022 after being off for two years because of the pandemic. Keen to hear her winning joke? Check it out below, along with all of the winners.  RECOMMENDED:Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024The best comedy shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024The best theatre shows at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024 The best jokes and one-liners ever told at the Edinburgh Fringe 2023 – Lorna Rose Treen  ‘I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah.’ 2022 – Masai Graham ‘I tr

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 kids theatre is 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 London 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:101 things to do in London with kids.The best child-friendly restaurants in London.The top 9 museums in London for kids.

Need a place to stay in London? We’re here to make it easy for you. Even now, a wealth of new hotels are opening – which we reckon is a testament to the fact that London remains one of the most desirable places to visit in the world. Many of the hotels listed below are incredible enough to have made it straight into the Time Out top 20, but our hand-picked list of the best hotels covers locations right across the capital, and every category from blowout luxury (including having your own butler, might we add) to budget basic and brilliant.We’ve listed everything from five-star hotels in Mayfair to incredibly affordable hotels in some of London’s very best neighbourhoods. Plus you’ll be able to check out one or two of the capital's many Michelin-starred restaurants because yep, loads of them call London hotels their home. But if spending a small fortune on food isn’t your bag? There’s also an ever-increasing number of good-value food options for budgeteers, too. Throw great design and architecture into the mix, plus superb bars, world-class hospitality and the opportunity to have a home-from-home in the best city in the world and, well, you’re laughing. Basically, you’re totally spoilt for choice. So, read on, decide where to stay in London, and ready yourself for a hotel visit like no other. Enjoy! Looking for even more options? Check out London’s best Airbnbs. Keen on a steamy night in? Check out London's best hotels for sex. Who makes the cut? While we might not stay in eve

There’s a reason people travel from all over the world to visit Edinburgh. This is one of our favourite cities on the planet, bursting with food, culture, and all-round great vibes, all while looking a bit like it’s a made up place from a gothic novel.  Firstly, of course, there’s the Fringe, the largest arts festival in the whole world, taking place throughout August. But at any time of year, you’ll find charming old-school pubs, top-notch restaurant scene and plenty of cute cafés to break up a day of mooching. Whatever your vibe, here’s our local’s guide to the best things to do in Edinburgh.  RECOMMENDED:🥞 The best brunches in Edinburgh🍸 The best cocktail bars in Edinburgh🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Where to stay in Edinburgh🏨 The best hotels in Edinburgh   This guide was recently updated by Time Out’s features editor Chiara Wilkinson, who is originally from Edinburgh. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. This guide includes affiliate links, which have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, see our affiliate guidelines. 

It’s the largest arts festival in the world – there’s nothing quite like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (August 2-August 26 2023). With literally hundreds of comedy shows to choose from, flicking through the phonebook-like Fringe 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’ve either seen and reviewed or are 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

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is back for summer 2024. For three weeks (August 2 – August 26), the Scottish capital is home to comedy giants, serious thespians and hilarious first-timers, all putting on shows left, right and centre. It’s a huge, colourful celebration of all sorts of performing arts, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.   But with so much choice on offer, it’s difficult to know where on earth to start. Here’s our pick of the best theatre shows accounced so far. The programme is famously enormous (over 3,500 shows), so we’ll keep adding to the list in the run up to the festival and will update it based upon reviews when the festival actually starts.  While most of our recommednations are from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2024, the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) is also running alongside, and we’ve included some picks from that.  RECOMMENDED: Your ultimate guide to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe10 of the best comedy shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 202411 of the best jokes and one-liners ever told at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Six. Weeks. Or thereabouts. Officially the London school summer holidays run Thursday July 25 to Friday August 30, but with some boroughs breaking earlier and many schools taking a day or two of teacher training in early September, we’re basically talking six big ones – more than most parents’s annual leave. So good luck with that! To help you organise and plan, here are our picks of the best new and temporary London family events this summer, from exhibitions to theatre shows, festivals to magicians. These are events likely to either only be on this summer or new to London. For evergreen ideas for things to do with children, see our 101 Things To Do With Kids In London. For general London summer ideas see our summer in London guide.

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. 

London’s theatre scene is the most exciting in the world: perfectly balanced between the glossy musical theatre of Broadway and the experimentalism of Europe, it’s flavoured by the British preference for new writing and love of William Shakespeare, but there really is something for everyone. Between the showtunes of the West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector, there’s a whole thrilling world, with well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work. This rolling list is constantly updated to share the best of what’s coming up and currently booking: these choices aren’t the be-all and end-all of great theatre in 2024, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.   They’re shows worth booking for, pronto, both to avoid sellouts but to get the cheaper tickets that initially go on sale for most shows but tend to be snapped up months before they actually open. Want to see if these shows live up to the hype? Check out our theatre reviews. Check out our complete guide to musicals in London.  And head over here for a guide to every show in the West End at the moment.

A musical about obsessive online fandoms is a brilliant idea. But I’m sorry to report this hit Australian show – largely the brainchild of writer, songwriter and original star Yve Blake – is very much Not It. Australian 14-year-old Edna (Jasmine Elcock, winsome) is a fully signed-up stan of Harry (Thomas Grant), the most beloved member of reality TV show-assembled Brit boy band Heartbreak Nation (to be clear here: to all intents and purposes Harry is meant to be Harry Styles.) Edna seems to be normal enough: she writes fanfic about Harry, but she’d hardly be the only one. Beyond that her only real distinguishing characteristics are that she’s on a scholarship to a fancy school and her mum is a single mum.  Anyway, long story short: she fails to secure tickets to the band’s Sydney date and decides she’ll abduct Harry instead. And indeed she does so. Which is a fun premise but ‘Fangirls’ doesn’t do much with it. It is neither a fast-paced, laugh a minute dark comedy nor a serious interrogation of obsession fandoms. Instead it dabbles in high school drama clichés and mixes jokey bits and earnest bits to muddled effect. Director Paige Rattray brings a stylish music video aesthetic to bear, and David Fleischer’s three-level video screen set is nifty: sometimes it’s just a flexible projected backdrop, but later it works brilliantly as the tiers of a stadium. There’s cracking video design by Ash J Woodward. Blake’s book and lyrics aren’t deep, but a better director of comedy could s

What is the Paradox Museum?  The Paradox Museum joins the likes of Dopamine Land, the Twist Museum, the Balloon Museum and Bubble Planet on the ranks of what I can only describe as ‘Instagrammable immersive family attractions’. They’re 2024’s answer to the escape room fad of London circa 2018. Where is the Paradox Museum? Located in a plum spot in Knightsbridge, bang opposite Harrods, it’s palpably fancier than some of its peers, and on its first Sunday of operation was doing a roaring trade (we had timed tickets but it still took about half an hour to get in). What happens at the Paradox Museum? You’re not going to learn a lot about famous historical paradoxes here, although there are QR codes to scan if you’d like more information. For the most part it leans on optical illusions and cool mirror-based tricks, less so actual paradoxes, though there are fun nods to things like Schrodinger's Cat, and a general tongue-in-cheek quality to the descriptions that separates it from the bland tone adopted by many comparable attractions. Some of it is just goofy fun: a sofa where one person’s torso sticks out of one side and another’s legs the other is nothing more than a photo opportunity, but a pretty good one. There are some broad-brush London allusions for the tourist crowd, from an upside down tube station to a David Bowie mural. I’m not above being pleased by this stuff and was particularly taken with the ‘paradox tunnel’, a room with rotating walls that makes you feel like you’r

This rambling but impassioned Pulitzer-winner from Kaitori Hall (‘The Mountaintop’, ‘Tina’) follows a group of middle aged gay Black men in Memphis, Tennessee who have said goodbye to the certainties of a conventional life and are now trying to dream it all up again.  Cordell (Kadiff Kirwan) left his wife and two sons five years ago for the sake of his relationship with Dwayne (Simon-Anthony Rhoden), and he is still trying to come to terms with that decision – his kids won’t talk to him, and there are tensions between the two men. The only real certainty in Cordell’s life is his obsession with chicken wing perfection: he is determined to take the coveted title of the Memphis hot wing king, his various creations include blueberry wings, lemon wings (wet and dry), parmesan wings and this year’s masterpiece: the spicy Cajun alfredo with bourbon-infused crumbled bacon. Roy Alexander Weise’s production of Hall’s play is a peculiar, often enthralling mix of serious naturalism, spiky comedy and flights of hyperreal whimsy. Most of the lols comes from Jason Barnett and Olisa Odele as Big Charles and Isom, the other couple – or sort-of couple – in the house. Charles, a barber, is schlubby, sports-loving and blokey by the standards of the group. Isom is affably ludicrous, an ultracamp urban dandy who gets the show’s funniest lines (and the night’s biggest gasp thanks to a catastrophic spice mishap). We don’t actually learn a huge amount about their backgrounds, but they feel vital to t

Nassim Soleimanpour’s global cult smash ‘White Rabbit, Red Rabbit’ was an ingenious response to the fact that the Iranian playwright was at the time unable to leave his home country. He wrote a sly subversive script designed for a different actor to perform cold every night, pointedly acting as stand ins for the writer who was physically banned from travel. It was good, but was it so good that it justified him making an entire career out of variations thereof? As with 2017’s ‘Nassim’, ‘ECHO’ – staged as part of this year’s LIFT festival – has its moments but struggles to really find a truly compelling reason for being performed by a cold reader (on press night the redoubtable Adrian Lester). What the production - directed by metatheatrical master Omar Elerian - does bring to the table is a heap more cool techy stuff than the ultra lo-fi ‘White Rabbit…’, and an awful lot more of Soleimanpour himself. Early on, our performer (Lester) is put into apparent live video contact with Soleimanpour, who merrily bumbles about his Berlin flat – where he lives with his wife, and dog Echo – chatting away inanely to his bemused star.  ‘Echo’ does two things well.  It is excellent on the nature of what it is to have a divided self as a result of emigration, as most specifically embodied by the fact Soleimanpour finds himself unable to clearly say where his home is. He has left Iran, yet Iran never leaves him, and he does not seem to have an emotional connection with Berlin. He is not a refug

Itinerant attraction ‘The Art of the Brick’ has been trotting around the globe since 2007, and at time of writing had virtually sold out every time slot for the entirety of the Easter holidays at its temporary London home. As I have technically been an adult this entire time I have never previously had cause to visit what is essentially a series of Lego sculptures made by a single man: Nathan Sawaya, whose image and inspirational quotes are slapped all over the place (which is unaffiliated with Lego beyond its bricks being Sawaya’s material of choice). It’s not really art. I took a photo of a Sawaya quote saying ‘fortunately, there are no rules in art!’ and sent it to Time Out’s art editor. He replied saying that he thought I should be ashamed of myself. However, clearly the audience is not actually an art audience. The audience is children. One clue is the room with a gigantic T-rex skeleton in it. Another is the play area at the end, with a big pit of Lego and a big pit of Duplo and a nifty scanner thing where kids can place pictures of objects they’ve coloured in, which then appear in a virtual art gallery on a big screen. If the works lack razzle dazzle, Sawaya’s various humanoid figures are nonetheless technically impressive.  And kids will dig the art. Or models, or constructs, or whatever you want to call it. If the works on the whole lack a little razzle dazzle, Sawaya’s various humanoid figures are nonetheless technically impressive. My nine-year-old loved reading th

Feature: the happiest show on Earth is coming to London. For complicated reasons I ended up seeing the new spectacle from Argentine stunt theatre legends Fuerza Bruta twice, once effectively on a night out - drink had been taken - and a second time to review as a theatre show. It’s a ridiculous way of going about it of course, but it is also pretty illuminating because I think these are almost two different philosophical approaches to the Diqui James-led company, who return to the Roundhouse for the first time in over a decade having scored blockbuster successes here with hits ‘Fuerza Bruta’ and (as De La Guarda) ‘Villa Villa’.  Billed as ‘the happiest show on Earth’, ‘Aven’ is more euphoric and less macho than ‘Fuerza Bruta’, and its component parts – the stuff that happens in it – are completely different. There are new themes and motifs: the natural world crops up a lot. But it is undeniably a series of spectacular setpieces with no plot, set to Gaby Kerpel’s pounding electronic score, staged largely around, and often above, the all-standing audience. The theatrical highs are fairly obvious: a gaggle of acrobatic performers running around the sides of a giant smoke-spitting globe; a man appearing to ‘swim’ through a huge tube filled with a vortex of confetti; at the climax a gigantic inflatable whale – controlled by two performers – swimming majestically through the Roundhouse’s towering vaults.  Overanalyse it as theatre and you’ll probably see it as variable: the aforeme

What is Dopamine Land? Probably the most important thing to know about immersive London experience Dopamine Land, is that it is called Dopamine Land. Where some other, similar events make a slightly cringey play to be viewed as art or informative, Dopamine Land makes no such claim: it’s a series of rooms full of mirrors and balls that broadly exist for you to dick around in and take some sweet selfies. It’s not art, it’s fun: it’s Dopamine Land, baby! What age is Dopamine Land for? When it launched way back in 2022 it was aimed at adults as much as kids, perhaps slightly more. It probably draws a different crowd in the evenings, but the vibes when I visited were distinctly families only - there’s something slightly hilarious about the fact you can buy cocktails at the end, as if one might get hammered in a soft play. Certainly it seems like a truly strange place to go for a first date, culminating as it does in a pillow-fight room. But for your average group of children, it’s undoubtedly a good time, and the staff are slick and good humoured when it comes to herding minors around. It’s not art, it’s fun: it’s Dopamine Land, baby! How long do you need in Dopamine Land? The officially time they recommend is 30 minutes to an hour. We probably spent around 45 minutes there total, which is fairly brisk but we felt like we had enough time in each room. There is a bit of waiting around, although this is a function of your group getting several of the rooms to themselves for a spell

Jeremy O Harris: ‘Most theatre is boring. I wanted to write something cool’. ‘Is London ready for “Slave Play”?’ run the adverts. It’s a tagline that the smash Broadway play’s larger-than-life author Jeremy O Harris has revealed to essentially be a subtweet directed at a London artistic director who got cold feet over staging it. But it’s also genuinely a fair question, one that echoes the infamous ‘finally London is ready for Bruce Springsteen’ 1975 ad campaign – the suggestion in each case being that we’re dealing with something potentially too American for the British mind to handle. If you genuinely know nothing about ‘Slave Play’ then maybe consider reading up after seeing it, because the original intent was audiences went in blind: its journey to becoming the most Tony-nominated play of all time (until it got dethroned by this year’s ‘Stereophonic’) began with a 2018 off-Broadway run in which the marketing didn’t actually say what the play was about at all. After six years of hype, it’s possible London is actually over-ready for ‘Slave Play’: the average West End ticket holder will have an idea what’s up when the show apparently begins as a period drama set on a plantation in the antebellum US South. There, three similar, but different sexual scenarios unfurl: a Black female slave (Olivia Washington’s Kaneisha) makes overtures to her slovenly white supervisor (Kit Harington’s Jim); the white mistress of the house (Annie McNamara’s Alana) gears up to peg her chipper mixe

In Detroit, Michigan another auto factory is reaching the end of the line. And to the people who work there, it’s more than a money problem.  In Dominique Morriseau’s 2016 drama, the US playwright explores both the dignity of labour and the trap of labour by showing how utterly dependent on her four working class Black characters are on their jobs. At the most extreme example there’s Faye (Pamela Nomvete), the seen-it-all union rep who we come to realise is actually living in the factory. There’s Shanita (Racheal Ofori), a pregnant single mother, whose medical benefits are dependent on the job. Supervisor Reggie (Tobi Bamtefa) has a mortgage to pay. And as for gun-toting youngster  Dez (Branden Cook) - is he the one who has been breaking in at night to steal stuff? What Morriseau does extremely well is bring together four well-rounded characters - each of whom appears to have a full life off stage, only glancingly alluded to here - and show their lives through the prism of work. Admittedly we don’t ever see them working: the play is set entirely in a staff common room, though in Matthew Xia’s production the nature of their jobs is brought home by pummelling industrial light and sound during the scene transitions.  Although matters get gradually more fraught, it’s not quite a tragedy - the endgame is more the exposing of these superficially tough people’s vulnerabilities than their actual destruction. The tough but troubled turn from Nomvete as Faye is the best performance and

Brainiac Live! comes to the Marylebone Theatre in 2024. This review is from the 2013 run. Unless you’re hoping your kids grow up to have a career in blowing stuff up and electrocuting people, it’s probably worth stating from the off that ‘Brainiac Live!’ isn’t really an educational show – you’ll probably learn more about science from a Harry Potter novel. Still, even the most sensitive of children tend to derive a certain amount of pleasure from watching things explode. And in that respect this live spin off of the defunct Sky children’s show ‘Brainiac: Science Abuse’ delivers. It starts with a caravan being detonated and ends with the destruction of a microwave: in between various gas-filled balloons are exploded, one of the enthusiastic young presenters gets strapped to a rocket propelled office chair, and several of them learn the hard way how an electrified fence works. There’s a sort of boffins-gone-rogue aesthetic to the whole thing, with much donning of lab coats and brandishing of goggles. Yet only the most apologetic of explanations interrupts the bangs and pops – call me Herr Gove, but ‘Brainiac’s palpable terror at being seen as improving felt like a slightly missed opportunity to me. Still, I suppose children have schools to learn stuff in. What ‘Brainiac Live’ indubitably lacks is a big personality host a la the TV show, which employed the likes of Vic Reeves and Richard ‘The Hamster’ Hammond. Backed by three mute assistants, presenters Rik Warren and Andy Joyce

Quite possibly the most aggressively ‘80s artefact in existence, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Starlight Express’ is a musical about anthropomorphic roller skating trains that often feels like being forced to watch ten consecutive episodes of some trashy Saturday morning action cartoon. It’s loud. It’s dumb. It barely has characters in any meaningful sense. Richard Stilgoe’s lyrics are kind of anti-Sondheim: it’s a show that makes your brain contract with every second that passes. And yet to complain ‘Starlight Express’ isn’t very clever is like complaining tigers aren’t very good at accountancy. It exists as pure spectacle, and where the original production ran out of steam on the West End way back in 2002 (after a near 18 year stint), this revival from ‘& Juliet’ man Luke Sheppard supercharges it. Staged at what would appear to be enormous expense, the nouveau ‘Starlight Express’ has given Wembley’s hi-tech but hitherto under-utilised Troubadour Wembley Park a real sense of purpose. The production is billed as ‘immersive’, and while I’d argue that’s a stretch, the reconfigured auditorium - designed by Tim Hatley - is extremely cool, with the audience divided into little seating areas that the roller skating actors whoosh around at roughly head height.   Oh yeah, roller skating. Ultimately ‘Starlight Express’ is inseparable from its original conceit, which is that the actors playing the trains skate around the venue. Maybe one day after it’s fallen out of copyright somebody will st

Simon McBurney’s legendary theatre company Complicité basically has two modes: clever but fairly narratively conventional takes on difficult-to-stage classics, and brain melting experimental odysseys that’ll rewire your cerebellum. Their 1999 play ‘Mnemonic’ - reimagined and redevised for 2024 - is very much in the latter camp, although to a certain extent the problem with brain melting experimental odysseys is that they can be hard to describe in a way that accurately conveys their appeal. Does a play that explores the parallels between the act of memory, the act of migration, the act of ancestry and the act of storytelling sound intrinsically thrilling to you? It doesn’t to me. But it truly is.  ‘Mnemonic’ begins slow, with actor Khalid Abdalla delivering a rambling, slightly Richard Curtis-y speech about the nature of memory, his personal background as a Brit born in Scotland with Egyptian ancestry, and the fact that Compicité is reviving its 25-year-old hit ‘Mnemonic’, with Khalid assuming the role director McBurney originally played. Eventually it unfurls into two separate strands: the mystery of what happened to Alice (Eileen Walsh), the wife of Omar (Khalid), who abruptly disappeared nine months ago after her mother’s funeral; and a fictionalised version of the true-life mystery of a body discovered on the border of the Austrian and Italian Alps in 1991 due to a freak glacier melt, which was discovered to everyone’s great surprise to have been 5,200 years old. It’s ess

The Shakespeare’s Globe outdoor summer season is currently in full swing and is running right up until the end of October. But time marches on and so does theatre programming and today (July 10) the Globe has announced its winter programme of shows at its intimate candlelit indoor theatre, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. So what’s on the programme? Would it blow your mind to hear that there are several plays by William Shakespeare involved? In fact the Wanamaker steered clear of The Bard in its early days, but now it’s long got past the pedantic period quibbles that used to keep him outdoors only. The season will begin with ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ (Nov 8-Jan 4). Generally something of a rarity in performance terms – it’s possibly the only Shakespeare play better known as a cheery aphorism than an actual work of drama – the Bard’s weirdy late works are well suited to the Wanamaker and you only have to go back to 2018 to find the last production (though that generally wasn’t viewed as very good). Chelsea Walker will direct one of his strangest plays, a thriller about Helen, a woman brutally rebuffed in love. Early next year, Jennifer Tang will direct another of Shakespeare’s so-called ‘problem plays’, the tragicomic pastoral ‘Cymbeline’ (Jan 10-Apr 20), last seen at the Globe in an aggressively modern raved up version called ‘Imogen’ back in 2016 (and in a more trad Wanamaker production the year before that). For a final dose of the Bard, a 90-minute version of ‘Macbeth’ aimed

Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour made his name with ‘White Rabbit, Red Rabbit’, an experimental drama that played on the fact he was then unable to leave his home country, and thus a different performer was required to read the script every night, having never seen it before. The show started small but soon became something of a celebrity cause, with the likes of Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg, Dominic West and many more all taking part. It’s the perfect play for a busy star, as it explicitly requires that they don’t prepare, and they only ever do it once. Originally performed in 2010, it set the template for Soleimanpour’s future works, which brings us to his new one ‘ECHO’. Somewhat enigmatically standing for ‘Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen’, the whole point of his plays is that nobody knows what’s going to happen in advance and thus information scant, but apparently it’s going to be about ‘what it means to be a refugee in time’. What we do know is who is going to perform in the play, which will run at the Royal Court as the centrepiece of this year’s London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). The actors tackling it will be Sheila Atim, Monica Dolan, Jessica Gunning, Jeremy O Harris, Adrian Lester, Nick Mohammed, Mawaan Rizwan, Jodie Whittaker, Benedict Wong, Kathryn Hunter, Toby Jones, Fiona Shaw, Meera Syal and Rebecca Lucy Taylor. The performance schedule is not quite finalised but runs as follows: 13 July, 7.30pm: Fiona Shaw 15 July, 7.30pm: Benedict Wong16 July, 7

As we enter the high summer months the big West End musicals are slowing down, but London theatre as a whole continues to be prolific, eclectic and thrilling. From the long-awaited UK arrival of Jeremy O Harris’s wildly provocative race relations comedy ‘Slave Play’ to a three-show barnstormer of month at the National Theatre, there’s plenty to get your teeth into. Photo: Olivia Lifunglia 1. Slave Play Jeremy O Harris’s incendiary play about a series of interracial couples who use radical slavery-based roleplay to try and pep up their flagging sex lives was a huge – and hugely unexpected – hit in his native US, but has been a long time coming over to us. Finally, though, it’s here, a remount of the original production with a cast comprised of veterans of the US show and a new infusion of Brits led by Kit Harington. Jun 29-Sep 21 Noël Coward Theatre. Buy tickets here. Photo: David Ryle 2. Mnemonic/The Hot Wing King/The Grapes of Wrath The National Theatre has an opening in each of its three theatres this month, and frankly they all look awesome. A lavish new stage take on ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (pictured) starring Broadway and ‘Succession’ legend Cherry Jones is the big summer blockbuster; Kaitori Hall’s Pulitzer-winner ‘The Hot Wing King’ is for the cooler new-writing kids; the real jewel in the season’s crown is almost certainly the revival of the pioneering theatre company Complicité’s revered, unclassifiable masterpiece ‘Mnemonic’. Mnemonic: National Theatre, Lyttelton,

Twenty-four years ago, an unknown student theatre company named Punchdrunk staged an elaborate immersive performance for one audience member at a time, based on Edwardian writer Barry Pain’s macabre short story ‘The Moon Slave’. ‘It’s genuinely my favourite thing we’ve ever done’ says company founder Felix Barrett of the show, which he put on as a student at Exeter University, ‘just the sheer intensity of it – the most distilled, pure version of a Punchdrunk show.’ If you’ve heard of Punchdrunk but not ‘The Moon Slave’ then that’s understandable: Punchdrunk has gone on to become the most important immersive theatre company in the world, making their name with colossal, ominous explorable worlds visited by thousands every week. By contrast ‘The Moon Slave’ was staged one chilly night in November 2000… and only four people ever saw it. ‘We saved up and we could still only do it for one evening,’ reminiscences Barrett. Trying to make a name for themselves, the invites were strictly industry: one local journalist, and three local Arts Council reps. ‘We used a marine flare for the finale of each performance, and we literally couldn’t afford more than four,’ sighs Barrett. Quarter of a century on and money isn’t a problem: Punchdrunk is by far the biggest immersive company in the game, with a string of huge international and domestic hits – its most recent was Trojan War epic ‘The Burnt City’, staged at Woolwich headquarters Carriageworks.  For a follow-up, Punchdrunk is bringing ‘

Mark Rylance – aka the world’s greatest living stage actor and an Oscar-winner to boot – and J Smith-Cameron – aka Gerri from Succession but also a veteran Broadway and off-Broadway actor – join forces this autumn to star in a major West End revival for the Seán O’Casey’s classic Irish play ‘Juno and the Paycock’, helmed by West End super-producer Sonia Friedman.  Directed by Old Vic boss Matthew Warchus at the Gielgud Theatre – his seventh collaboration with Rylance – the 1924 tragicomedy follows the Boyles, a shambolic Irish family trying to scrape by in the tenements of Dublin during the Irish Civil War. Rylance will star as drunken rogue Jack Boyle, with Smith-Cameron as Juno, his sharp-witted wife essentially tasked with looking after everyone. ‘Paycock’ is, of course, peacock said in an Irish accent – what Juno calls Jack.  As funny as it is dark, ‘Juno and the Paycock’ is O’Casey’s best-known and most-performed play, but you’d have to go back to the early ’90s to find a West End production. This centenary production is probably its biggest to date. Rylance is a prolific stage actor, last seen in the West End last year with ‘Dr Semmelweis’ and the year before that in a revival of the landmark ‘Jerusalem’. This will be Smith-Cameron’s UK debut, though she has dozens of appearances on the New York stage under her belt – including starring in this same play, in the same role, back in 2014. ‘Juno and the Paycock’ is at the Gielgud Theatre, Sep 21-Nov 23. Tickets go on sale 

In 1973, Quadrophenia was released as a high concept album by The Who – the only one of the legendary group’s records to be entirely written by guitarist Pete Townshend. In 1979, it was adapted into a film that starred a young Phil Daniels as protagonist Jimmy, a young, disillusioned mod trying to find some meaning in life on Brighton seafront during the mods vs rockers skirmishes of the 1960s. And in 2025 it’ll reincarnate as a new ballet staged by Sadler’s Wells, staged with Townshend’s blessing. Set to an orchestral arrangement of the record, the new ‘Quadrophenia’ will be by directed by theatre director Rob Ashford and choreographed by Paul Roberts, who is well known for his collaborations with pop artists, from the Spice Girls to Prince. Rising star dancer Paris Fitzpatrick will play Jimmy in a new work that follows last year’s Black Sabbath musical in bringing classic boomer rock to a ballet setting. As befits the fact it’s an adaptation of a huge-selling record and much loved film , ‘Quadrophenia’ will tour the country, playing in Plymouth, Edinburgh, Southampton and Manchester, with a lengthy (for a ballet) stint at Sadler’s Wells next summer.  ‘Quadrophenia’ is at Sadler’s Wells Jun 24-Jul 13 2025. Tickets go on sale Jul 5. Adrien Brody and ‘Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812’ star in the new Donmar season. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2024.

New Donmar artistic director Tim Sheader has delivered one almighty-looking first season as he announces his first set of plans for the bijou Seven Dials powerhouse. Sheader is best know for running the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park for a massive 18 years, and if there’s one thing we could reasonably expect from him, it’s a big musical. He has truly delivered with a show many have been waiting over a decade for: Dave Malloy’s ‘Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812’ (Dec 7-Feb 8 2025), a folk opera adaptation of a chunk of Tolstoy’s ‘War & Peace’ that became a huge cult hit on and off-Broadway, with its original Rachel Chavkin-directed US production staged in a tent, with the audience liberally doused in vodka shots. This is not that production, but a fresh one directed by Sheader himself, but however he goes about it, it’s just a tremendous thrill that we’ll be able to see it at last. Before that, though, and proof that there’s more to Sheader than musicals, he’s scored a seriously heavyweight casting coup with the season opener and UK theatre debut of Oscar-winning US actor Adrien Brody. He’ll play the protagonist of ‘The Fear of 13’ (Oct 4-Nov 30), US playwright Lindsey Ferrentino’s adaptation of David Sington’s 2015 film about Nick Yarris, a man who spent 22 years on death row in Pennsylvania for a murder he didn’t commit. Next year comes Anna Mackmin’s new play ‘Backstroke’ (Feb 14-Apr 12 2025), which stars Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig as a mother and daughter who

London-based Disney-loving musical theatre fans who have been struggling to let the imminent closure of the West End’s ‘Frozen’ go are about to receive some serious compensation: it’s been confirmed today (June 24) that the new adaptation of 1997’s Hercules will go into Theatre Royal Drury Lane in summer 2025. Okay, there is admittedly a reason why it’s taken so long for ‘Hercules’ to hit the stage. After Disney’s insane late ’80s-to-mid-’90s hot streak of animated movies that was ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Lion King’, the Greek myth-derived ‘Hercules’ was very clearly a cultier affair: profitable, but modestly so.  Still, it very definitely has its fans, and Disney songwriting legend Alan Menken has kept the faith over the years, with this stage version very much his baby. There have so far been two productions in the US and one in Germany; all of them have been on the smaller side, relatively speaking, but for Hercules’s latest labour his namesake musical will go into one of the biggest theatre in the West End next year. Information is relatively scant, but it appears this will be a version of the Hamburg production, as it is directed and choreographed by that production’s helmsman Casey Nicholaw. It’ll use the most recent book for the show as well, which is co-written by Robert Horn and our very own Kwame Kwei-Armah. Will it be any good? The US incarnations received mixed reviews, but musicals are notorious for taking years to get righ

It’s the one weekend of the year where musical theatre in London goes from ‘basically unaffordable’ to ‘free if you just want to hear the songs’. Here’s everything you need to know about this weekend’s West End Live. What is West End Live? West End Live is an annual free outdoor concert staged in Trafalgar Square in June, with a bill made up of live performances from West End musicals – basically all of them. When is West End Live 2024? West End Live takes play Saturday June 22 and Sunday June 23. Do you need tickets? No, it’s free and unticketed. It is usually very popular however so you’re advised to get down early if you’d like a good spot. Can you watch the shows online? You can’t watch them live but they will be uploaded to the OfficialLondonTheatre YouTube channel in short order so you won't miss much. You can see last year's show here. Who will be appearing this year? On the whole, the cast of every musical theatre show currently running in London will do a song or two, from old classics like ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ to newies like ‘MJ the Musical’ and ‘Standing at the Sky’s Edge’ to a taste of shows that aren’t on yet like ‘Why Am I So Single?‘ or ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. There are also a handful of performances not directly affiliated to a musical such as performances from musical theatre stars Mazz Murray and Carrie Hope Fletcher. Plus a ‘surprise show’ at 12.25pm on Sunday has people speculating about a major celebrity appearanc

It has been an extremely long time since Nicholas Hytner’s Bridge Theatre staged a new show, thanks to the extraordinary success of its last one. Hytner’s immersive production of ‘Guys & Dolls’ has been packing ‘em in since the start of last year and is still due to run until early 2025. That’s still a while off, but the next show at the prestigious London Bridge theatre has now been announced and it’s big one. Stage regular and Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey will take on the title role of Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’ in a new Hytner directed production that’ll run from February next year.  Shakespeare’s play concerns the titular monarch: a charismatic but weak ruler whose steadfast belief in his divine right to rule proves his undoing as he’s thrust into conflict with his nobles led by the future Henry IV. We don’t have many clues about the production at this stage, though the language around Bailey’s Richard suggests he’ll be in something more like charmer Bridgerton mode than, say, David Tennant’s weirdo take from a decade ago. Both of Hytner’s previous Shakespeare plays at the Bridge – that’s ‘Julius Caesar’ (2018) and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (2019) – had immersive productions similar to ‘Guys & Dolls’, with half the audience seated and half standing on the floor and moving around the room throughout the show. We have no idea if that will be the case this time, and there‘s been no designer announced (all those shows were made with the great Bunny Christie). There’s als

UPDATE: a second ballot will now be drawn at noon on Thursday 20, withe the general sale now taking place on Monday 24. Taskmaster is one of the great cult comedy success stories of our time. Initially created by comic and musician Alex Horne as a live show, he sold the idea to the comedy network Dave and the rest is history. Now rehomed on Channel 4, the show – which is presented by Greg Davies with Horne as his assistant – is essentially a sort of very surreal panel show that revolves around and to take a panel programme adaptation of revolving around each season’s batch of celebrities being made to tackle a series of completely ludicrous tasks and challenges. While still definitely on the cult side of TV programming, it also has a committed army of fans, who’ve been out in force as Taskmaster has announced a return to its live roots. ‘Taskmaster: The Live Experience’ is a live version of the show that will allow the general public to enjoy a slice of the show’s insanity via two different gameplay challenges: Melon Buffet and Absolute Casserole. Running at Dock X in Canada Water for four months, initial demand for it has been so overwhelming that all tickets are being allocated by ballot – a ballot you can still enter, but not for long. You have until 2pm on Wednesday June 19 to sign up – presumably more like 1.59pm as the draw happens at 2pm. If you succeed the tickets will go on sale two days later. Whether or not a more conventional sale then happens presumably depends o

The weather may be struggling to catch up, but summer is now officially on, and with it one of the best bits in the annual musical theatre calendar. Where many musicals these days will charge you triple figures for a tepid seat in the circle, West End Live has the distinction of being totally free (it’s actually funded by the City of Westminster but you don’t really need to worry about that). Not only that, but pretty much everyone shows up: ‘Hamilton’, ‘Wicked’, ‘Frozen’, ‘Operation Mincemeat’, ‘Mean Girls’, ‘Les Mis’, ‘Next To Normal’, ‘Cabaret’… there may be some hold out that we’ve failed to spot, but basically every single musical showing in London – and a few that are coming up or yet to open – will have a performance slot over its two free days. Obviously you’re not actually getting the full musical experience – you’re going to get one to two songs from most shows. But they tend to put their bangers to the fore, and regardless it is pretty astounding vale to see professional cast performing some of the greatest songs ever written, all for free. Early entry will yield a better vantage point (it is understandably very popular) and the absolute best time to go is definitely the first couple of hours on Saturday, when most of the biggest shows perform in advance of that afternoon’s matinee performances. But you’ll have fun all weekend: provided you have a reasonable tolerance of showtunes it’s the best free event in the London calendar, two nine hours of pure musical theat